I became Catholic on my own accord at 15 years old. I went to church religiously [ha!], and joined RCIA and did my communion shortly after.  Since then I go through spells of dedication and then spells of laziness.  Before the age of 15, I was plenty versed on the Christian Bible and Jesus’ trials throughout Lent.  When I became Catholic, it was the first time that I started to understand Jesus’ role in my life and my religious beliefs, and for once, Lent.

I apologize if I start to offend either non-Catholics, or heck, practicing Catholics for that matter – but I feel like I’ve needed to say this for a long time: giving up chocolate is not Lenten sacrifice.  At least, not for an adult. If I were 11, I could see how that would be a big deal. Don’t get me wrong, there are bigger fish to fry and I don’t sit here and pretend like I’m perfect by any means – until today I hadn’t gone to church in 3 months. I just somehow doubt that when Jesus was going through the most difficult times in His life, he was thinking “I hope when they remember this moment, they’ll give up eating candy for 40 days”.

From wikipedia: Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial.

So for me, this is Lent. The self sacrificing, loving, repenting, and preparation of Easter. So before you decide that giving up chocolate is enough… I hope that there’s some self reflection involved.

I’m not perfect, and this Lenten season, I’ll be ensuring that I talk to God for (at least) 40 days. I’ve been self sacrificing and repenting since I became a Vegan – I need to continue to let it drive me to be thankful for the life I have, my health, my family, His love, and all the things He created. At first it was giving up meat and dairy as a sacrifice, but He has shown me through abstaining from these things, I was giving back to Him. Giving love back to His world. It becomes a bit clearer every day what my role is on His Earth. I want to become a better person and “giving up” meat and dairy is a good way to start to give back. It’s made me remember that deep down inside I want to be a better Dad, husband, colleague, supervisor, but mostly a better human being.

I pray that I can learn how to strive to do that over the next 40 days.

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I realize that I’m growing to understand myself a bit better every time I talk to folks about how and why I became a Vegan. I have yet to encounter the prejudice that I thought I would encounter. Anybody that read my post could, at the very least, connect with one aspect: health.  I don’t think anyone could possibly argue against eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat (or no meat in my case) is healthier for you. Doctors say it, news reports scare you into it all the time, and heck, I think at this point its accepted fact by all.

The question I get the most is, “What do you eat all day? Salads?” I figured it warranted a blog post to answer it. I’m glad your curious, because the answer is a big fat NO.  The speakers and mentors at the Vegan Pledge have made one thing abundantly clear: you can be a Vegan and still be unhealthy! Since I got on this train to be healthy, I’m listening. I’m reading a lot about good, balanced nutrition. It takes very little effort to actually eat healthy, just some will power.

Let me get back on track for a moment, I think nutrition is probably a longer topic for another day. I’ll discuss my personal endeavors with food in the time period I’ve now started to label as Edwin, A.V. (after Vegan). One of the goals I set out to accomplish was to eat more raw foods daily. So I take tons of snacks with me to work. Usually consisting of fruits like apples, oranges, bananas, tangelos. That is what I eat in place where chocolate bars used to be. As for potato chips cravings (or salty cravings) I tend to eat things like Wasabi Almonds, Peanuts, Natural Corn Chips with Hummus. The key for me has been to eat wisely and often – hunger leads to overeating and bad choices.

But what about meals? Keeping with the idea of eating more raw foods, I have also taken to eating salads just about once a day. Sometimes, in place, I’ll have steamed veggies. And in both cases, I eat as much of that as I want since there’s so little calories involved. I use little to no salad dressing because I use good tasting lettuce and a wide vegetable variety: romaine lettuce, raw spinach, cauliflower, tomatoes, green/red/yellow peppers, zucchini, etc. I genuinely enjoy the taste of good fresh veggies so this is pretty easy.

For the hot plates, I eat roasted potatoes and peas drizzled in olive oils, delicious breads like Alvarado Street Bread or Ezekiel Bread from Food for Life; these are now a must have in the household. I eat pasta, and Amy’s Organic Soups (a lunch favorite of mine) that vary from Lentil to Minestrone. I eat Pei Wei take out with vegetables and tofu. I really like the Nature’s Path Cereals with Vanilla Soy Milk. I eat rice and beans (see, I’m still eating like a Latino), bento boxes from Trader Joe’s.

As for desserts, my two top favorites have to be Julies Organic Sorbet bars which is basically a freaking delicious fruit pop (only 60 calories!) and Trader Joe’s Pound Plus 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate. I love dark chocolate and this is a massive block of chocolate for 5 bucks of which I only eat a square the size of a quarter.

There’s tons more I didn’t get into, after all I don’t want to post 4 weeks worth of food right now! But those are some of the favorites as of late. I will leave you a photo of what I made for dinner tonight: Penne and Diavolo Sauce with (Meatless) Italian Sausage, a side of Avacodo, zuchinni, tomato salad. It was a great meal, large portion and only 758 calories, 0mg of Cholesterol, and only 4.2g of Saturated Fat. Hope you’re not hungry.

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I can’t remember the exact timelines anymore everything seems like a blur, so for the sake of storytelling, let’s say it’s November 2010. It was at this point that my buddy Marvin was executing his move from NYC to Phoenixville and him and I are commuting together.  Him and I talk a big talk about exercising. We talk about the joining a gym. The idea terrifies me, because I know that I need to do it, but I really don’t like the idea of working out in public. When you are as big as I am, the smallest things make you self conscious about your body.  You start thinking about the stupidest things. Such as if your belly will peek out of your tee shirt when your bench pressing, not doing as many push ups as someone else, only being able to last 5 minutes on an elliptical machine before feeling like your going to frickin’ die! But in my mind I kept pressing on about how much I would really like to start exercising. Then it happened: the doctor’s visit that changed everything.

That last statement might seem a little misleading, and I’m sorry if you thought I would follow that up with something like: I have Type 2 Diabetes. One of things that has always really bothered me about gaining twice my body weight in 10 years is that I have not had any health related implications to go with said weight gain. During a routine checkup, I got on the scale and I almost cried when I saw those dreadful three digits, 312.  That was the first time in my life that I had been over three hundred.  It made me feel like I could no longer call myself just obese. That ship has sailed a long time ago. I was morbidly obese. You ever have one of those moments when you go “Why didn’t someone tell me?” I felt like a huge pile of denial was lifted off of me at that moment. What the heck have I been doing all these years? It was time for a change.

Marvin and I evaluated once more our exercise. We promised we would be each other’s inspiration. We needed to start together and support each other. He had already invested in P90X and so it was decided: we would start P90X together for all the right reasons. There would be a smaller investment compared to the gym, our own hours, in privacy. I was stoked. So I started to work out with Marvin. For those of you who have been up late enough, you may have seen the informercials, and let me tell you first hand, it works.  P90X is everything it advertises. It is damn hard, it requires at minimum an hour of your time a day, it’s 6-7 times a week, and it can be emotionally challenging.  During this process, I have never felt better. I think it’s given me a reason to succeed. To get all in your face about how ‘you have to want it for yourself’ and ‘if i can do it anyone can do it’ and all that jazz. I’m motivated, determined and focused on the prize ahead. This is no easy task. These intense workouts are not made for fat people, so imagine this morbidly obese guy doing extreme jumping jacks or Kempo for an hour straight. It is hard, really damn hard, and I love every second. There are times when I can’t do the workouts, because I’m tired, or because I can’t physically move that way… but that does NOT stop me from trying. There’s no greater motivator for me than almost doing that workout or better yet, finding out that I accomplished being able to move that way. When the time comes, you will be seeing some before and after pictures like in the commercials… but not quite yet.

Along my path I had been ignoring one thing, diet. I was under denial once more: exercise would be enough.  As I read more and more about working out, I had gotten many reminders that exercise accompanies your diet, not the other way around. So I decided that I would really start watching what I was eating and be smarter about what I was putting in my mouth.

She didn’t know it at the time, but the IM or Email (I can’t remember which) that Jeesely sent me would change my life. Philly and Phoenixville were targeted by The Peace Advocacy Network to sponsor up a “Vegan Pledge.” This basically entails a 30 day pledge of being Vegan. In case you’re wondering or don’t know, this means (from a dietary perspective anyhow) no meat, dairy, cheese, butter, eggs, etc. In a nutshell (pun intended?) that is not eating any animals or animal products. At first glance, this was a way to help me promote good healthy habits in eating for 30 days. About a week into it, I realized this is something that I want to do long term, for many reasons. The concept of not ingesting another animal ever again has truly taken new meaning for me. I won’t get overly preachy here, because that’s not the point of this post, but I will tell you why it works for me.

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to change your views on food, ethics, morals, etc. I will, however, try and explain how and why I came to a personal decision in becoming a vegan.

This all began with health for me. I wanted to encourage myself to eat more raw foods and less processed foods. I wanted to consume less fat and cholesterol (not eating meat will help that!), I wanted to start shocking my body into ingesting a variety of nutrients and more wholesome products (raw fruits and veggies will do that!). The second reason for doing the pledge was essentially a personal dare. To be able to say, I did that. I really wasn’t prepared for the outcome.

It was a rocky start. I think at first, I didn’t understand how this would effect my family. Jeesely and I were bickering about food choices, which in hindsight, was petty and childish (Jeesely is not doing the pledge nor is she currently planning on becoming a vegan herself). I think now after 24 days of this, we finally have found our dynamic and are living very much in harmony with this decision and each other.  I’m sure I’ll tackle some of this in more detail in other posts, but suffice it to say: I’m eating extremely healthy, I have not knowingly eaten any animal products, I’m having a wonderful time trying out new foods, I realized that not only is this not hard – but it’s actually quite easy to do, I feel great spiritually and have likely increased my karma in doing so. Oh yeah, and I now weigh 289 pounds, below that scary 300 and counting.

I’m going to take the time to say a few thank you’s to the people that are making this possible:

Jeesely – for continuing to be my ROCK! I can’t do this without you. Even though you bought me the wrong bread, I truly love you. Thank you for shopping with me, cooking with me, and pushing me to stay on track.

Marvin – I know we are off the wagon right now, but without you, I don’t know if it were possible to get back on it. Let’s keep it up, stay amped and look forward to those lovely before and after pictures. X!

John (J-Wash) and Lisa – I swear you two are the people that don’t realize how much they are helping me. John, you say I motivate you, but your attitude is so positive that it’s hard not be excited about exercise. Lisa, I feel like I finally understand you. You’re a super courageous herbivore that has made me remember that I’m not alone in this and that it means something. Thank you both.

Peace Advocacy Network, Pledges, Guest Speakers and Mentors (specifically Allison!) – I’ve seen this group  only TWICE and Allison only THREE TIMES, but you have started something big in my life. I want to thank all of you that I’ve participated with for helping me understand why I was doing this. I may only still be a pledge, but I hope I can ‘graduate’ to whatever the next plane is. The boards, the emails, the recipes, the food, the advice, the motivation, and the truth has all come in a way I never expected. I think I always associated Veganism as folks with nothing but a Tree Hugging Agenda, and well, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing anymore.

If you made it this far… PEACE!

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The adjustments were plenty, I was going for a vintage look. Additionally, at the request of my wife, I blurred her signature somewhere…. Can you spot it?

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This is the natural shot, I liked it that much.

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There’s only a small bit of cropping and some light adjustments so that you can make it out.

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For this one, I’m not going to link the flickr photo. There were 2 pictures that I loved so much that made it difficult to decide. Instead I’ll post both of them here (and the ‘winner’ on flickr). So instead enjoy both of these pictures equally. If you really want to know, just head over to the 365 day link.

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The bobble head was a gift from Ken. Being a Phillies fan, when the bobble head’s bat broke, he gave Jose Reyes this non-regulation bat.

Since then it has graced my desk every day.

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So here’s EJ’s whiteboard with all of the planets in marker. He’s especially interested in astronomy. You can even see Saturn’s rings there at the bottom.Not a lot of digital adjusting, just some white balancing (everything in my house is freaking fluorescent) but this is mostly a natural shot.

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