Carry on Beautiful!

I decided to go vegan over night on July 1st 2017, so I’ve now been vegan for just over 6 months and wanted to do a little update on it. I really want to do more posts about veganism to help combat that whole ‘angry vegan’ stereo type, we’re mostly nice I promise! Thats for another post though, for today I want to talk more so about different things I’ve noticed and experienced since going vegan!

First I want to talk about the good things, like that I really don’t have to miss out on any good foods! Cheese, chicken nuggets, pizza, chocolate, anything you can think of has a vegan alternative thats just as good or even better. I’ve even had delicious vegan yorkshire puddings that taste exactly like the original things.

More and more restaurants and shops are offering vegan options too! Just since I went vegan Wagamama, Pizza Hut and Pizza Express have bought out vegan options on their menus, and I’m sure theres plenty more I haven’t heard about yet. Wicked Kitchen is now also in a lot of Tesco’s, meaning I can buy a delicious vegan pizza for later rather than having to make it, which is brilliant.

I’ve also tried so many new fruits and vegetables and new ways off cooking, I’m enjoying food and cooking way more than I ever did while eating meat and dairy. For example, I’d actually not had aubergine or watermelon before going vegan and they’re definitely major parts of my diet now. I also used to think I hated spinach and mushrooms but since they’re in so many vegan recipes I made myself give them a go and now I’ve figured out how I like them, I absolutely love them!

Moving away from talking about actual food, I feel so much better. I’ve lost over 70lbs without even trying and while still regularly eating pizza, though it is of course with vegan cheese. The mixture of losing weight and eating way more fruits and vegetables has given me so much more energy and my skin is much softer and less red. Of course this is largely because of all the extra veg and fruit I’ve been eating but I feel like a plant based diet kind of means you need to.

I’ve also been really enjoying veganism because it makes me feel good. I don’t want to go into preach mode here, but I think its really cruel and wrong to kill animals or exploit them so we can gain something from them and I feel much better in myself knowing that I’m doing what I can to not contribute to that.

Negatives come with everything and although theres only a few with veganism, I’d be being a bit evasive if I didn’t share the ones I’ve come across. The first and usually the worst is the way people can be towards you if you tell them they’re vegan. I have a family friend that constantly offers me meat and dairy as a joke and tries to trick me into eating it. During the two days I worked one of my colleagues asked why I bought in my own lunch and I told him it was because they didn’t have any vegan options, he went on to spend a lot of time going on about how vegans always have tell everyone they’re vegan. YOU ASKED!! Of course most people are fine and don’t care at all, but theres always someone that has to be a knob.

Finding take aways or places to eat out can be tough. Going out to eat is easier, but theres been a fair few times I’ve been sat down in a restaurant and had to leave because they had exactly zero options. Ordering in gets tricky. There are 3 places I can order vegan options from, and 1 of them is actually good but also only open on weekends. You can try ordering cheesless pizza’s from major chains but they’re usually pretty boring, will sometimes arrive with cheese on anyway (really) and still cost the same as a pizza with meat and cheese on!!

You have to check the ingredients on everything you eat because they sneak milk powder and eggs into the things you’d least expect. Pesto has milk in it. Why? So do salt and vinegar pringles. It gets a bit tedious but you do get used to it and just automatically check before eating or buying anything.

Overall, I really enjoy eating a vegan diet. The food is great and it makes my body feel fuelled and energised more so than eating meat and dairy ever did. There are times that it can get frustrating or when you end up not being able to eat for a while when you’re out but over all, its not that hard and I would definitely encourage anyone who is considering veganism to at least give it a go!

-Dana