Advice to newbies

This is adapted from an email I sent to a friend trying to be vegan who asked for some advice:

Feel free to eat as much fruit and veggies as you want. Eating a piece of fruit or two first thing in the morning is a good thing to do to boost your energy, I do that pretty much everyday on the way to work with my coffee, its good to eat fruit before heavier carbs like bread because you digest fruit much quicker. Then I'll eat a 10 o'clock snack of like pistachios or peanut butter crackers, or even an English muffin with grape jelly. I used to get an English muffin with jelly and home fries from dunk all the time.

Vegans can sometimes eat more calories than they used to and still lose weight. Because you are eating better food, your body processes it more efficiently, and you expel more energy.

Don't know if you drink any soda, you shouldn't, its probably the most unhealthy stuff on earth. especially diet soda.

Me and Shannon slipped many times, especially with dairy, if you do just reread the section about dairy in skinny bitch, or watch some you tube videos to remind yourself why you are doing it. Dairy takes about a month to leave you body but once it does you'll have far less "colds" and "sinus infections." I used to get them all the time year round and I haven't had one in for ever.

Some days you'll feel crappy, but most of the time in the beginning this is because the toxins are leaving you body in the form of , runny nose, diarrhea, headaches, etc... but once you're off dairy and meat for like a month you'll start to feel great almost everyday.

Also keep in mind you'll prob drop some weight in the first couple months especially with exercise, but eventually your body just sort of levels out and the weight loss happens slower (again depending on how much you exercise) so don't get discouraged if you plateau for a while, the good news is if you stick with the healthy diet you'll never go back up, always down until you reach your natural body weight.