30 before 30: #22 – Go Vegan for a month

Completed: 1 Sept 2018

When I was writing this list, number 22 was the one I was dreading doing the most. People who know me know that I like eating, there are very few foods from around the world that I won’t eat, but I don’t make food a priority in my life. I’ve lived with one of my best friends for about 2 years now and he’s seen me cook maybe…once?

Why? 2 main reasons. The first one is because taking care of what you eat should be just part and parcel of living and I don’t respect that enough. Secondly, I’ve believed for a while that the vegans have it right. I’m fully on board with the idea that the rate of meat that we’re consuming on the whole is reckless and unsustainable. I live in a country where the rainforest is being chopped down at an alarming rate to create extra farmland to raise animals that grow in terrible conditions all so I can have chicken from a small restaurant for just over £1.

Now, do you have to be as strict as becoming 100% vegan to support the environment? I don’t feel I do. Overall, I’m looking for a reduction in my meat intake rather than an elimination, but elimination for a month is going to force me to rethink my diet. That’s why it’s on the list.

The last time I tried anything like this I was 15 and went vegetarian to try and impress a girl I liked. I ate a sausage roll that Wednesday. With that in mind, I was ready for this to take a couple of attempts and thought I’d better try it pretty early on and in steps. I started by switching my lunches to a vegan delivery company in July with the idea of taking on August as the vegan month.

This was bigger news to the office than I thought it would be. What’s this? Vegan? Why is it so expensive? It’s just salad- what’s the point? “I just hate when something looks like meat, but it isn’t. It’s lying”. I’d never considered my lunch as a hot topic before, which was ironic because I didn’t like how cold these salads were. I was missing the warmth of something that had been cooked, but at least this companies’ sauces were good and the variety was just about good enough to keep me interested. I also tried soy milk, then I spat it out. That stuff is horrible.

Then, to my surprise, two of my housemates said that they’d try something like this for August too. One housemate said he’d go vegetarian for the month, another said he’d go vegan but only on weekdays. The trial-vegetarian is a big barbecue-lover by the way. This was a massive surprise, and it definitely helped my motivation.

1st August came. No more meat. No more milk. No more chocolate from the company tuck shop. No more cheese or eggs or ham sandwiches. No more empanadas and no more cake. This was going to be a long month.

I should probably be a bit clearer on the rules at this point. I wasn’t going to worry about things that weren’t vegan on what I’d call a technicality. If it’s pasta from the supermarket that may contain traces of egg or chips that’ve been cooked in partial animal fat, I’m not worried about that. Beer and wine are apparently not vegan but they were exempt from this rule too. I have to do due diligence to check if the hummus has traces of yoghurt in it but it doesn’t reset the counter if I find out later that it does. I’m also not allowed to refuse everything at a dinner party if there isn’t a vegan option, because my rule is not more important than the enjoyment of the host. This happened once, and I knowingly ate cheese. You get the idea. It’s serious, but it’s not 100% strict. It’s also a diet too, which means my leather wallet didn’t get thrown away.

I was told by the vegans in my life (in person or indirectly on facebook) that the positive benefits of my diet would start to show in about 1 or 2 weeks and then I’d know I’d made a good decision. Well, for me, the first week was amazing. I felt an obvious spike in energy in my daily routine. I was down to 0 or 1 coffees (now without milk) a day from my usual 2 or 3, and I was able to keep going for longer at the gym. So far, so excellent.

What I think had happened is that my body had been given a surplus in vitamins and just went crazy happy. It wasn’t so much that I’d removed meat, but my fruit and vegetable intake had gone through the roof. But midweek in the second week I felt noticeably sadder.

There was no circumstantial reason for it. Nothing different was happening behind the scenes. My job was stressful but my job is always stressful. I didn’t want company so much, and I was tired quicker. Tired, but not feeling I’d produced enough that day to justify taking a nap. You know, that mixed-up logic that only a tired mind would make? Well, I was doing that a lot.

But on the upside I was cooking. Well, basically cooking. If you call pastas and vegetable stir-fry and occasional fried aubergines- that’s the number one new food in my life by the way- cooking. Mashed potato tasted ok, but lacking something (I think it was that I’d used the rest of that soy milk). I did learn that if you haphazardly throw spices into whatever you’re making, your housemates will be deceived into thinking you’re cooking. I went and picked things up from the store and cooked with my girlfriend which made for a lovely Sunday afternoon. That’s normal for normal people, but that was new for me.

The problem was that I never felt full. Weeks 3 and 4 levelled off and I never got that week 1 buzz back, but I didn’t feel as bad as I did in week 2. I was determined to see out the month with the knowledge that I 100% wasn’t going to keep this going into September. I wasn’t going to go through week 2 again.

One of my favourite restaurants in Santa Cruz is Indian, and is big on its vegan lunches. When I went there, that was when I’d feel full. One Saturday afternoon going into the final week I tried one of their recommended lentil curries and my body picked up its mood immediately. It was clear that being vegan could definitely be a good thing for me but I wasn’t quite balancing it right. Or maybe I’d just tricked my body into thinking it’d eaten something that didn’t look dissimilar to a meaty curry. Or maybe it was because it was a Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining and I’d had a couple of beers. Probably all of the above.

Coming to the final few days of August, I knew I had this in the bag. My housemates had cheated a few times (the weekend started including Fridays…and sometimes Mondays….and a Wednesday), but I thought of that Tesco sausage roll I’d eaten as a teenager and told myself I didn’t want to have to start this all again. Also, I had made this 30 before 30 in June and I hadn’t ticked off a single entry yet. The end was in site.

So there I was at 11:30 sat in the kitchen watching my housemate eat his pizza (it was Friday after all) feeling that I’d done it, and he’d offered me a slice for after midnight. At 12:10am I double-checked with everyone in the room that it was in fact September, and savoured that bite in a moment of silence. It was the proudest slice of pizza I’ll probably ever eat. It tasted of accomplishment and relief but mostly it tasted like cheese and that was wonderful for me. The next day I had a packet of Rocklets (they’re basically Bolivian M&Ms) and my brain fizzed as my neurones gossiped en masse that chocolate was back in my life.

It wasn’t meat that I’d missed so much; it was dairy. The milk here in Bolivia isn’t as good as the milk in the UK (it’s all longlife UHT stuff) but I still love it. I have done all my life. Cake too. I didn’t have to shy away from my housemates’ muffins anymore or anything with butter in it. My girlfriend hooked us up with a barbecue place over the weekend to celebrate and the pork (Bolivian friends read: matambre) was excellent.

(Skip this paragraph if you’re not interested in my digestive tract). My mind and my tastebuds were very happy to go back to normal, but my body had definitely done some adjusting to the vegan diet. Things had, let’s say, been *coming through* a bit more readily than before while I was vegan but then this weekend of eating freely was not received well by my intestines which, when left with an easier processing job for a month, took on the meat challenge a bit too readily. Furthermore, I needed a LOT more sleep than usual and much of Sunday was spent with a dull migraine too- and I don’t even remember the last time I had one of those. I’m writing this on the Monday after and now I feel normal again, but there was definitely a re-adjustment period.

So was it worth it? Yes, definitely. It came with its ups and downs. I try to take my mental health seriously because that stuff is precious, but on the whole I think I have a better respect for food and cooking and longterm this should be good for me. I’m also slightly more prepared for the possibility that our grandchildren look at each other in horror when they realise that “granddad used to eat cows”. For the future, I’m definitely considering the vegan option where there is one, especially in restaurants.

I’d recommend it to anyone considering it, and I think I managed it without cheating thanks to the preparation period of just doing lunches for a little and then stepping up to the whole day.

If you’re living in Santa Cruz Bolivia, be prepared for at least half of the people here to not have heard of being vegan before, and for most of those that do to think that it’s a ridiculous idea because “meat tastes good”. I mean, it does, but that’s not the point. This feeling is echoed in the economics too- it’s more expensive to have a good salad than something quick from a small restaurant. That being said, there are more vegan food places popping up throughout this city, and Ambika (That Indian Restaurant – 3rd/4th ring San Martin) leads the way. Also, once any restaurant owner has got over you asking for something vegan – which takes about 20 seconds for most – they’ll usually offer you something. It’s a personal choice after all, and you’re not forcing lack-of-meat on them.

So, one down, twenty-nine to go. See the whole list and why I’m doing it here.

Days remaining: 283