I Survived the Vegan for a Week Challenge

A week ago, I started the Vegan for a Week Challenge, vowing to give up meat, eggs, milk, and butter for 7 days.  Here’s my thoughts, in summary:

The Good

• Everything I ate this week was really tasty-who says vegan has to be boring?
• My body felt good and I had energy.  Which is to say, I felt normal.  Not awesome, just normal.
• I tried some new foods including agave, Ezekiel bread and seitan.  Agave and Ezekiel bread may join the list of regular purchases for our household.
• I gave a lot of thought about what my food contains, which I think is always a good thing.
• My lunches were awesome.  I really need to work harder towards making hot meals for myself for lunch.

The Bad

• Eating out was hard! We couldn’t just stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for a snack or coffee (we don’t do black).
• I really missed my morning tea with milk and sugar.  Almond milk and agave just aren’t the same.
• No cheese.  ‘Nuf said.
• Label reading can be exhausting.  It was hard work to double check everything I wanted to put in my body.
• People looked at me like I was nuts when I told them I was going vegan for the week.  Why would someone give up animal products?!

Conclusions:

Veganism isn’t right for me.  In order to make such a drastic change in my diet, I’d really have to feel strongly that it was the right thing to do.  I don’t feel that way.  I believe there are serious issues with our industrial food system, I believe homemade is better than store bought and I believe that we don’t need to consume meat or animal products at every meal to be healthy.  But I don’t believe that consuming animal products is fundamentally wrong.  I don’t think that animals are on the same level as people and I’m okay with eating meat occasionally, especially if I know where it came from.  Maintaining a vegan lifestyle with no emotional/moral/intellectual conviction is simply not feasible.

I have a lot more respect for vegans than I did a week ago.  I used to think that going vegan would be easy: a simple matter of getting rid of butter, eggs, milk and cheese but there are animal products in so many things.  Being vegan is work.  This week wasn’t too bad because I only had to plan a week’s worth of meals, we ate a lot of leftovers and I was too busy to think too much about snacking.  But if I was going to become a full time vegan, my pantry would need to undergo some serious changes.  I think I’d have to spend a lot more time cooking and spend more money on substitutes in order to keep some of the flavors I enjoy in my diet.

All that said, I really appreciate the awareness the past week has provided me.  I’m going to try to continue thinking carefully about what I’m eating and including more vegan options in my diet.