I Skinny Bitch'd it for a week and a half, and that was enough for me!

Since Skinny Bitch is one reason of the myriad that I chose to become a vegetarian, I thought I might try to take it a step further and actually do the vegan thing, as the authors of Skinny Bitch promote. I thought doing the four week meal plan in the back of the book would give me some good first-hand experience for my semester project about the eating practices of vegans. I decided I was only going to eat vegan—going 100% vegan would take a little more preparation than I have time for. Avoiding all and every product that contains a trace of animal product is so much bigger than I can wrap my head around at the moment…(are you aware of all the things that contain something from an animal??)

            Anyway, so I spent over $100 at Earth Fare as I prepared to hop on the Skinny Bitch diet for four weeks. I picked up a Vegan pizza, vegan butter, fake turkey, fake bacon, fake hamburgers, sesame oil, whole grain muffins. Needless to say the cashier had to pry my debit card from my hand to swipe it. I was not only unhappy about the amount of money, but I don’t like to eat frozen foods, and a lot of the vegan stuff was from the freezer section. I made a club sandwich with the Tofurkey and fake bacon one day—it wasn’t bad, but the fake bacon was a little off-putting when I opened the package and it smelled like Beggin’ Strips for dogs….

            So I Skinny Bitch’d it for 10 days and then I quit. I enjoy cheese way too much. And I kept slipping up on accident because I wasn’t aware something had a cream-based sauce, or I didn’t know there was cheese wrapped up in the sandwich. It was frustrating not only because I wasn’t aware of every single ingredient, but also because where I live there are very few vegetarian options much less vegan options.

            So for the rest of my project, I plan to research the implications of veganism on society, individuals, animals, health, and consumerism, looking to see what it takes to live this kind of lifestyle, where it’s most prevalent, and why people decide to do it. Hopefully I can interview someone who is a practicing vegan to get a better first-hand account, because I must say my attempt was inadequate. I’m a fairly healthy eater anyway with lots of whole grains and vegetables, but like I said, cheese is a staple for me, I can’t do without it!

"Um, yeah, can I get a large french fry...?"

As a twenty-something college student, image is a big deal. Specifically physical image. When I put my jeans on in the morning, I turn around and check in the mirror that I don’t have love handles spilling over the waistband. When I sit in a desk, or anywhere for that matter, I suck in and pull my jeans up so what fat I do have doesn’t bulge over the top of my pants. I buy clothes that give me a certain figure, as close to an hourglass shape as I can get, and it really sucks when I’m bloated, even a little bit, because then it throws the shape all out of whack.

            Besides the fact that you actually need fat in your body to function, it’s absolutely imperative that you walk around as though fat doesn’t exist in your body, and if it does you deny it vehemently and avoid gaining it like the plague. The only place I want fat to fill my body is in my butt so I can achieve the Kim Kardashian booty. Fat is not a good thing, so magazines, television, movies, and the rest of society tells me, unless it gets you a big butt or a nice pair of double d breasts. Seems to me those two areas are the only places fat is acceptable.

            So since fat is the most taboo subject in pop culture today, my eating habits are directly correlated with it. I really hate the assumption that skinny=healthy; as a person who is not overweight or underweight and a vegetarian to boot, I hate feeling bad when I want to eat a Kit Kat bar (my favorite) or a cinnamon roll or pasta smothered in cheese. There is the need to be hyper-vigilant about what I put in my mouth, especially when I’m eating around other people. So I have this whole regiment where I eat Subway—a lot (I think I should get some kind of faithful customer award)—and then sneak french fries from McDonalds or Sonic once in a while and don’t tell anyone about it. What kind of walking contradiction am I that I am such a proponent of healthy eating choices but I slip up so often with my french fries? So, friends of mine, I seriously doubt you know how many french fries I pack away in a week…

            Although I am not a calorie-counter per se, seeing the numbers on the Subway napkin that compares Subway sandwiches with hamburgers from McDonalds and Burger King makes my heart race just a little bit. Especially the calorie count for french fries….

            While I am not recovering from an eating disorder as the author of the blog ED Bites is, the author made an astute comment in relation to calorie counts on menus in the post “Mind F*ck”: good intentions can have very bad effects. The author writes of the panic felt at the little numbers listed beside every choice on the menu, a panic I understand although perhaps in a different way. I feel bad enough that I break down and swing by McDonalds for french fries once in a while without visualizing obsessively each calorie counted as a bubble of fat that might hang over the waist of my jeans. Perhaps it helps some people make better choices, but all I can imagine is the waiter saying, “dang, I can’t believe she saw that sandwich has 2345942370978 calories and she still ordered it…”