
Being vegetarian has always been pretty easy for me, especially since it’s what I grew up with, but over the past year I’ve gone from being a healthy vegetarian who watches her protein and vitamins to a carb-etarian who lives on potatoes and pasta. I’ve tried to be healthier, I participated in a six week health blogging challenge and focused on making progress with my habits. But all winter I knew that how I was eating wasn’t healthy, and I had to get back to viewing my healthy vegetarian eating as something fun and manageable instead of as a hassle.
What better way to force some perspective than taking on the ultimate hassle? So in February I put the butter under lock and key, and I tried out being vegan for 30 days.
Expectations vs. Reality
When I started out my main expectation was that it was going to be kind of terrible, that I would crave dairy, and that I wouldn’t be able to eat out. I started aggressively meal planning and trying come to up with new ’stand by’ meals so I would have something (anything!!) to fall back on. For the first few days, food was a battle. I’d eat what looked like a great salad and some fruit at noon and be ravenous by two. I would eat dinner and be hungry again in an hour, and heading back to the kitchen for toast, baking or pretzels so I could feel full.
I hit the grocery store again, this time with protein in mind and bought some tofu and those “shake and bake” pouches to make tofu strips for salads and sandwiches. I started adding caramelized onions and avocados to wraps when I wanted a creamy taste, and found that I was more full and didn’t miss cheese that way. I stopped eating spinach only in salads and started wilting it to add some heavier food to my meals. I made corn fritters, spicy chickpea and tomato soup, garlic & sun dried tomato (whole wheat) pasta and even started having fruit and tofu shakes every morning.
While eating out was harder than it had been before, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I focused on going out for sushi (Mmm… avocado rolls) and mexican food (hold the sour cream, double the guacamole) as each was easy to make vegan friendly.
I was expecting it to be awful and hard, and to feel deprived but it turned out to be alarmingly, frighteningly easy, especially with some vegan brownies tossed in the mix. I would have never guessed that I was anywhere close to being vegan, but finding out that we didn’t even own snacks with milk solids in them made me think twice about what I seem to think veganism is about.
The results
When March 1st hit and my challenge had ended, I ate a silly amount of perogies with sour cream and slept like a small child. But knowing that carb & dairy laden food is off my “forbidden” list, I don’t think I can feel good about returning to my old ways. Against all odds, being vegan just made me feel way too good! I’ve heard hype about the weight loss (um, hi) that comes from being vegan and while I didn’t see a lot of that, I just felt better in my body than I had in a long time. Even scarier, a month off of butter and cheese has made everything dairy taste strange to me. Sour cream isn’t palatable anymore, and butter is nice in small doses but generally heavy and overwhelming. This from the girl who is a cheese aficionado!
Last month re-set my perceptions around the foods I like, and it also changed my expectations for how my body should feel. It was a lot like a detox, a little challenge at first, and then suddenly I had new habits left, right, and centre. For now I’m going to stay 80% vegan and see what happens over the next year, but either way I’m glad that I gave in to my curiosity and gave this a try.
Have you had any food epiphanies this year, or have you tried an experiment like this?



























