It has been about 3 months of eating a solid plant-based diet, so I figured it’s time for an update. I don’t have a specific start date because I slowly started adding plant-based meals to my diet, but I’m glad I changed my diet so casually. I feel like if I had a date where I “started to be vegan” it would be more stressful to stay vegan. Here is a quick update about how it’s going.
It turns out it is very easy to do, but I’m convinced that it is because I can’t really socialize in a pandemic. I would say the hardest part is the social aspect, and the dreaded question, “why are you vegan?” I don’t have a clear answer to that yet that is quick and to the point and won’t start an argument. I want to say, “it’s just how I am eating that’s all”. However, this usually sparks the follow-up question, “HOW do you do it I could never stop eating meat and dairy!” Well, I hate to say it but I felt the same before I did some research and tried it out for a few months.
I will first give an update about how I’m feeling after eating plant-based for roughly 3 months, then explain why I’m eating this way and how I’m doing it successfully.
Overall, I feel pretty darn good! I still need to work on eating enough calories as it’s hard to get used to replacing all the calories that meat and dairy can give you. I definitely feel less sluggish and my meals don’t weigh me down for the rest of the day. I am also VERY regular it’s truly amazing. Every 12 hours I’m cleaned right out (TMI, sorry). I also feel good in general that I haven’t harmed any animals, and I’m finding the more I’m avoiding meat, the more I’m grossed out by it. Not like an insane amount, I still love the smell and could easily eat it, but the other night I had a dream that someone shoved a raw chicken breast in my mouth and it made me sick to my stomach (probably because it was raw and you should never eat it raw…) but it’s weird that there’s no food in the plant world that I would feel the same disgust. I just found that kind of interesting.
Moving on to why I am still eating plant-based. At this point, it is kind of a challenge I want to show the world. My plan is to find a way to make it easy to cook flavourful food, easy to eat this way around friends and family, and easy to be strong and healthy. I think that if I am not an anorexic twig like most people view vegans as, then it would change people’s perspective on it. If it is truly a sustainable and easy way of eating, and provides enough nutrients, then I think it would be pretty cool to show people we actually don’t need animals at all, they can just be adorable frolicking creatures in nature.
And finally, how I am still eating plant-based. Meal prep is key. At least for some meals throughout the day to make your life a bit easier. For me, I have basically the same breakfast every day (overnight oats/oatmeal with a variety of seeds, nuts, berries) and the same rotation of snacks (nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruits and veggies). Then, I keep a stock pile of beans, lentils and tofu for easy protein, and always have rice and/or quinoa on hand. Garlic and onions are key for flavour, and yams and potatoes are great starchy vegetables. From there, I go to town on all other vegetables, both fresh and frozen, and make all sorts of dishes. I have a wide variety of spices and sauces to make everything taste delicious. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to only eat whole foods, and to cook all the time – we are human after all. So I allow myself to get a few fun snacks and drinks, order in, and for special occasions I’ll try some “fake” meat and cheese.
I think the only annoying part, especially once the pandemic is over, is to constantly ask if there’s meat or dairy in the food I’m eating. Right now I’m making 90% of the food I’m eating so I know what’s going in it. It’s uncomfortable to ask at restaurants, but even more so when you’re asking friends and family who might’ve cooked for you – especially since this was such a sudden change for me. In the summer I was eating BBQ ribs and chicken thighs, and now I’m not.
It’s going really well so far, and I’m curious to see what the future holds. Once we are allowed to go to events, see our friends and travel, I wonder if I will have a hard time eating plant-based. Things are looking up though, as I found out that DAIRY Queen has a NON-DAIRY dilly bar. Can you believe that?! It’s blasphemy. Perhaps it will continue to gain popularity so it won’t be so difficult to eat however you want wherever you are. If you are thinking about going plant-based, I highly recommend starting out slow and finding some recipes that you love. Once you have enough variety and easy go-to meals, it’ll be much easier to cut out meat and dairy!
We need to eat to survive, but sometimes the choices of food we eat are detrimental to our health. It seems obvious to say we need to make a decision every day for what we eat, but sometimes our own rationale isn’t helpful to us.
This concept of making a choice every single day for what we eat clicked with me when I was making the breakfast above. It’s not an ordinary breakfast that I would make, but I had the time so I went for it. While I was making this, I already was faced with multiple decisions. I could’ve cooked with butter, used white bread, and processed peanut butter. I could’ve sprinkled brown sugar on my apples and cheese on my eggs, but that day, I didn’t do any of that. Each of these choices seem very small and insignificant when you’re talking about one meal, but it can add up if you’re letting it happen for every meal.
Another thing that opened up my eyes was late night eating. This is a choice to make every day, and it’s up to you to decide whether you’re eating out of boredom, if you’re genuinely hungry and if so, which snack you will choose whether it’s healthy or not. It’s incredible how easy our will power can disappear when we try to justify our choices even though deep down inside, we know it’s the wrong choice.
As I started thinking deeply about this, it kind of reminded me of the KonMari method of tidying up. Where Marie Kondo says to keep things in our environment that “spark joy,” why don’t we eat things that spark joy? I know that eating junk food tastes wonderful while you’re eating it, but I’ve started to pay very close attention to how it actually affects me. Most of the time, I very much regret eating junk food. When I look at the picture above, that was something that sparked joy for me. I took the time to cook a meal for myself with several different food groups and even used my home grown fresh herbs. I felt good about all the decisions I made, and strangely enough, this doesn’t happen every meal.
Of course, this is all subjective. Some people could care less about eating healthy and just do what makes them happy in the moment. For myself, I started to imagine what it would feel like if I thought about all the food decisions I made before caving in to eat whatever is convenient. I think this applies to treating myself to junk food sometimes too. For example, if I feel like I’ve been eating really well and it’s a hot summer day, I couldn’t say no to having ice cream with my friends. Perhaps I could choose to get a small cup, or choose to go all in and accept the consequences.
I think this becomes a problem if we justify every junk food choice, because then we go down a slippery slope. “I had an apple this week, so therefore I can order pizza, eat ice cream, drink a bunch of beer and have hot dogs every day.”
With all of the choices we have to make every day in general, making appropriate food choices can seem like the last thing on our list. I can totally see how there are people who suffer from food disorders because there is just so much psychological effort to balancing what you eat, why you are eating it, what your body looks and feels like, and how it can control your emotions.
If we decide to make more choices that make us feel good despite the little devil inside trying to justify why we should choose differently, I think our psychological well-being would be just fine. I find the more I justify “bad” choices, the worse I feel about what I eat. So why don’t I just make healthy choices more often so I feel really good about what’s going in my body?
I’m going to pay more attention to what my thoughts are for the food choices I make and if I truly feel good about choosing them. I’m thinking that this will cause me to make more healthy food choices than if I stay in the habit of not thinking before I eat.
Every time we are hungry, there is a decision to make. If we take a second to think about eating things that truly make us feel good about ourselves, whether it’s healthy or not, I think it will help our psychological well-being in the long run.
It can be very confusing to know how to properly eat with all of the social media, opinions on the internet and keeping up with the new trends. It wasn’t until the last few years, especially after my experience as a personal trainer, that I started taking my nutrition more seriously. Obviously it helped actually feeling the results of super clean eating when I did the Whole30 diet, but now my main focus is how eating healthy can change my energy and mood. It always seemed like something you would do to get a nice looking body, but I have always been an average size so it was something that never affected the way I eat. I will always continue to learn more about what my diet would ideally look like, but I think at the same time we all need to put less pressure on ourselves.
It’s okay to make mistakes
There are so many factors that contribute to the way you eat every day. How you slept, what time of the month it is (for the ladies), what your job entails, the people around you, Western culture, who you live with, peer pressure from friends, all while trying to have the will power to not eat a freshly baked cookie that is sitting on a pretty plate at your grandma’s house.
Yes, it’s you who can control what you put in your mouth in the end, but as humans we are wired to socialize and do what everyone else is doing. I’m pretty sure there was no tribe that had someone who only ate blueberries because they were on a diet, they most definitely also ate the kill of the day. The problem now is that we have access to everything all the time. And so does your family, and your friends, and your coworkers, and everyone is all confused about what we should eat. I guarantee every person that I mentioned knows fairly well about how they “should” eat.
I think we all just need to support each other with any choice that we make. If a friend doesn’t want to have alcohol, don’t buy them a drink at the bar. If someone wants to be on a diet, let them be on a diet and don’t judge them for it. If your vegan friend wants to try fish, that’s okay too. There are so many opinions out there to worry about that it’s nearly impossible not to make a so-called “mistake.”
Find what works for you
Without thinking of other people, or what the internet is saying, just try to stop and think about what type of eating would make you happy. For me, I am trying to learn how to make more meals homemade because then I know what goes in them. It’s not full of processed food, and it’s interesting to learn how to make things taste good. I am also constantly trying to find ways to make vegetables taste good especially while living with someone who would rather not have to eat them. I like trying out baking recipes that are a bit healthier by using other types of sweeteners or non-dairy products. I try to not consume “empty calories” from juice and alcohol and candy, and I also avoid fast food as much as I can.
That being said, I have no idea what the ideal diet looks like for my body, so I am learning to accept that and be okay with occasionally eating something that isn’t so healthy. There is no reason to beat yourself up for wanting to have a beer out on the lake with your family, just have it in moderation and don’t do it every day all day.
Another option that I have been dying to try is to actually invest in seeing a nutritionist and to get a blood analysis done. I think it’s always worth learning more about your own body so you stop trying to figure it out among the chaos on the internet. And after learning about how my body might be malnourished, I still have the control to decide what I would like to keep eating and what I might eat less of.
Conclusion
There are so many choices that we have to make each day. Not only about what we will eat, but just anything – what to wear, when to leave for work, how to do your hair, etc. So every time you eat, you are making a choice and it should be one that you feel good about. I think if you at least stop to take a moment about how you feel about your choice, you will feel much better about it. This includes allowing yourself to indulge once in a while – it will be much easier to accept when you realize you’ve been making healthy choices as much as possible. Don’t dwell on mistakes you might make along the way, just keep moving forward.
I remember reading something once that said we tend to self-sabotage when we feel guilty about something. The example they gave was after we eat a pizza, we feel bad then have a beer and ice cream and chocolate and another beer just because we messed up and deserve to just keep messing up. They said to just let the pizza go and have a healthy breakfast the next day to break the cycle. For some reason we think we have to eat clean and healthy all the time for every meal in order for us to be doing it “properly.” I think it’s just important to keep moving forward, be aware of your choices, and do what feels right for your body.
My boyfriend and I had been doing a lot of research on this concept, and wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a bandwagon everyone was hopping on. It wasn’t until I attended a Personal Training conference until I fully understood what this meant.
We had a doctor (I wish I remember her name, but I can’t at the moment – this was years ago) speak about the importance of limiting your eating hours to at least below 12 hours per day. I think the name of it can sound a little intimidating and misleading, but all you do is work on fasting an appropriate amount of time to help balance out your metabolism.
Before I looked into this research, there would be days that I would eat as soon as I woke up, say at 7:30am, then I would be eating throughout the day until about 11:00pm before I went to bed. That’s 15.5 hours of letting your insulin go all over the place. I can’t even imagine how messed up it would’ve been in university… binge drinking all night then having pizza at 4:00am? Yikes. Insulin is meant to come in and do its job by lowering your blood sugar levels, then leave and carry on with its day. It is similar to when we think of the hormone, cortisol – the stress hormone – where it is supposed to enter the body when you are stressed (being chased by a tiger) and then leave as soon as you are safe. But with our lives that we live, it’s quite often that cortisol stays in our bodies in small doses all of the time.
Anyways, back to insulin. What I learned from this keynote speaker, is that your metabolism works like your circadian rhythm, our biological clock letting us know when it is time to sleep or wake up. Eating for long periods of time completely throws off your metabolism and doesn’t do what it’s supposed to while you are sleeping. You want to make sure there is a set period of time when insulin enters the body and has time to lower for at least 12 hours.
An interesting study that she told us about was when they tested this on rats. They gave the same amount of calories, same food, to two different groups of rats. One group ate within 9 hours, and the other group ate within 15 hours. The first group who ate in a shorter amount of time actually gained lean muscle mass and lost fat mass, whereas the other group lost lean muscle mass and gained fat mass. She said eating in a shorter time interval is MORE IMPORTANT that WHAT you are eating. There have been studies showing that eating in short time intervals has incredible benefits on the body and can even help add years to your life.
My experience with intermittent fasting
I have always been someone who eats breakfast immediately in the morning. I couldn’t think of a good time period to choose in the day because I also like snacking after dinner. They say that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, but after learning more about this concept, it’s more so that “your first meal is the most important meal of the day” which is also technically a ‘breakfast’ because you are breaking your fast. So I decided to try and keep my eating hours between 12:30pm and 8:30pm.
The first day was tough just because I had always thought I would pass out if I didn’t eat immediately after I woke up. I was definitely feeling hungry, but thankfully I was at work and could focus on that while I was secretly starving. My first meal was my lunch at 12:30pm and from there, I packed more snacks than normal because I thought I was going to die or something. I found I was more hungry because I was missing about 300 or so calories that I would normally have in the morning. I also found it difficult to stop eating at 8:30pm, so a couple of times I would eat a bit later and felt okay about it. As long as I at least stayed with eating in less than 12 hours, I knew it would benefit me.
The next few days became easier, but I was struggling to remember to eat snacks throughout the day. I was only eating lunch and then dinner, so I would be hungry for the rest of the evening. I think a big part here is to still consume enough calories, but just in a shorter amount of time. I watched a few YouTube videos on people who are into this, and I found the big body builders who would eat 4000 calories in 2-4 hours… That was not very motivating and seemed terrible. So I did my best to make bigger meals and add more snacks in between.
The end result
What I noticed is I actually felt more focused in the mornings. I read up on this and apparently this is because your body enters “survival mode” from the long period of fasting, so it’s as if I’m on high alert to find food. I thought that was pretty cool. The first meal also always tasted so amazing, so I enjoyed my lunches a lot more. I lost about 10 lbs doing this and found that I was sleeping better. I feel liberated knowing that I won’t pass out if I don’t have breakfast immediately after waking up. I remember being at friends’ houses after staying the night and no one would even think about breakfast for 1-2 hours after waking up. I felt pressure to not complain, yet all I wanted to say is “so what are we having for breakfast?”
I still to this day make sure I am eating within 12 hours. I know that it is a better idea to start eating early and finish early so you aren’t consuming calories right before bed, but that just hasn’t worked for me. Ideally I would eat at 8:30am and finish eating at 4:30pm, but I find this difficult because it’s hard to eat snacks sometimes while I’m working… it can get very busy. So on most days, I will just have a black coffee, head to work and have my first meal at lunch. On days that I have off, I still enjoy making a nice breakfast, but it’s usually a bit later in the day around 10:00am.
I would recommend that everyone try to at least keep their eating to below 12 hours per day, and if you are already doing this – good job and keep it up!
A few months ago my boyfriend and I wanted to challenge ourselves. I heard about this Whole30 concept through a friend and decided to do a bit more research on it. I am absolutely not into any sort of crash diet in order to lose weight. In fact, that was not at all my intention… I just wanted to know what it would be like to feel better than I did. I have tried and tried to figure out how to eat healthy but also make things taste good, and I honestly thought I had it down. After I read this diet I was intrigued because I wanted to test out all of the claims that it made. Less bloated? More energy? Better sleep? Good mood? Seemed magical, and my boyfriend was on board with trying it out. Here is what I learned from doing this “challenge.”
Before we begin, take a look below. THIS CALENDAR IS SO ACCURATE IT’S SCARY.
WOW WAS I EVER SHOCKED. There are definitely some permanent changes I’ve made since doing this. This diet says to stay away from alcohol, added sugars, dairy, grains, legumes, and processed foods. I immediately went to my cupboard and in my fridge and looked at all of the labels to move what we could eat for the 30 days to be right in front of our faces. I didn’t even realize there was sugar or MSG in seasoning salt… I have been using this my whole life, but I always thought it was just spices and salt. And olives need chemicals to stay green and firm? And pickles?! I can’t even have pickles?! Don’t get me started with condiments. This was so shocking to see the amount of chemicals I put in my body every single day. Not only chemicals but there is sugar in everything. Like, everything.
I learned how to make a few sauces and dips to help make things taste better and it was actually easier than expected to make homemade sauce. I remember how long it took my brain to comprehend how to make spaghetti sauce until I realized I am supposed to blend tomatoes and spices. I always just grab spaghetti sauce off the shelf and call it a day. It turned out great and I felt really good eating it.
There were also a few things that were Whole30 approved that definitely saved the day. For example, my friend gave me a Whole30 approved mayonnaise, and thankfully Frank’s Red Hot Sauce was also approved – and yes, I did put this on everything. There are probably a lot more choices out there now and it would be worth investing in them to make your life easier.
I’m pretty sure sugar is heroine
I cannot accurately describe the feeling of going through a sugar withdrawal. It is brutal. In just a couple days I felt like I got hit by a bus. Especially going cold turkey on it, it was a shock to the system. You’re not supposed to have even a small amount during this and you need to fully commit to going 100% for the entire 30 days. I have never craved something more… All I could think of was sugar because I wasn’t allowed to have sugar.
A couple of things that helped me were fat bombs and berries. I think a lot of the time I’m craving sugar is actually just me craving chocolate. You aren’t supposed to make anything that resembles what you usually crave because the point is to destroy bad habits. HOWEVER, that being said, I was suffering HARD at the beginning, so these got me by for the first 5 days. Fat bombs can be made all sorts of ways, but I made them with cocoa powder, coconut oil, cinnamon, and almond butter. You freeze them and then they end up having the same consistency as a chocolate bar, but tastes pretty gross. It would be good with sugar of course… Now I make them with honey or maple syrup and they are most definitely tolerable.
Berries are a good choice since they are easy to eat for a snack and a bit lower in sugar than other fruit choices. Sometimes I just want something to graze on and they are the perfect size for that. My go-to easy snacks were blueberries and almonds. As soon as I was craving something sweet I would make myself a small bowl of berries and almonds and it worked just fine.
It’s much easier to eat healthy when your entire household is on board
There has been many times that I told my boyfriend I don’t want to eat dairy, or processed food, or sugar, but as soon as I see him with cheese and crackers I can’t help myself. Same for him, there has been many times he wanted to stop drinking alcohol, but I would constantly invite him out with friends and my sports teams and he would feel obligated to have a beer.
I would say to successfully do the full 30 days, you and whoever else you live with NEED TO be in it together. It’s a huge challenge especially during the worst part of the sugar withdrawal where you become angry and irritated. I remember finding him on the couch just scrolling through pictures of delicious burgers. We wanted to quit about 10 times during this, but we kept going because we needed to find out the benefits of eating clean.
It actually turned out to be quite fun once we go the hang of it since we needed to learn how to make everything homemade. We worked together to come up with ideas for meals and snacks and cooked together whenever we could. It would’ve been brutal to be making a salad while he was eating hot dogs so again, try to get everyone on board.
It’s a bit lonely
Although we spent more time cooking together, we spent much less time out with friends. We were so committed that we didn’t want to take the chance of what is potentially in restaurant food to ruin what we were working so hard at. This diet also says to steer clear of industrial oils which would be a hard one to avoid. We found mixed nuts without peanuts (which is a legume) that was roasted in peanut oil so we couldn’t have it. We also found cashews that were roasted in canola oil so we couldn’t have that either. So we assumed pretty much everything in restaurants wouldn’t be guaranteed to be “clean.”
We were not only paying attention to what might be in the food in restaurants, but being around friends has a huge amount of impact on the choices we make. Even if we both ordered plain salad, it would be so hard to eat while watching everyone else drink beer and eat saucy wings. So rather than suffering through this, we just didn’t go out.
The benefits of getting rid of waste
After going through the roller coaster of mental and physical confusion of changing our diet so drastically, amazing things happened. We were sleeping well, we had more energy, and we weren’t bloated… at all. I know the goal of this diet is absolutely not to lose weight, but I found it fascinating how much weight we lost just because we weren’t full of inflammatory foods and processed junk. I ended up losing 13 pounds and my boyfriend lost 23 pounds. Of course, this was a minor motivating factor for the last few days just because we were also looking good in addition to feeling good.
It is still shocking to me that I ate a normal amount of food… but lost weight. Eating whole foods is filling when you eat enough and lower in calories too. So the amount of “empty calories” we were consuming before must have been a lot. Alcohol and juice are easy ways to get a lot of calories with no nutritional value. And having a little bit of this every day adds up! Had I not done this diet, I would still believe that it’s fine to eat whatever I want when I want because it won’t affect me. It in fact affects me a lot. Not only with managing weight, but with mental clarity, stable mood and just not feeling gross (i.e. bloated all the time).
What NOT to do
Do not end the diet like we did. I repeat, DO NOT do what we did. After the 30 days, we were SO EXCITED to be able to eat yummy foods again. What you’re supposed to do, is slowly introduce foods back into your diet category by category to see what is truly negatively affecting your body and how. I think our problem was we didn’t start this diet to find foods we shouldn’t have anymore, we just wanted to see how good we can feel without all the junk in our body. So naturally, we decided to make a big ‘burger and fries’ feast. We didn’t take our time to enjoy every bite, we just ate like animals who haven’t been fed in a month. Delicious soft brioche buns, ketchup, mustard, pickles, cheese, handmade burger patties with fries on the side.
Then our bodies exploded. Just kidding, but that’s pretty much what it felt like. Think of a time you had eaten way too much and had to sit on the couch to digest. It was like that, except add in a million times more inflammation and bloating on top of it. Our bellies were hard. Like a basketball. And we could barely move. We were instantly filled with so much regret. It also felt like the worst fast food you’ve ever had and how it made you feel. I think we would’ve actually been dead if we got fast food burgers instead.
As exciting as it is to accomplish 30 days of eating well, I highly advise that you slowly introduce foods back into your diet. If you aren’t looking to find out what affects you and how, please still add things slowly and in small amounts.
Conclusion
The Whole30 diet is worth doing at least once in your life. Go all out, 100%, because you will learn a lot while doing it. We are considering to do it again with less drastic measures, just being a little more lenient so we don’t feel guilty eating at restaurants or wanting to use different sauces. I would go without alcohol and sugar for sure, no dairy, legumes or grains.
I think all in all the “whole foods” concept stuck with us. We prefer eating whole grains rather than bread and pasta, and we eat less sugar in general. We construct most meals with a protein and two vegetables and we try different healthy snacks. I eat much better than I did before and I don’t feel guilty when I do want something like a beer or pizza. Instead of having these twice a week, we can now appreciate that having it once a month is a better option.
Ashley's Adventures 