Fight Man Made Climate Change! How to Vegan. Episode 2. Day 2.

Current weight 71.3 kg Current attitude: Optimistic Current attempt record : 1 days. The first time I attempted a plant based diet was a shock to the system. My body simply didn’t know what the hell was going on. I had grown up my whole life eating meat, drinking milk and loving cheese. In fact my love for cheese bordered on an addiction. As it was to turn out this analogy wasn’t far from the actual truth. This cheese addiction I will perhaps discuss in another episode. One of the biggest issues I found going Plant Based was the constant struggle to find what foods I could eat and which foods I couldn’t. Going to the shopping centre had quickly become a deep dive into ingredients lists. This process of picking over foods had quickly become slow and tiresome. You will find yourself saying “It was supposed to be easy. Simply don’t eat meat or animal based products”. But, when you attempt to be more plant based you will quickly discover that a lot of processed foods have animal based products in them, even the ones you would least suspect! In fact, the more effort you put into trying to avoid animal products the more time shopping will initially take. There is good news though, like all things, the more you practise something the quicker it becomes to do something. So over time you come to know which items you can eat and which ones you can’t. Oreos for example are vegan. Who would have thought? So, without understating it in any way, starting out as a vegan will be initially difficult. Well, it was for me anyway. Now on my fourth attempt at being plant based I find it a lot easier. The obvious truth is, I have been here before. After all, this is not my first animal free rodeo. During the previous attempts I was fortunate enough to have developed some habits that have never changed. For example, for the majority of my life I drank my coffee with a dash of cows milk. This is simply no longer the case. Those days are over. Now whenever I get a coffee it is a flat white on soy if I am out. And a shot of coffee with a dash of oat milk if I am at home. This practise continued whether I am trying to be plant based or not, it’s what I have come to call a plant based hangover. It’s something that has remained with me from previous attempts. Now if I could just get all the other eating behaviours to fall in line with my coffee drinking habits I would be set.