I Went Vegan For A Week And Here’s How It Went
As a Vegetarian, I have often been more than tempted to try going vegan for a while. The main thing that has prevented me in the past is that I have a severe nut allergy, meaning my diet would be even more limited than it already is. Also, with the addition of this factor, it seemed I would be making a serious commitment that would require more than a fair share of effort during what is already a busy daily working schedule. Where would I find all of the necessary time to grocery shop and cook?
Due to this inner conflict, I decided to try going vegan for a week to see what happened and whether or not this might be the lifestyle for me.
Because it’s a short space of time and summer isn’t quite over yet, this week seemed to be the perfect time. Before I began, I researched online the healthiest ways for me to go about doing this so that I could keep a balanced diet whilst also going completely cruelty free in my diet for span of the whole week. And then, in short, I managed a whole 168 hours of vegan eating!
There was a lot I learned from being Vegan for a week.
First of all I found that, whilst it is difficult to shop for this diet, it is not as challenging as I originally thought. In fact it really inspired me to be more creative with my food which is something I want to take away from this experience as I revert to Vegetarianism for the meantime.
There were so many new recipes I discovered, most of them really easy to make and requiring only vegetables and meat/dairy substitutes. I can highly recommend curried coconut quinoa which was the highlight of the week and sugar snap peas which became my favourite lunchtime snack. Because I used so many fruits and vegetables as the foundation of my dishes, I also found that it was much easier to build upon this to make nut free meals that were safe for me to eat.
The best thing about trying out Veganism was the number of smoothies this encouraged me to sample.
Equally as hydrating as water, there were so many I tested. Watermelon, raspberry and blueberry blended with some cold Vegan icecream has become my new definition of absolute perfection!
Additionally, I also found that this really helped me in terms of my outlook and general sense of wellbeing.
This was the case in two different ways, the first being that it kept my body fuelled up and ready to work and exercise. Preparing food the way I was, as well as this being a much more balanced menu than I am usually accustomed to, my sleep and behaviour really benefited. This wasn’t something I expected and came as a pleasant pro to the experiment.
Secondly, I felt so much better in terms of my dietary ethics.
Veganism means that I am in no way contributing to the harm of innocent animals who are so often brought into the food market where they suffer for the sake of a profit. Knowing I wasn’t a part of that chain really added to my clarity of conscience and made me feel a lot more at ease when I was eating. It definitely meant the food tasted better!
Overall I had a really positive and interesting insight during my trial of what life is like when you are Vegan and how this can play a really important role in improving your health, work ethic and relationship with both animals and awareness about the world around us.
It has made me realise that challenges such as this are only a bit scary because we don’t know the details fully and we can’t know until we experience things ourselves. Because of this, I can highly recommend a similar experiment for those of you reading who might be wondering if Veganism is for you too. It’s definitely made me want to become Vegan full time even more, and I hope to begin this adventure slowly but surely from now on.
