Welcome to The Reduction Project!

Hello, and welcome to my new project! I need to lose a little - okay, more than a little - weight. I am a vegan and try to be as plant-strong as possible when it comes to food, but it seems that the baby fat (my babies are, ahem, seven- and nine-years old) along with the holiday-and-special-occasion binging has caught up with me. And the lack of exercise. Well, it's time to get serious and do something about it!

I love to cook. I love to eat (obviously, but who doesn't?!). I also love to collect cookbooks and try out new recipes. (Sorry, inter-webs, but you will never be able to replace my beloved collection of treasured cookbooks!) My newest addition to my collection is Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Appetite for Reduction. I thought it would be fun to cook my way through the book while journaling about my weight-loss trials and tribulations. Hence, the inspiration for the title of this new project and blog!

I'm also a fan of all those really smart, plant-strong doctor-types, like Esselstyn, Campbell, McDougall, Barnard... I think they have a really important message that everyone should at least consider. There seems to be a nutritional crisis in this country, and it's not getting any better. Currently, I'm re-reading Dr. Joels Fuhrman's book, Eat to Live, which advocates a "nutritarian" diet-lifestyle, i.e., focusing your eating efforts on food with a high nutrient density. It's not as complicated as it sounds, really. But the recipes in his Eat to Live book are, well... okay. Just okay. Some are pretty good. But some are boring. And some are kinda weird.

Enter Isa's new cookbook. All of her recipes in this book are low fat, and it looks like most, if not all, can be made without any added oils, if some slight modifications are made. (I'm not necessarily "fat-phobic" - I just prefer my fats to come in their whole, unprocessed form instead of from refined oils, especially if I'm trying to lose weight.) And most, if not all, of Isa's recipes look EXCITING and DELICIOUS! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

I've already lost about ten pounds using the plant-strong, no-added-oils approach over the last couple of months, but I have more to lose until I get to my goal. I'd like to achieve this goal before my next birthday, which is about nine months away. Given that the amount I want to lose is about the same as the amount I gained over the course of my pregnancies, I think nine months is a reasonable time frame to take it off, too.

So, let's see where this goes!