What I learnt going Vegan for a month
For the past 4 years (I think), my wife Anna and I have gone veggie for January, so this year we thought we would up the ante and go Vegan for the month. Here’s a few things I leant/observed.
I will warn you though, a few of the things I observed aren’t pretty, and in no way was this a scientific study. This was just me eating Vegan for a month and seeing what happened. It’s that simple.
- You have to be watch everything you eat – When we started it seemed that everything had dairy in, it was a nightmare. Okay not a nightmare but a mild inconvenience. All the veggie burgers, sausages, mince etc that we liked and ate regularly were a no go. So we had to take a step back and go back to basics. We did find some Vegan friendly “cheat” meals in the end on one of our hunting trips to the local supermarket, but no where near as many as we expected. I have a feeling we didn’t prepare anywhere near as well as we should of for this.
- You have to be a tad selfish – 10 out the 31 days in January I was out of the country in Phoenix working and this presented a few other problems, but the main one being eating out with friends. It’s a problem having friends and spending time with them I hear you ask! Let me explain. I had to be a bit of a selfish bastard when it came to deciding where we could go to eat, and I didn’t like this. The States is far more geared up to Vegan diets than the UK, and the variety of restaurants available to eat from far surpasses most places in the UK, but still I felt a right dick having to inspect every menu before I went and changing plans just because they didn’t cater to me. Now I know this is a small price to pay for attempting to do my part for the environment, but friendships are import to me and having to constantly veto friends perfectly good restaurant choices just because it didn’t suit me didn’t sit well with me.
- You become a wimp in the gym – Out of everything I discovered this one frustrated me the most on a personal level. I have read articles and listened to podcasts on the positive effects that going Vegan can have on you whilst exercising, yet for me I found this all utter rubbish. Utter rubbish. The difference in the amount I could lift before and during was ridiculous and I still now over a month later are playing catch up in the gym. I probably needed to do more research on this and look for more article outlining the negative effects, rather than looking for the pro Vegan articles to try and justify my choice. Lesson learnt.
- Your skin gets crazy good – With all the vegetables and fruit I was going through my skin cleaned up perfectly. Even though it was never bad to begin with there was a very noticeable difference after even a couple of days which I was very surprised about and pretty darn pleased with.
- You fart like crazy – This one was a surprise to me as it’s something no one else seems to mention when writing about going Vegan. Strange that 😐 . I’m no scientist yet I have a feeling it’s the amount of fibre and plant products I was going through might have been the main contributor to this. So a word of warning buy in some air fresheners, because you will need them.
- You find out how delicious fruit and veg is – As a kid I wasn’t particularly into my veg, I was never fussy but I’d always go for chicken over broccoli. I can’t say this has changed as I’ve grown up but I definitely appreciate the taste of vegetables far more so now than I did. So I wasn’t particularly surprised by this one as I do love my veg, but when you focus on it and make it star of the culinary show it steps up to the plate and delivers. And yes that was a food pun! You can take that with a pitch of salt 😉
- You have to eat loads – I had no issue with this one, I do like to eat, yet it did take me some time to work out actually how much I had to eat. I knew protein filled me up for longer because it takes longer to digest yet getting the balance right was a little tough to begin with and a few days were spent feeling rather hungry. Once I got this balance right the amount of fruit and veg we went through was ridiculous. So if you are thinking about going Vegan stock up the fridge.
And there you have it, 7 observations on what I learnt going Vegan for a month. In short I became a greedy flatulent observant selfish wimp with flawless skin. I can’t work out if that’s a good or bad thing…