I often said, no one could make me eat veganly, not even my beloved Beyoncé Giselle Knowles Carter. It turns out I was wrong. Apparently, my little sister can nicely challenge me to eat plant-based for about 30 days and I’ll oblige if I happen to be in the mood. It also helps that she gave me a short time frame unlike militant PETA vegans that demand I repent from my bacon ways and eat a leaf. Whichever way, I am here to tell you that I ate my vegetables for 30ish days and I feel great.
Whether you are interested in the veg life because you watched a one-sided Netflix documentary, or you are simply curious about a different way of eating, it can be a pretty fun experiment with health benefits. Here’s what happened along my journey:
I ate a lot of carrots. And hummus.
I found I got a lot of emotional enjoyment from being able to chew things. (I’ve never been a liquid diet fan. Not chewing makes me feel robbed of a food experience). For lunch, I would typically eat a salad (that made me sad) and then perk up when it was carrots and hummus time. At some point, I even started to skip the hummus and just eat carrots when I felt the need to snack. Since it takes so much work to eat a carrot, some people consider carrots a negative calorie food since you burn calories while eating.
I realized rice is a plant based thing.
I cling to rice like normal people cling to pasta. So it made my heart glad that I could still eat rice. It went well with my Indian and African inspired dishes. Now, also being diabetic, rice is a carby, carby thing so I aimed to keep my rice meals to a minimal 1-3 times a week. As a Nigerian child, I feel like that’s not too much.
I stopped eating when I was full.
And maybe it’s because no one wants to binge on salad (correction: I don’t want to binge on salad), but it was easier to stop eating because I was full. I also kinda reduced my snacking.
I lost a little weight.
A little. I see the difference, but I know I can still stand to lose some more and actually use my gym donation/membership every once in a while. I haven’t gotten there yet, but the Lord is working on me.
I gave myself grace to go vegetarian sometimes.
If there was a little cheese on my bag salad, I didn’t stress it. Making me (or anyone else) feel bad about food was not the point of this journey.
All in all, so far so good. Though I did indulge on a chicken wing or two (actually two) yesterday, I’m not ready to give up on eating mostly plant based. But I also don’t plan on being strictly plant based either. I have no real direction for my eating habits, to be honest. I am excited to explore eating veggies and fruits in new ways. Rocking on with my flegan ways (flexible vegan) until I’m not. If you’re ever curious about meat less food options, hit me up! I’m always happy to share what I’ve been eating.
