I found a draft of my vegan journey and even though I did this in 2018, I realised that some of the lessons I learnt are still useful. I’m going to leave the draft untouched in italics below and continue after.
I didn't want to start off the year with the pressure to lose weight so when someone I know suggested vegan January, I jumped at the chance. More fruit and veg and real food in my diet? yes. There's this misconception that vegans can't eat anything- hahaha. They can. Bruh, I might actually put on weight on this thing they way things are looking.
Examples of things that are vegan that really just make me stressed
Smarties- what?
oreos- this is the most common one and i think everyone knows this
hobnobs
pringles
ritz crackers
noodles
dry pasta
omo- the list goes on.
Things that should be vegan and often aren't
orange juice
wine
sugar
palm oil
So yeah anyway, I'm in for a carby ride. To fully prepare, I went on a massive shopping trip, which on reflection was largely unnecessary. Stocked up on nut milks for my lattes, pasta sauces and chilli sauces. I'm not going to be vegan AND stress myself cooking everything from scratch. Ironically, I kept fresh fruit and veg to a minimum because I dont like having tons of stuff that can go off in the fridge staring at me.
The biggest revelation was all the SNACKS! Bruh, being vegan is a snackers paradise- might really have to do no sugar February after this- hmmm, thats actually not a bad idea.
Anyway, wish me luck, off to nap after eating garlic chilli noodles.
I made a vegan birthday cake for my husband (boyfriend at the time). I make vegan cakes all the time because it’s good for a lot of intolerances (dairy, egg etc)
Okay so now we are here in 2020 and thank God for the Apple update that makes it possible to search your phone by date because I have 21,733 photos and would never have been able to find photos from January 2018.
When I look back on my journey, it was obvious that I decided to do this on a whim. If I were to do it now, I would eat completely different foods and approach it differently. I had to stop after 24 days because I couldn’t breathe properly, I felt like I constantly had a weight on my chest. I did go to the hospital and they said nothing was wrong, but I still couldn’t breathe so I stopped. I did try to eat fortified foods and supplement as much as possible, but I was eating a lot of low nutrient foods and I’m anaemic, so it honestly wasn’t the best combination.
Here’s a summary of stuff that I found
My skin was kind of glowy. I sent a photo to my friend and she thought I was showing her a new highlighter. The only other time I got good skin from a diet was when I gave up sugar completely in all forms. This wasn’t skin on that level but it was pretty good.
I never felt full no matter what I ate- I did feel satisfied but never stuffed and sometimes I ate a ton of rice. I guess because of how simple carbs (which sadly, is the bulk of what I ate) are used by the body, it’s harder to feel stuffed.
I craved vegetables. My first meal post vegan was a vegetarian pizza with A LOT of vegetables and a salad.
My appetite shrunk a lot
Places I ate at
Samantha’s bistro (does it even still exist?) had a really really good veggie burger- they claimed it had no animal products but I didn’t investigate too thoroughly because I wanted to eat it.
Craft Gourmet was a place I used to go to a lot at the time so it made sense that I tried being vegan there. The options were fewer than I expected- lots of vegetarian options though.
Sharwarma & Co was the surprising one! They have a couple of vegan wraps and they are delicious!
I also did things like buy plain salads and add them to plain white rice to make a “burrito bowl”.
I would hundred percent do it again if I needed to or if I became vegan for ethical reasons and I think it’s very doable in Lagos. I’m sure with eating out, things may have had stock cubes that weren’t vegan etc, so it would have been a completely different experience if I approached it from an ethical standpoint. I probably wouldn’t have risked eating cooked food at non-vegan restaurants. I stayed strictly on the side of “contains no animal products as far as I can see and am told.