Day 1, the numbers have to go down

So, wanted to document this little experiment I'm doing. It's always good to, once the event is over, look back and read how it all started. Sometimes its good, sometimes not so good. Hopefully, this will be a good thing. So I'm going to start a no dairy, no meat, whole foods diet. Yup. They call it vegan, but I don't want to put myself in the vegan category yet. The aim is to eat like a vegan, with results of losing a little weight, lowering the blood pressure, and lowering cholesterol. All good things. I mean, I always have, for the most part, eaten pretty healthy. Not just eating, but cooking. I love to cook, love the whole process. Choosing, slicing, dicing, the whole nine yards. Love the whole process. To the point where, if I ever get laid off or fired or whatnot from my engineering job, I think I'd go to culinary school. Just to learn more, not to really work in a sweaty busy kitchen in Manhattan, but just to increase the knowledge base. I took a few cooking classes at ICE in Manhattan, they were cool, you learn so much from those folks. Definetly worth the money. Anyway, I digress. So, I want to start this, not gonna call it a diet, I'm gonna call it a change of diet, to really get healthier. I'm also kind of big with the big food companies and the whole way they produce and treat their meat and dairy products. It's a fricking disgrace. I'm not really blaming them, because they have to keep up with demand. The world is eating more meat and poultry than ever before. So these big huge farms are just chicken and beef mass production lines. The animals get treated like shit, but I'll get more into that later. Basically, I just want to start off this blog to document my progress. So, I weighed myself this morning, Jan 2, 2015, and I weigh 201.6. I measured my waist and its a whopping 42 inches!!!!!! And to top all this off, my blood pressure is a ridicolous 151 over 101!!!!!!!! I DON'T WANT TO DIE YET!!!!! So, I'm on my way. All the numbers have to come down. I watched a few documentaries yesterday, while nursing the New Years hangover, on Netflix. One was called Forks over Knives; the other one was called Vegucated, which was excellent. It takes 3 random New Yorkers, (selected from answering a Craigs List ad., and changes their normal meat and dairy eating diets to a vegan diet for 12 weeks. Blood work done before and after, and the results are exactly what I want. Of course, during the documentary, it shows big ag poultry and beef factories, footage that would make Jeffrey Dahmer quezzy, and lots of interviews with Phd's which are experts in the nutrition field. Good stuff. Very motivating. Watch these both (on Netflix) and you will never eat fast food again. I don't eat fast food at all. I wised up to that years ago. It's not really food, it's garbage. It's certainly contributing to the health issues in this country and other developed nations around the world. 
So, now I have to get some good vegan recipes. If anyone out there has some, leave a comment or put it on my facebook page. And as I go forth with this, I'll post some here also. So for now, I'm off to surf the vegan internet for tonights recipe.....(I still get to cook meat, Adora is not doing the vegan thing.....so my cooking skills for non vegan shouldn't suffer...)