vegetarian

My experiment in vegetarianism continued

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Surprisingly still going strong after 6 weeks….

I‘m now about six weeks into the experiment. I stopped keeping track a few weeks ago.

For anyone who wants to catch up, I’ve included links to the previous installments at the end of this one.

Losing track of when I last ate meat. Well, I take that as a good sign that the experiment continues to be positive.

I’m still enjoying myself with it. Still experimenting in the kitchen and trying new foods.

I’ve not been bored with what I’ve been eating either which is a good sign as well.

It’s not all been smooth sailing as you would expect. But that’s ok, some bumps in the road I can cope with.

hat said, having a garden full of fruit and veg has helped. Being stuck at the house has been an advantage here. Food tastes much sweeter when you have grown and picked it yourself!

In this catch-up, let’s cover the bad first before moving onto the good

So as I said it’s not all been plain sailing and over the last few weeks I had 3 issues I needed to fix:

– Having fruit in the garden is awesome. But too much of it messes with your blood sugar. I have to be careful to make sure I don’t each too much. The fruit is great but needs to be balanced in my diet.
– I need to make sure I’m eating enough calories. There have been times where my diet has just been off. I haven’t eaten the calories I needed and I didn’t lose weight as a result.

– I developed an iron deficiency. I thought this might happen and it did. It’s just something to be aware of if you make the switch in diets. A simple supplement or eating more leafy greens solves the issue.

The good

Well yes, there has been a lot of good:

– I have continued to lose weight despite some bumps in the road.
– Not once have I missed eating meat
– I continue to learn more about my body, and feel fitter every day

Having gone from thinking I would be lucky to manage 1 week of this new diet. I have been surprised at how easy it has been.

I’m also surprised at how healthy and fit I feel. That’s not all down to eating vegetarian. At the same time, I cleaned up my diet quite a bit.

Overall though so far I’m enjoying the journey and meeting the goals I set. For as long as that continues I’ll keep to this diet.

Six weeks or so in, if you ever thought about making the change I would say go for it. If only for a short time, the benefits are worth it. Plus it’s always fun to try something different.

1001 Personal Experiments Continued…A casual fling with Vegetarianismmedium.com

1001 Personal Experiments Continued1 week into my fling with vegetarianismmedium.com

1001 Personal Experiments Continued…

/ dodwalker1 / Leave a comment

A casual fling with Vegetarianism

The project continues…

I’ve written on medium before about one of my strategies for being quarantined, which was to give myself a series of challenges or experiments.

A lot of those had focused on my relationship with food, which is not a coincidence, since I’m a little more than half way through losing a significant amount of weight.

This new experiment took my by surprise when it entered my thoughts yesterday and so I think its worth writing about.

Challenges of losing weight…..

One of the challenges of trying to lose a significant amount of weight is that what worked for you in the beginning wont work for you all the way through.

Weight loss plateaus, either because your body gets used to the regime, or because you got fed up following the plan.

My strategy to weight loss is intermittent fasting and exercise, and while I don’t find myself getting tired of either of those, I do still have the weight loss plateaus to deal with.

Im in one of those right now, which is how the thought came about I’m sure…

A vegetarian experiment

As a dedicated meat eater, my first thought was have I been abducted by aliens or drugged maybe, there has to be a reason that these thoughts are entering my head, it’s not natural at all….

The more I thought though, the more it makes sense, I need to change gears on the weight loss again and I have already cut red meat consumption down significantly, so this is just the next step in the process.

I wont become a vegetarian full time, that’s not the goal and I have to be honest in telling you that.

What I am interested in is, what can a vegetarian diet (Still consuming dairy) do for my weight loss and my overall health.

To begin with this will be a 7 day experiment.

What will I learn in 7 days???

Not much I think, 7 days is really too short to evaluate anything.

I will be able to see the effect on my blood sugar levels and I’ll know if I feel a difference in myself but that will be it.

So then why 7 days you ask?

The answer is simple, this is probably the biggest and scariest life change I have ever thought of.

If I can compartmentalize it, then I can do 7 days without issues and then extend it if im comfortable with that in 7, 14 or 21 day chunks.

I know I need at least 1 month on this, but that’s looking to far ahead right now and this approach will keep me going.

An exciting new world awaits

All I can do is put one foot in front of the other here and try and make this work, while that’s daunting there is an immediate advantage.

I get to try something new, vegetarian cooking. An exciting new world where the veggies are the main event and not the side show.

As someone who enjoys cooking it’s a new challenge I can look forward to and it genuinely gets me excited for the days ahead.

Final thoughts

In terms of these small personal experiments this is the big one for me.

Its a radical change, so one small step at a time and a compartmentalised view is key.

Ive not focused on the pro’s/con’s etc of a vegetarian lifestyle here because I honestly don’t know.

Im taking the YOLO approach here and will see how it turns out, like much that I do in life.

I’ll write about initial progress this time next week, in the meantime if anyone doe’s have any advice or tips etc please do get in touch…