The Introduction!

Hey everyone,

So I decided to write this blog after 1) my love of writing and 2) to document what it is like for your average curvy food loving girl to drastically change diet from a slob to healthy eating. I have done the Dukan Diet, A shake diet, healthy eating, exercising, this that and the other. I have tried it all!

To those of you who know me, hello :)
To those who don't, my name is Lala and I am a 26 year old girl from North London now living in Tel Aviv. I swapped a cold big city for a sunny smaller one that has a beach. I live here with two friends in a cute appartment in central Tel Aviv and you could say, my life has changed quite a bit. When living in London, I just about knew how to make scrambled eggs and a bowl of pasta! Now, I am quite the domestic goddess if I do say so myself! I used to be quite the party girl and some would say I am quite the nutter but in reality, now my life has changed a bit I am a tad more chilled out.

So right now I am on a 30 day vegan challenge. My journey started a few weeks ago when I was on the PETA website. (http://www.peta.org/) As an animal lover, I like to see what is being done for the good of animals by an organisation as big and powerful as PETA. Whilst browsing I saw a button for 'try the 30 day vegan challenge!' I clicked on it to read up about it a little bit and that was when I saw the slaughter video. A video by well known musician and vegetarian, Paul McCartney. Ok, here goes nothing, let's watch the video. In my head I am now thinking - "why lord, why did I watch this?!" Genuinely I have never felt more ill. The video shows the truth about what goes on in animal slaughter houses. The beating and the punching to cows. The way they are kept tightly locked and inflated with steroids to make them grow so their meat is chunkier. I actually stopped eating red meat a few years ago as I genuinely wasn't keen on the taste but now watching what they put into them makes you never want to eat a steak again. Basically the burgers you eat at McDonalds are just shit. It's not even 100% pure cow meat going into the burgers. It's probably 20% actual meat and the rest is carcus grinded up and minced and the fat from the meat along with steroids. No wonder I grew up a fatty. They don't tell you what shit is in them. However they are cheap and taste good with the bun and the pickles and I would demolish a Big Mac! Never again though!!
Anyway, further along in the video you are shown the chickens. This was probably the toughest part for me and tears streamed down my face. I adore chicken. A good chicken salad or grilled chicken with sweet potato mash ummmm I could devour it. Not after watching that video. Ever seen how the chicken on your plate is handled before it's killed? No, didn't think so, because neither had I. So I will break it down for you. About 40 chickens are kept in one tiny cage. They have wings but they cannot fly. They have beaks which are snapped off. Honestly, the brutality of it was appalling to my stomach. If the chicken was fed nicely, was able to run around and flap it's wings then fine, maybe I wouldn't be so bothered, but no. They are also fed steroids, kept in cages, abused, skinned alive and tortured and in some slaughter houses punched and beaten, all before they are killed. At least have some sort of humanity in you to feed it and then kill it before skinning it and chopping it up. I tell you now, if I ever did decide to eat chicken again, it would only be organic!
If you are at all interested in watching the documentary, here it is - Glass Walls - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTifP6idBPs

Let me also tell you, it doesn't matter if you are kosher, halal or an alien, the animals may be 'killed' in a certain way to make it ok for the certain religion to eat it, but it is still kept the same. This was made clear to me after watching a video from a slaughter house owned by Jews. I am Jewish myself so grew up eating kosher meat. Jews might as well eat bacon which isn't 'kosher' as it makes no sense. They tell you the animals are killed and cut in a certain way with some Rabbi dude looking over to make sure it's 'kosher' but where was said Rabbi dude when they were growing the animals and feeding them steroids to make them larger?? So now I have noticed that it's basically kosher shmosher - all because one 'trained' watcher says it's ok?! Bullcrap! You wanna eat any type of meat? Do it. But these rules about kosher or halal or whatever don't mean anything if the way the animal is treated before hand is the exact same as other slaughter houses!
Ok, so anyway, I watched this video and decided I would do the challenge. There have been many obstacles along the way - like the time at work where we had karaoke night with beer and pizza. Wow the pizza looked delicious but I couldn't have it. As a vegan, you cannot have anything animal based. So that includes anything dairy. So no cheese, milk, yoghurts, chocolate etc. No eggs or egg based produce so no scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning and no cakes. Not even honey! Oh and no sweets because they have gelatine - animal fat. Ok so basically I can't eat shit - or so I thought.

Throughout this challenge or shall I say journey, I have learnt so much about food. What foods apart from dairy have calcium. What foods apart from red meat have iron. What foods beside chicken have protein. It's amazing what you can learn and the recipes you can make that still keep you satisfied and taste delicious. I will post about the obstacles I face, the good and the bad and my life changing along the way.
I have also learnt a lot more about what my body likes and dislikes. I have IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) so have also learnt what foods really do not agree with me and which do. I have seen the change in my skin too. I read that not eating meat or dairy does great things for your skin and for me, this has been so true. People have even told me that I look 'glowing' which is a great compliment and I feel it in myself too!
I hope those reading who aren't vegan or vegetarian are not offended by anything I write, that isn't what I am here to do and I hope those who are, can also enjoy and value what I write and maybe send over some tips or idea or recipes or even their stories to help me along this journey!

Lots of love..
Lala xx