Tag: plant-based

Transitioning to a Plant-Based Diet: 3 Month Update

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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!

Transitioning to a Plant-Based Diet

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Well, this year has been full of surprises. It’s been a wild ride adapting to the pandemic, being laid off, moving to a different city, starting a new job and now figuring out a new way of eating. I wanted to write about this today because it seems like a sudden change that I’m guessing all of my family and friends would be surprised about and thinking, “she probably won’t last 2 weeks without animal products.” This is a very new endeavor, and I want to explain how it came to be.

I have always been interested in healthy eating, but I struggle to have will power to make healthy choices when I’m around family and friends. I’ve cut out dairy a few times before because it was noticeable how it hurt my stomach, gave me dry skin and built up mucous, but it’s just so delicious that I kept going back. I’ve seen and read about animal cruelty in the dairy and meat industry, but it was never taken seriously with my family and friends; they would kind of just joke about how delicious a pig looks and that bacon is life. I kind of felt like a hypocrite though, because I could never kill a cute little lamb or a big ol’ cow if my life depended on it, yet I would gladly eat them.

I’ve read a lot about veganism before but it has always seemed like a taboo religion, almost like vegans act superior to others and are annoying with their activism. Not to mention, I can only think of a couple friends I know who are vegetarian, and I only know one true vegan. So I’m constantly surrounded by meat eaters, and thus it was very difficult to think differently.

Anyways, fast forward to moving to a new city with my boyfriend, and beginning my job working at a gym. Finally, after not working for 4 months I was back to having a routine and better yet, zero excuses to not exercise. I know that when I am working out consistently, I am more likely to choose healthier options to eat. I have always liked watching recipe videos for new ideas, and I noticed that so many videos would pop up that had something to do with a “whole food, plant-based diet.” When I hear that, for some reason it seems like another trendy diet like keto so I would kind of whiz past it.

The reason I began researching obsessively about taking on a plant-based diet was because I sort of had a random shower thought. For so long I’ve been frustrated with trying to figure out my hormones and mood swings, low energy levels, sensitive stomach, dry skin, allergies, asthma and so on. I wondered what would happen if I completely cut out dairy and meat. I mean, there could be other reasons why I have all those problems, including genetic and environmental, but a lot of the health videos I was watching claimed that eating plant-based has the potential to alleviate all of them.

I started my research very, very skeptical. First, learning the health benefits of eating plant-based to get me motivated to read more. Obviously I would get a lot more nutrients if I focused on adding more plants into my diet. I learned that it’s completely a myth that “you can’t get enough protein on a vegan diet” and that “you won’t get enough nutrients like vitamin B12”. In reality, I’m already low on B12 and I was eating animal products 3 meals a day. Both vegans and meat eaters need a B12 supplement to get enough because so much gets killed off in new ways of farming (B12 comes from the bacteria in soil, and cleaning and sanitization of crops kills it). Also, the “not enough protein” thing is too silly to argue about.

I thought to myself, okay so now that I know I can survive and thrive on plants, I will continue finding plant-based recipes. Next on my research list was to learn what could possibly be so bad about the meat and dairy industry. Well I watched “What the Health,” “The Game Changers,” and also watched a speech by Gary Yourofsky. I learned that the Diabetes and Cancer associations are sponsored by meat and dairy companies. Even though so many studies show that processed deli meat is carcinogenic, and meat causes diabetes (not sugar), these companies were taking money from the very things that cause these diseases. They even put these food items on their website as a part of their food guides.

If that’s not twisted enough, the company that wrote journal articles arguing that cigarettes are good for you and make you healthy back in the day is the same company that defends the meat and dairy industry saying humans need to eat animal products to be healthy. Not to mention, big fast food chains are huge in the meat and dairy industry and have been going crazy with it; with options to add cheese, extra cheese, more cheese, and put even more cheese in your pizza crust! Double, triple, quadruple patty burger with bacon and cheese! In between those lovely commercials are a million drug ads so the pharmaceutical industry can make billions off of people who have high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and so on. To me, it sounds like the more they persuade people into eating animal products that are proven to lead to a variety of diseases, the more money they will make from selling pills to “fix” it all.

With the coronavirus sparking so much uncertainty and shining a light on how messed up the media is (and always has been) I really started hating on big corporations and selfish people with power. I never had sufficient evidence of who is the “bad guy” because again, I’m getting all of my information from fake news. However, this information about the meat and dairy industry made so much sense to me that I started feeling quite upset about it all.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe, but with so much controversy over the benefits of eggs, milk, cheese and meat I think I’m just going to stick to plants because you really can’t go wrong. No one has heard of a carrot causing a heart attack. There are so many ways that you can get all the nutrients you need, and to me it’s not worth jeopardizing my health just because something tastes good. I’m willing to continue learning about new exciting plant recipes that taste just as good, if not better, and changing my lifestyle. I have yet to conquer the difficulty of being the “odd one out” in social situations, but it will just be another learning experience.

I’m looking forward to sharing my journey on transitioning to a plant-based diet and sharing my successes and failures with you all.