@bugsbane: no kidding on the weight handling itself. I keep being told to watch out for my metabolism kicking in as I get older because my junk food will be a problem. I reply that I need to eat junk food to keep my weight up. Between Christmas and March, without trying, I accidentally lost 10 pounds. Don’t know how it happens, but I have to watch my weight to keep from becoming underweight.

I also get asked all the time what I eat if I’m vegetarian and don’t like salad (I like my food cooked usually). My response is “anything but white people food” Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Ethiopian…mmm…all kinds of delicious vegetarian food out there.

Great going! Remember, once you’ve done something once, doing it a second time is way easier (riding a bike anyone?), so the weight thing is a fabulous improvement.

I just wanted to share too, as someone who’s been happily veg for 15 years now what really made things easy for me making the transition. Focusing on having options I love in my environment over self beating for screw ups / conscious exceptions. I found that if I felt like having something ‘off the plan’ that first I’d ask what veg option would be even more enjoyable and try that if I could, and then if I still felt like something non veg I’d do it, but plan on how to have something veg I’d like even more available next time. That way, over about 8 months I went 100% veg, but more importantly I never felt deprived until I got to the point where everything I wanted was veg anyway and staying the course became automatic.

It all came down to “You won’t keep doing anything that feels bad long term. Find more enjoyable ways of doing something and change is automatic.”

Oh and by the way, the other nice side effect of staying veg (with an emphasis on fresh produce) is that the weight thing tends to handle itself.

Anyway, congratulations on all the fab progression. Thanks for hacking on free software for the betterment of us all, and all the best for the future.

Go team Carter!