One of my major motivators for creating a blog was to give people an honest and accurate account of my experiences with making diet changes, so I thought I'd take a break from my more intellectually-driven ideas to give a report of how things are going for me. Overall, it has been an extremely positive experience that I would highly recommend to anyone feeling discontented. What I've noticed is that even if it isn't the source of your problems, knowing that you have control to change something and the drive to commit to the change can give you a new perspective that is really motivating. It definitely hasn't been easy, though, and I plan to be completely honest about that. Here's what has challenged me throughout the process:
1. Cravings:
In an interview by KD Traenger, Anne Hathaway stated, "The moment I learned, I evolved. I have never, not once, craved a single non-vegan food."
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Now, maybe Anne Hathaway didn't have roommates who brought Frosties back to her room late at night. Maybe she doesn't have a Pinterest account to scroll through grilled cheese after grilled cheese at any given moment in the day. Maybe she's just one of those weirds who doesn't actually like ice cream that much. Or it could be that she really did just poof her cravings away with magic. Whatever she did, I haven't figured it out. Throughout this experiment, I have wanted to eat so many things that I shouldn't eat. When I started, it was milk, ice cream, and other non-vegan desserts. I realized, though, that I was never craving the animal products in these things; I was craving the sugar. And sugar, for all it's other possible flaws, is vegan friendly.
I've always heard people say "well if you crave sugar, eat an apple!" and laughed at them. 'You obviously don't understand,' I would think. 'I don't want sugar, I want pure white refined sugar in heavy cream. An apple isn't going to do it for me.' And I was right. But the thing is, though I thought I was craving the heavy cream and other things in the recipes, I really just wanted a large amount of sugar. It takes a lot of apples to get to the amount of sugar in a Frosty. The good news is, eating lots of apples is okay! Way more okay than a Frosty.
Once I adopted this new idea, I didn't have cravings anymore. What I did have a few weeks in, was a craving for meat. Really weird. I've been a casual vegetarian a few times in my life, and never actually craved meat. But after I eliminated milk, cheese, etc., I actually wanted meat. These ended after about a week, though.
2. Quantities:
"Enough," I have learned, is a relative term and will change when you change your diet. Animal products are much richer than their plant based alternatives. If you make the switch to plant-based foods, you'll find yourself eating Cheesecake Factory-style heaping plates of food for almost every meal. That's just what your body wants, and it's not over eating. I know this now, but I grossly underestimated my caloric needs at the grocery store, and I basically ran out of food half way through the week.
3. Being that guy who has to ask if there's cheese on the pasta:
It's really easy to be a vegan when you already went grocery shopping and all the food in your house is vegan food. But food is a social thing and I am a social person. I'm not a picky eater so I'm not used to having difficult food preferences, and it feels weird to ask people questions about the free food they put in front of me. Again, it helps to have eaten enough at home. But I've found that it's more than just being full. It's being comfortable with your choices about food to discuss them without feeling pretentious or needy. Because I do feel confident in my choices, I've been able to get over the initial weirdness.
4. My body was like "What are you doing?"
This was a pretty major change for me and my body responded to it as such. I don't want to go into details here, for the sake of the general body of readers, but if you really REALLY want to know you can contact me elsewhere and I'll probably tell you? I don't know.
The major drawbacks have been, for the most part, physical. But the major advantages of this switch surpass the needs of my body. I know that there is one element of my life I am consciously making changes to. To feel like you have enough knowledge, skill, and commitment to successfully change even the smallest aspect of your life is really empowering. I urge anyone reading this to find one thing about their life that they're not happy with, and consider changing it. Baby steps.
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