Back in the Saddle Again!

Yes, it's been almost a year since I last published here. Life has been very busy and a few things have changed. I haven't been following a vegan diet for some time now. It was a gradual change that started with including other foods back into my diet. So you won't find any new vegan info here. I won't remove my old posts because it's been part of the journey. In other news, my husband has just been diagnosed as having celiac disease, so we are diving into the whole gluten free thing. It's a lot of information to digest, but I'm so happy that he finally knows what has been causing problems for him. He's starting to feel much better after eliminating gluten. My kids and I are not completely gluten free, but we've greatly reduced our gluten intake too. It takes a lot of label reading for sure. The reason I decided to post again is that I read an email from Fly Lady last week that said "As the kitchen goes, so goes the rest of the house." And I decided it was time to get back to actually trying to get organized. So, I started tonight by shining my sink. It looks pretty good. Don't worry, I won't post a picture of it. Getting the sink shined is a small step, but it feels like I might be headed in the right direction. I'm trying not to dive in too deep because I start hard and then fizzle out. Instead, I'm just going to try to set up some habits and keep doing them over and over again. I've also been working on my fitness for awhile. I'm doing Online Boot Camp with Jonathan Roche. The biggest thing I've been learning is that fitness is a mental challenge. Being positive and having a positive mind set helps me so much. I'm feeling better and have more energy. The weight is taking a while, but I'm feeling good about it. I'm OK if the weight comes off slowly as long as it comes off and stays off. And that's my update for now. Hopefully you will hear more from me in the near future.

Healthy Eating: Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten Free??

Lately, it seems that everywhere I look, different diets are being touted as making huge changes in overall health.  Some of the special needs parenting sites I follow have talked about changing their children's diets and seeing positive results (usually these are gluten free).  Just this week, one of the characters in a book I was reading was a vegan chef.

It's hard to know if these are "fads" like the carbohydrate thing that was going on a few years ago or not.  I don't want to be the kid who jumps in with both feet and then finds that I'm in water over my head.  I've started to look at information on vegan diets.  I'm not lying, it would be a huge change.  The benefits in terms of reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes alone would be a good reason to try it.

Is there any one out there who is currently following a vegetarian, vegan or gluten free diet?  I would really love to talk to someone real who has made this kind of change.  Any suggestions, tips or reference sites would be much appreciated!

Don't worry, this isn't something I'm going to jump into all at once.  I'm strictly gathering information right now.  I imagine that this kind of change is one that would have to happen gradually, but I need to find out more.  I found some interesting books on amazon.ca.  If you know a book that would be helpful for starting a vegan diet, please let me know!