VEGANUARY
Challenge yourself to start the new year off right!
This is it, folks. The end of the old year, and the beginning of a brand new one. 2025 can be the very beginning of your plant-power journey, or it can be the point where you level up from plant-based to whole food, all-plants.
The first step is to decide. The second step is to do it.
Need Motivation?
Call your doc’s office and ask for an order for some bloodwork. Check cholesterol, triglycerides, A1-C, inflammatory markers and anything they feel you should also look at. You might even have results before the 1st. When you see the numbers, you’ll want to improve them. It’s a natural human reaction and an excellent motivator.
Clean out the cupboards and fridge!
You can’t be tempted by food that isn’t there. I hate when people eat garbage because they “don’t want it to go to waste.” It’s going to end up in the toilet, my friend, and it’s gong to do harm along the way. Why not skip the harm part and toss it into the composter? Worst case, donate the unopened stuff to a shelter or church.
What to get rid of?
Everything processed. So most of your cold breakfast cereals, sauces, dressings, cans of soup, all the mixes and so on.
All the dairy products including cheeses, butter, margarine, and so called “non-dairy” creamer. (That’s what all coffee creamers are called, but they have dairy ingredients.) And all the plant-based creamer too! It’s made mostly of oil and sugar.
Get rid of oils and oil sprays and anything with oil as an ingredient.
Get rid of white flour, white sugars, white breads and rolls, and regular pastas.
Fill the empty space with…
Fresh & Frozen dark green leafies
Swiss chard, turnip greens, collard greens, arugula, spinach, kale, mustard greens, dandelion greens, all the lettuces, beet greens
Cruciferous veggies
Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, cabbage, turnips, beets
Other veggies:
Carrots, corn, peas, black eyed peas, peppers (red, yellow, orange, green, hot, sweet,) onions, shallots, endamame (soybeans,) snap peas, tomatoes both fresh and canned, summer squash, eggplant
Legumes: Black beans, dark red kidney, light red kidney, pinto beans, navy beans, lentils, cannellini beans, cranberry beans, all kinds of beans!
Mushrooms:
Lion’s mane, white button, portobellos, shiitake, etc.
Starches: Whole grain spaghetti, whole grain macaroni, whole grain spirals, whole grain every kind of pasta, potatoes galore, sweet potatoes, winter squash, whole grain-oil-free breads and rolls, brown basmati rice, brown jasmine rice, brown texmati rice, brown oborio rice, calrose brown rice, black forbidden rice, black sticky rice, red rice, Carolina gold rice, rolled oats (old fashioned or steel cut,) barley (hulled, but not pearled,) Quinoa, Udon noodles, soba noodles, whole grain pasta noodles
Fruits & berries, fresh or canned
*if canned, be sure it’s in water.
Bananas, apples, oranges, mandarin oranges, melons of all kinds, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, kiwi, mango, pineapple, cherries, yellow grapes, red grapes, purple grapes, white grapes, tangerines, nectarines, grapefruit, peaches, pears, fruit cocktail. All fruit!
Extras
*Tamari: You’ll want some reduced sodium vegan soy sauce, or reduced sodium tamari which is exactly that, if a bit milder.
*Tofu: You’ll want to begin experimenting with tofu. Start with extra firm. Dice it, soak it in tamari, and bake it until you like the texture. You can make a thickening of a tiny bit of orange juice with cornstarch, roll it in that and bake it. I like to end the baking with a couple of minutes on the air-fry setting to get a crispy crust.
Soy Milk: The phyto-estrogens in soybeans have the opposite effect as mammal-sourced estrogens on breast cancers. Science has proven that, contrary to older thinking, the ingestion of soy actually reduces the risk of breast cancer and reduces the risk of recurrence in breast cancer survivors.
Noochie: You’ll want to try nutritional yeast, which is made from molasses and has a lot of natural B12. It has a cheesy, nutty flavor and is in a lot of vegan dishes.
Natural Peanut Butter: One ingredient: Peanuts. No oils, no salt. Just peanuts. When you first open it, pour off the peanut oil that has risen to the top.
*Balsamic: You’ll want some excellent balsamic vinegar. I’ve fallen for Sclafani Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, moderately priced, and it’s nice and thick and sweet.
*Other vinegars: White wine vinegar, rice vinegar, and apple cider vinegar
Salsa: We love Newman’s Own brands, the pineapple and the mango flavors are always in our stash.
*Tempeh: I haven’t yet learned to love it, but you might.
*Kimchi: Fermented vegetables, cabbage based, great in soups
*Miso: Fermented soybean paste
Consuming *fermented foods* is extremely important to building a healthy gut microbiome, so be sure to include at least a few of these (marked with asterisks.)
When we first went whole food, all-plants, we tried many salad dressing recipes, but after a short time we realized we enjoyed a nice, thick balsamic as a dressing a whole lot more.
*I’ve linked the image to Amazon. It’s not an affiliate link
Simplicity, variety, & batch cooking
The 3 keys to success!
Simplicity
The more fancy recipes I try, the more I realize that simpler is always better. Just basic foods. Bake some potatoes and put some Newman’s Own Salsa on top instead of butter or sour cream. Make chili but instead of ground beef, add a can of lentils, two tablespoons of tamari and 1/4 cup nooch. Make bean burritos and tacos. Make goulash and pasta and soups and stews. Make the same old stuff, just swap out the meat and dairy for other flavors. Bake broccoli, cauliflower, and chunks of carrots drizzled in balsamic and/or maple syrup (at the end of the cooking time for the syrup so it doesn’t burn.)
Variety
It is virtually impossible to be deficient in nutrients on a whole food, all-plant diet IF you are eating enough to get full, AND eating a wide variety of plants.
I don’t just use whole wheat flour. I did at first, but everything tasted like, well, whole wheat. Now I use a whole grain, gluten free flour blend of oat flour, brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, and finely ground chia seed. It does everything a white baking flour would do and it’s white and tastes great.
We do suggest a B12 supplement for everyone, not just vegans. It used to come from the soil, through ruminant animals and root vegetables to us. But chemical fertilizers, weed killers, and bug killers, have depleted the soil of its stores. So everyone should likely be supplementing this one.
Batch Cooking
My crockpot is my BFF. I fill it to the brim with stew or chili every week. Interspersing with giant batches of goulash or Spanish rice which I cook on the stove. When Lance makes his black bean burritos, he makes a huge amount. These are multi-meal dishes. The stew, chili, and burritos serve us for 3 to 5 meals each, the others 2 meals, maybe 2 and a half.
Anything you make, make extra. Just by making double batches of every meal, you cut your cooking time in half. Just like that.
Resources to help you:
Forks Over Knives: the website has hundreds of recipes, articles, tips, a free recipe app, cooking courses, and it’s all whole food, all-plant
The Recipes section here, and the video demo on the oil-free sauté. You will not be using oil in any recipes from here on. It’s not needed.
WATCH the following documentaries. They’ll motivate you like you won’t believe.
Forks Over Knives (on Amazon Prime for a couple of bucks.)What the Health? (On Netflix and elsewhere)
The Game Changers (Netflix, the world’s most highly viewed documentary)
You Are What You Eat: Twins Experiment (Netflix)Fill your home with snacks, things you can grab and eat quickly. Have raw veggies readily cut and homemade hummus, or store-bought if it’s oil free. Have fruits that are easy to grab and eat. Wash them before you put them away so they’re ready to munch, things like strawberries, grapes, apples. Canned fruits (in water) and veggies (salt-free if possible) make great grab and go snacks. Applesauce (unsweetened, should have one ingredient: apples. Maybe some cinnamon.)
Change the way you think about meals
We have to change. We have to think about what we’re having for dinner ahead of time. I often put portobello mushrooms or diced tofu into a marinade first thing in the morning so it’ll be flavor-maxed by the time I bake it for dinner. Or if using the crockpot, filling in the morning is essential, and it’ll be ready in the evening.
Dinner prep takes a little more time, so find ways to make it fun! I listen to audiobooks a lot of the time when I’m cooking. It’s the perfect time to do so. About half the time, I turn on one of my playlists and dance my ass off while I’m cooking. I work in lots of exercise moves, squats, bends, jumps, kicks, etc, so I’m getting my exercise in while doing meal-prep.
Feel good about what you eat!
Know that every meal is healing you. It’s rebalancing your gut microbes, and they are singing for joy with every bite you swallow. Unhealthy, mutated genes are staying dormant, or if they’d already been awake, they return to dormancy. They turn off.
Your inflammation heals. Your arteries expand and strengthen. Fatty plaque deposits are dissolved by the “scrubbing bubbles” of nitric oxide you get by eating greens and cruciferous vegetables. The plaque in your coronary arteries actually reduces. Your blood sugar normalizes. Your cholesterol lowers. Your weight melts away no matter how much you eat. There’s no effort required. But you will move more, because your energy levels are going to surge. You will not believe how good you can feel.
As you feel better and better throughout the month of January, know that if you can sustain this lifestyle, you can keep feeling this good and better, and you’re going to add years to your life. (And life to your years!)
You’ll be able to get off most of your prescriptions. Your blood pressure will normalize, especially if you add exercise to your routine. Getting the heart rate up a bit and keeping it there for twenty minutes or so a day really is key for the old BP.
Every digestive issue you have will correct itself. Angina will fade. Type 2 diabetes will reverse, so watch those numbers carefully. You will absolutely need your doctor reduce your dosage if you adhere to this plan faithfully.
Anxiety and depression reduce as do many autoimmune disorders. Even my flaky scalp and chronic reflux vanished!
So? Are you in?
Let’s do this! Let’s do a whole food, all plant VEGANUARY!
Let me know in COMMENTS if you’re in. I am HERE FOR YOU.
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Come on! It’s a new year. If not now, when?
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