Being vegan: M is for...

It is hard to believe, but nearly 4 years ago, I began my year-long decision to celebrate my 40th birthday "fit and 40". I accomplished that goal, and over the ensuing years, I now weigh in 50+ pounds lighter! I've kept the weight off, and have reached the "ideal runner's weight" for my height. I am continually improving as an athlete in distance running. I'm evolving as a vegan in my diet and lifestyle choices. I'm even enjoying my role as a resource and example of diet and exercise.

I am happier and healthier than I have ever been, and though it has required hard choices at times, the positive changes in my life have come because of discipline, self-control, and the fourth principle in veganism:
M is for MASTERY over oneself

Of God's many gifts to humanity, freewill is among the most precious -- a reflection of God's love, trust, and respect of us. Though a God-given blessing, freewill comes with responsibilities. Responsibilities come with choices, and choices come from our values. Values reflect that which is important to us, and are evidenced in our choices, how we live out our responsibilities and honor the God who loves and respected us enough in the beginning to have blessed us with the gift of freewill.

In the Garden of Eden, this gift was symbolized in the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The apostle Paul describes this gift as the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 2:22-23, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Self-control is, I believe, the seed of freewill.

While we may be attracted to the exterior beauty of the fruit (love, joy, and peace), and while we can appreciate the taste of its inner essence (patience, kindness, and goodness), the core of the fruit (faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) can quite literally be a "hard seed to crack".

We want what we want, and we want it now. We don't like to wait. We don't like being told no. We are selfish; our desires war within us, with mass media declaring that human passions have won. The excesses of contemporary American culture reflect a lack of restraint, discipline, and self-control. Obesity and consumerism are two values that dominant our indulgent lifestyle, as the world spins out of control, away from Eden. While the natural resources of earth are being depleted, the rich are overfed, while two-thirds of the human population continues to die of starvation. Something is not right.

We may feel like we're "victims", but when we blame others and point to the "snakes" in our world which have deceived us, we have begun our fall out of Paradise, away from grace. Self-centered choices stop the flow of God's blessing as we allow our desires to control, rather than our values.

For vegans, compassion is the highest value. For followers of Jesus, the highest value is love -- love of God, love of others, love of all that God loves and made. Life is good when the gift of God's freewill is exercised with self-control, in balanced compassionate harmony, with love for all God's creation. Life becomes bad, and turns downright evil when we indulge in selfish whims and assert dominant control over the natural order.

Michael Cusato writes, "Every creature -- human or otherwise -- has a God-given right to be sustained at the table of creation. However, human beings, accustomed to enjoying the abundance of the earth, all too often twist the munificence of God into an illusion of self-sufficiency. Forgetful of God and of the fact that the earth is ultimately God's possession, they begin thinking of themselves as possessors, acting as if creation were their own private possession intended for their use alone. Assuming that others think and act as they do, out of fear and insecurity they develop a spirit of acquisitiveness, hoarding for themselves what might be desperately needed by others. Such attitudes and actions... are violations of the intent of creation." (Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics, p. 197-198)

The US, like the UK, suffers from what is called the "Three Planet Lifestyle". If the entire planet were to live like us, it would take three planets worth of natural resources to support it. Globally, that is impossible, and ethically, that is unacceptable.

"We urgently have to face the fact," says Paul King of World Wildlife Fund, "that we are all running up a serious ecological debt and that we cannot continue to exhaust the Earth's natural reserves without putting something back. It is time to make some vital choices, to enable people to enjoy a one planet lifestyle."

The gift of freewill is reflected in the everyday choices we make in what we eat and wear, how we live and relate. "By their fruit you will know them," Jesus says in Matthew 7:16. By our choices, people know who we are. Mastery over-self means we choose our tree and the fruit our lives will bear.

What type of tree are you? Are you a tree of life, celebrating the beautiful harmony of creation as it was in the beginning? Or are you a tree of death, out of harmony with God' natural order as you pursue selfish wants to feed the desires of endless passions?

As I blogged a few weeks ago, "Veganism and a vegetarian diet celebrate life by refraining from practices that harm animals, and seeking to live in harmony with all living beings." This is one reason why I continue to choose self-control in my diet and mastery of my living decisions. It is no longer about weight loss. It is about living simply so that others may simply live.

Joanne Stepaniak in Being Vegan writes, " Our dietary choices have more to do with tradition, culture, economics, politics, and availability than with some predetermined fate. It is time for our species to behave responsibility and select those foods that best sustain the earth, the animals, and ourselves." (p. 24).

It is choice. The choice is yours. May you choose wisely this day and every day.

MY VEGGIE TALE: Part 1 - a weight loss story

My vegan life officially began in June 2007 on my 42nd birthday. While there is nothing magical about June 26th, my birthday does create a line, which I've used to mark significant life-changing decisions. A big one came on my birthday in 2004 as I turned 39 and gave up a vegetarian diet to become a meat-eater again.

Believe it or not, the first part of this veggie tale begins as a weight loss story as a carnivore!

In 2003, I was a partial vegetarian, limiting my meat consumption to one meal a day. I am not totally sure of the reason for the decision at that time, but the roots of my vegetarian convictions run deep (and I will eventually articulate them).

By the end of that year, I was down to about 1 meal with meat a week, however, my weight was up as my vegetarian diet consisted of lots of pasta and parmesan cheese. I was weighing in at 180-185, and on my 5'6" frame, I was looking rather round. I really didn't notice how much weight I had gained until I saw a picture I took with my godkids for Christmas. I looked big, but wrote it off to the angle of the camera.

I enjoy the outdoors and pride myself in being a backpacker. But in April 2004 on a hike for a friend's 40th birthday, something occurred which really got my attention. I hadn't been out hiking much that season. I knew I was out of shape, and had gained some weight, but I didn't think much about it. "I am a hiker," I said to myself. "I know how to do this stuff. I'll be OK."

Unfortunately, I was not OK. I was not doing well on the hike and didn't want to admit it. I blamed it on the warm weather, the steep inclines, the "getting over a cold", but I knew that wasn't the truth. I was in the rear huffing and puffing. I was out of shape, and all of a sudden, something clicked. If I want to keep hiking and backpacking, I knew I needed to do something to get into shape.

Thus, as I prepared to turn 39 in June 2004, I set as a goal to be "fit and 40" by my birthday in 2005. In a Men's Health magazine I picked up one day in a grocery store, I read about the Abs Diet. It intrigued me with the promise to "lose 10 pounds in 6 weeks." Could this diet really do that? I purchased the book by David Zinczenko, read it all in about a day, and decided to go for it.

Thus, as I turned 39 in June of 2004, I ceased my vegetarian diet which had caused the weight gain over the past few years. Would I be a sucker for empty promises? Only time would tell.

Though I had been a "partial vegetarian" before the Abs Diet, I was not eating a healthy diet. I was eating little to no protein, and lots of carbs. I liked desserts, and also enjoyed drinking Coke (and not the diet stuff). The Abs Diet began to teach me about nutrition.

The first thing I did was cut out soda, and I began to simplify my meals around the 12 power foods in the Abs Diet. I started an exercise plan beginning with weight training during the summer, and the initiation of running in September. It took me about 8 weeks to lose 10 pounds, but the diet started me on a journey of health and fitness, and as I continued to learn more about food and my body, by the end of that year I had dropped 25 pounds. I was feeling good.