I Tried To Be Vegan And This Is How It Went...

Changing your diet can be really difficult, especially when it means cutting things out completely.

I went vegan for about a month and although I am no longer still vegan - I enjoy the changes I have now made to my diet to become more comfortable with the food I am putting into my body.

Over the course of December, ahead of Veganuary 2020 (sounds like a presidential campaign, doesn’t it?) I attempted as much as possible to gradually swap out non-vegan products (like meats, cheeses, and even honey - my favourite) for vegan products that could substitute them. This helped make the transition into January much easier as I have never done anything cold-turkey and am not one to flip a switch on anything.

I also started ordered more plant-based meals (like the Wagamama vegan special) above as I eased into Veganuary. This was more difficult being a food blogger, but a step in the right direction, and I felt less guilty afterward.

Alongside changing my diet gradually and then completely in January - I decided to read a book that would go alongside the month well: Eating Animals Should We Stop? By Jonathan Safran.

If you are trying to increase your plant-based intake, I would 1000% recommend reading this book. Although it didn’t necessarily explain the health benefits to changing your diet like a nutritionist’s book would, it gives you a behind the scenes on the farming industry and how your food makes its way to your table. This helped open my eyes to not only farming processes that I didn’t agree with, but also how the treatment of animals can affect the food we are eating. Jonathan also discusses meat products in relation to culture and how opting for plant-based may change the conversation at the dinner table for a moment, but in the long run will become second nature as the diet becomes more assimilated into our lifestyles.

Reading this book while also changing my diet helped me understand more about why people have been making the change, and also how it may be difficult at first - or not a complete change at the end of the day, but how small steps can affect the way our world works.

In mid-January I had a family trip planned in Florida, which usually means bagels, cream cheese and lox everyday on repeat for a week straight. Although my close family understood why I was trying to make the change overall, my older relatives found it more difficult to understand at first. Over the course of the first few days, they realised I had gone all in and even opted for making things like tempeh stir fry for everyone. Family can be difficult sometimes when these changes are made as it can affect the way you eat together and where you go out to eat - but once I showed them that I wasn’t just all talk, they took the change more seriously. That being said, I did feel a slight divide from me and the rest of my family as I was cooking separate meals, ordering things I normally wouldn’t at restaurants, and sometimes spending more on groceries than if I was going to eat what everyone else was.

After the trip to Florida, and staying vegan through my vacation, I felt more comfortable with the changes in my diet and went home feeling much more confident in what my goal was in Veganuary.

My mindset had changed to being completely vegan to being selective with the food I put into my body, eating a larger amount of veggies than meat, and making sure that my diet was balanced, healthy and still allowed me to have a little bit of chocolate when I want to.

Now this post doesn’t end with me telling you how my life has changed now that I am vegan - because I’m not.

I have adjusted my intake of non-plant based foods, and where I can, I swap out meats for veggies or pasta for zoodles - but I feel more knowledgeable about my body, my health and more comfortable with what I’m putting into my body.