Vegan diet

I just want to say, I was always a vegetarian as was my boyfriend. He went vegan 2 weeks ago and lost half a stone, which inspired me to go vegan as well. I started on monday, and now wednesday Im 4lbs lighter! And dont worry, Ive done alot of research into the healthy vegan... I feel so good about this!
If anyone wants to try it make sure you get enough protein and vitB12.
=]

Tell us what a vegan diet is, please.

in a nutshell, no animal products or by-products. no meat, milk, cheese, eggs, honey, gelatin, etc.

How do you get B12? I've recently started an almost vegan diet to try to lower my cholesterol and am good with the protein and iron but am concerned about b12

There are B12 fortified orange juices, cereals, and milk substitutes (soy milk, rice milk, etc.) that are good sources of B12 for vegans. Also, you could just take a B12 sublingual tablet or multivitamin with b12 in it.

Really the only way to get B12 on a vegan diet is through engineered foods. There are lots of cereals and soy products that have been synthesized with B12. Most vegan/vegetarian sections in your average grocery store with have products that feature this information on the front of the packaging. You are probably better off eating some lean meats, we are designed to be omnivores after all, but to each his or her own.

With a history of heart disease and a grandfather who died of a heart attack at 45 I'm very motivated to reduce my cholesterol number and get my heart in shape. The only scientific studies I've found where diet can reverse CHD is Dr Dean Ornish's diet, which is vegetarian. I'm allergic to dairy so that pretty much puts me at vegan. I wouldn't mind egg whites and honey so it's not strict vegan but I don't think there's a lot of B12 in egg whites or honey. Since I'm really eating "whole" foods and not packaged stuff I'll probably end up taking a vitamin. I had hoped there was an easy food source for B12, besides meat, that I could add in. I probably need to be taking a good multi-vitamin anyway.

If I can get my cholesterol down to normal I'll probably add lean meat on occasion back into my diet and test cholesterol every 6 months to see if it's increasing.

I have tried typcial diet/exercise and it didn't budge my cholesterol numbers; I'm not keen on taking a statin from 35 on especially as I'm currently nursing and might decide to have another child.

Also, while there certainly is historic precedence for an omniverious (and even predominately carniverous) diet there is also historic precedence for a herbiovore diet. It's quite possible that different people might react differently to various diets, based on genetic memory, and there is no one size fits all type diet.

It sounds like you are very interested in being healthy and not so much interested in a vegan diet for political or ethical reasons. If that is the case Salmon might be an option. The Omega-3 fatty acids help reduce cholesterol and a serving of salmon has 105% of your daily requirement of B-12.

Excellent! Yes, I'm not doing this for political or ethical reasons and had been on the fence about fish. I had not realized that it had B12, also. Thanks!