Vegan Paleo 5-Day Challenge Summary
When you have 60,000 followers or so…between Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and some of those other “minor” social platforms, the idea of blogging is like comparing running to swimming. Most people can run faster than they can swim, perhaps 2 to 3 times faster. Social media is so instant. I can communicate with 30 people in an hour versus maybe, if I’m lucky, a few people will comment on the blog over a few days or weeks.
However, I know I need to blog more, and get my recipes and other parts of what I do out there. My web guru was adamant about keeping ExpressionEngine which he said best integrated with my website, versus WordPress, for example. Until the last year, it was very cumbersome to upload photos and write. Even other bloggers commented about that as they invited me to post on their site via mine. Teaching frequent cooking classes (this one is one of two I teach every month at Rollin’ Oats in St. Petersburg and Tampa, FL) running almost every day and occasionally racing (71 5K or longer races that I’ve placed in since ’06 ‘just’ on plants), kayaking, my family and an intense book tour with now 4 books out…blogging has taken a very back seat.
Sign-ups for my cooking classes are here. Look for the calendar of events and find me. Generally I teach in the middle and end of the month on weekdays.
Enough excuses. It’s time to get it done. Every day, I’ll hear a news story, or a story related to veganism that I think, “I have to write about that!” I pledge to you to do better. I blog in my head all the time. I’m often the #1 finisher each week in the “Words With Friends” leaderboard. (Don’t ask.) It’s time to put the pedal to metal, or the fingers to the keyboard and get ‘er done. Do feel free to ask me any question or voice any concern you have. I’ve been doing this so many years, there probably isn’t any question I haven’t already heard. When I started out, I had zero support except for the 5 books on fiber I found at the health food store. That’s all there was.
Lately, I’ve heard about a few vegan celebs who are no longer vegan. Then I hear that they were only vegan for a few years. I found myself wanting to say, “Hey…I’ve been vegan for the better part of the last 34 years…why do these newbie vegans…who haven’t been through so many of the challenges I have, get all this attention…both when they start and when they abandon ship?” Since I taught media relations for years after I left 18 years as a TV reporter/anchor, I get the whole celebrities are news thing. And that is a trend that has only grown. For most of us, eating/living vegan has been full of zig-zags, challenges and has not been a straight line.
Along with my very cool publisher, Book Publishing Company, I just finished doing a Paleo Vegan 5-Day Dump the Junk Challenge. (Scroll down on the Facebook Paleo Vegan page to find the challenge and all the great links and comments.)
I wrote Paleo Vegan because I met many people in my running and fitness circles, both as an athlete, personal trainer and running coach, who were saying, “Used to be vegan, now I’m Paleo, and I lost so much weight.” Or just the popularity of paleo among non-vegans was so amazing to me.
My assessment was, after reading so many paleo books, it was a cleaned up version of Atkins, South Beach and The Zone Diet. High protein diets can work in the short term, but often at the expense of vital organs the we need for the rest of our lives…such as our hearts, brains and kidneys to mention the ones most impacted by protein overload.
We had hundreds of people jumping in during the Paleo Vegan challenge to post their progress on each day. We asked participants what it was they wanted to give for the challenge. The most popular answer was Oreos. So many people get hooked on the sweetness and double-whammy of chocolate, that Oreos can become their addiction of choice. Just because a diet is vegan, doesn’t mean it is healthy. And if I’ve heard once, especially by my non-vegan friends, I’ve heard it a thousand times, “Oh…oreos are vegan.” That doesn’t mean you should eat them every day.
For many of us, it is unlearning those bad habits. And it can take some time. Weeks. Maybe even months. If you need support, you’ve come to the right place.
Paleo Vegan is available in the “Fair Trade” way…buying it from this website, signed, for no extra charge. Or Amazon works too…whatever is best for your wallet. Most authors I know these days write for love, not money.