Vegan Experiment Day One
What would a vegan do? Hmmmm – good question. And what am I doing even pondering this question, you might ask? Well, here’s the thing …
Although I’m extremely healthy and my weight and BMI are all well within a healthy range, my knees suffer tremendously with few pounds that I waiver away from my ‘ideal’ weight. I’ve gone off track and had a few binges and ridiculous eating weeks and have been struggling for the last few weeks to stop eating garbage (albeit in between healthy mealtimes!). I’m just losing the plot and the final straw was last weekend’s ultra injuries, which were not only due to, I believe, a ‘glute’ problem, but also the extra pounds I was carrying.
Enough is enough, but I’m a very weird game-player when it comes to dealing with my health. I know exactly what needs doing but I’ve been trying this for the last few weeks and have failed miserably. If you continue to do what you’ve always done then you’ll always get what you’ve always got, right? So something has to change – radically – and what’s the last thing in the world I ever thought I’d do? Yes, that’d probably be ‘eat vegan’. So that’s what I’m going to do for a couple of weeks. I’m going to eat vegan. Because it’s alternative (to me, anyway), it’s different, it’s a million miles away from what I normally eat and it’ll force me to re-think what I’m eating, to look carefully at food and to take a massive interest in my nutrition to ensure I understand what I’m doing and I’m getting all the nutrients I need! Fascinating, huh? No? Well, I think it is.
Today has been Day One and yes, I’ve spent most of the day wondering ‘What would a vegan do?’ It’s a long time since I’ve carefully examined the nutritional content of almost every supermarket food I picked up, with the exception of all the fresh fruit and veg. I’ve had so much fun. It’s been enlightening, too. Granted, the idea came to me after reading Scott Jurek’s book Eat and Run (http://scottjurek.com/eatandrun/). I’ve mentioned this book quite a lot recently but I think that’s only testament to how much I’ve enjoyed it. The drive and determination of this man is nothing short of inspirational and it’s hard to read it and not want to get up and go for a run afterwards. Of course, the book also heavily advocates a vegan diet and yes, that’s where the inspiration came from for my radical nutrition challenge, but I’ll readily admit that I certainly have no intention of ‘going vegan’! Firstly, I’m far too fussy an eater to be able to sustain the diet for any length of time – and secondly, I have no intention of giving up wearing leather shoes/boots or being quite so radically environmentally-friendly. I do my little bit but I’m far too shallow to commit to the whole vegan ethic.
So I’ll stick to my own personal challenge to try something totally different. I’m a great believer in thinking that the magic happens outside the comfort zone and it occurred to me that I’ve always thought of this in physical terms – but why not nutritional? A vegan diet, I can assure, is certainly well outside MY comfort zone, but I’m looking forward to new knowledge, a real shake-up in my eating habits, reinforced awareness of the food I’m putting into my body and the effect it has, and plenty of fun (and hopefully energy) along the way.
Today, I tried soya milk for the first time ever!! Yes, really! I’ve always had a mental impression that it would taste revolting. I think it’s the idea of getting ‘milk’ from beans – what an odd concept. Well, I was thrilled to discover how wrong I was. It actually tastes rather like a sweetened cow’s milk – or not too far off it. Discovery No. 1 of the day has been positive.
Discovery No. 2 was the fact that I could actually survive a whole day without dairy. Blimey, I never realised how much dairy I actually consume.
I kept my food very simple today. I had a smoothie for breakfast, soup and bread (gluten and dairy-free) for lunch, fruit for snacks and roast veggies and wholemeal rice for dinner.
Looking forward to what I’ll discover tomorrow lol