1 week into my fling with vegetarianism

One week on progress is ???

Actually its pretty good, the first 7 days have been much easier than I thought, although they have not been without their challenges.

To go back to that start of the story, I decided last week as another experiment in personal growth to try vegetarianism.

This isn’t a radical shift in lifestyle, rather something I want to try just to see if I have the resolve to manage such a big change. Its also an opportunity to change gears with my weight loss efforts.

Its not a permanent change at least at the moment anyway.

But its not been a horrendous experiance, and im going to keep going for another two weeks.

I know that I need to stick with this for at least one month to see any results, but compartmentalizing it into smaller makes it easier to keep going, when you can always see the end of the tunnel.

That’s my insurance policy incase times get really tough to make sure I can keep going.

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The positives???

On the postive side of the equation in this experiment there have been quite a few benefits in the first week:

• I’m actually getting a better quality of sleep and at least 8 hours a night
• My weight loss accelerated slightly
• I have more energy in the mornings
• I feel lighter…
• I’m getting to try more vegetables and cook them in more ways, than I ever would otherwise

As you can see in 7 days alone im getting some benefits from this little experiment which is great and I’m also somewhat surprisingly enjoying myself.

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The Negatives???

Ok so on the other side of the equation, yes there have been a few negatives, but to be fair some of those are caused by me just jumping in and doing no research….

• My iron levels are down from what they were a week ago
• My blood sugar is raised slightly
• I have a constant headache
• Im done for the day by 8pm
• I’m back to eating small meals throughout the day, intermittent fasting is not working for me in this situation

Almost all of those negatives are being caused by low iron levels, which im working my way around now.

If I had done my homework, I would changed my diet at the beginning a little more and included more nuts and greens to compensate for that, as it is I can do that now and take a supplement.

On the blood sugar, that’s kinda expected with such a big change that the body is adjusting to, and ill continue to monitor that over the next 2 weeks.

The biggest surprise was just not being able to fast, but again with some more experimentation in my diet and eating a combination of the right things that I haven’t found quite yet, ill get back on track with that as well.

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Final Thoughts

This week hasn’t been the absolute hell I thought it would be, in fact im already seeing the benefits of this experiment play out for me.

I have some issues to overcome in terms of refining the diet to make sure I get enough Iron and to get me back to intermittent fasting, but neither of those are big issues, Ill get there.

Ill continue for another 2 weeks and then at that point look at the medium term, at the moment im feeling like this could be the summer diet for me, but again we will see how things go.

What I would say to anyone thinking of making the change?

Go for it!

While it is certainly different not eating meat, its been good fun so far, I actually feel better about myself and my health, and im learning to cook all over again.

Its great fun