Edmond Chan

Life Experiments

21 days of veganism – am I iron and B12 deficient?

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“Photo by Nanxi wei on Unsplash“

I woke up the other morning and I felt knackered. I just wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t know why I felt like this as in the previous few weeks, I’d had quite a lot of energy. Enough to do a half-marathon.

Was it something to do with veganism. I checked Rich Roll’s book and yes he does mention that vegans can be iron deficient and vitamin B12 deficient if not monitored. Doh! I quickly did some more research:

Iron deficiency

From this article by the Mayo Clinic:

Initially, iron deficiency anemia can be so mild that it goes unnoticed. But as the body becomes more deficient in iron and anemia worsens, the signs and symptoms intensify. Iron deficiency anemia signs and symptoms may include: Extreme fatigue Weakness Pale skin Chest pain, fast heartbeat or shortness of breath Headache, dizziness or lightheadedness Cold hands and feet Inflammation or soreness of your tongue Brittle nails Unusual cravings for non-nutritive substances, such as ice, dirt or starch Poor appetite, especially in infants and children with iron deficiency anemia

I didn’t know that iron comes in two forms: heme and non-heme. Heme is from animal products and is easily absorbed by the body. Non-heme is from plant-based products and isn’t easily absorbed by the body. You need to 18mg of iron a day and getting that from plants alone isn’t straightforward and it’s another thing too to get that iron absorbed. Certain foodstuffs such as tea and coffee actually inhibit the absorption of iron. Other foods such as those rich in vitamin C actually help iron absorption.

B12 deficiency

Apparently a key vitamin doesn’t appear in the plant kingdom. B12 only appears in the animal foods such as meats, fish, poultry and eggs. From this Healthline article:

It plays an essential role in the production of your red blood cells and DNA, as well as the proper functioning of your nervous system.

From this WebMD article:

If you have vitamin B12 deficiency, you could become anemic. A mild deficiency may cause no symptoms. But if untreated, it may lead to symptoms such as:

  • Weakness, tiredness, or lightheadedness
  • Heart palpitations and shortness of breath
  • Pale skin
  • A smooth tongue
  • Constipation, diarrhea, loss of appetite, or gas
  • Nerve problems like numbness or tingling, muscle weakness, and problems walking
  • Vision loss
  • Mental problems like depression, memory loss, or behavioural changes

The same article also had this to say about mothers who are breastfeeding whilst on a vegan diet:

Are you a pregnant woman on a vegan or vegetarian diet, and plan to only breastfeed your baby? You should talk to your doctor before you have your baby, so that you have a plan in place for how you’ll get enough vitamin B12 to keep your baby healthy. Without enough vitamin B12, your baby could have developmental delays and not thrive and grow like he should.

Vegans and vegetarians can get their B12 through a supplement tablet or through food such as nutritional yeast (I bought some and it’s very much like fish food flakes!)

From this article from WebMD:

To increase the amount of vitamin B12 in your diet, eat more of foods that contain it, such as: Beef, liver, and chicken. Fish and shellfish such as trout, salmon, tuna fish, and clams. Fortified breakfast cereal. Low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese. Eggs.

So I’m going pause the vegan experiment and modify it

It takes a while for your iron stores to become depleted and it takes time to build it up again. So for my own health and Angelique’s health, we’re going to load up on meat and eggs for the next couple of weeks to get our iron and B12 levels back to normal. I’m going to eat much the same meals as on the vegan diet (lots of veg, lentils, rice, fruit, mung beans, tempeh etc) but also add in regular lean red meat like liver and steak, as well as eggs and increase my vitamin C intake. I’m also going to start drinking cow’s milk again so that I don’t get a calcium deficiency. I realise that means that I’m no longer vegan but it’s helped me be more intentiaonl about the meats and foodstuffs that I eat. I’m still leaning to a ‘5 days vegan/2 days not’ balance.

Update

In the 10 days since pausing the vegan diet, I’ve been loading up on liver (high in iron and B12). I’ve had this three times. Plus a couple of steaks, some eggs, some oily and non-oily fish, plus some B12 tablets with 25 micrograms of B12 (not even close to the highest strength ones you can get on Amazon). I feel a lot better, with a lot more pep and energy.

It made me think that lots of people could be wandering around with a mild (or serious) mineral deficiency and that this could impact their daily energy levels, their moods, their ability to concentrate etc. How much could change with a nutrient-rich diet as well as the right supplements to complement that?

Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional and I have self-diagnosed myself using the internet. Please seek medical advice from a qualified professional before starting any major dietary changes. Thanks!

James Altucher’s Ideas Machine for 7 days. Here’s 55 ideas!

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Ideas Machine
(Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash)

In his book Choose Yourself, James Altucher suggests that you become an Ideas Machine. Here’s an article by Inc magazine that outlines the process: How to Become an Idea Machine.

It’s supposed to be 10 ideas a day but this is hard! Over 7 days, I should have generated 70 ideas but here’s 55 ideas:

Monday

  1. Pret needs to update itself to stay on top in 5 years time. It could easily go the way of Costa and Cafe Nero’s. I think it needs to freshen up its visual brand assets, and increase the range of vegan food offerings. Its coffee also needs to improve. There’s so many artisanal coffee shops out there now serving up delicious next-level single origin-based coffee.
  2. Veganism is a fast-growing trend. Start a local vegan cafe serving only vegan coffees and food.
  3. Can we live on a much-reduced food budget? eg £50 a week. Look at Jack Monroe’s site for ideas.
  4. Could mentorship be one of the solutions to reduced social mobility? Could the right mentors help and guide kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and circumstances to fulfil their potential? What if I started a website with videos of mentors advising, coaching?
  5. Just watched a few episodes of the new Queer Eye series. I LOVE this show. The transformation they go through is incredible. How would the Fab 5 transform our lives? Could we recreate it in our own lives?
  6. Crossfit gyms are super expensive eg £200 per month. What is it about Crossfit that makes it so expensive. Could someone recreate the experience for less money?

Tuesday

  1. I’ve started using the app Chip, which claims to use AI to analyse your bank account transactions to see what you can actually afford to additionally save and tuck that away. I’ve been using it for 4 days now and it’s saved and taken £6.79. As a user, I’d like to know what the £6.79 was based on ie how it was calculated? Where is the £6.79 held once it’s left my bank account? Are my deposits protected by FSCS? Maybe these should be communicated better to the user.
  2. Pubs will sell fewer drinks as due to social distancing, fewer patrons will be able to enter their pubs. This will hit overall revenue. To make this up, pubs can’t really raise their prices to compensate as people’s spending power will be smaller overall. So how about in busy times, the pub offers a smaller menu of drinks? This would mean that drinks could be poured in bulk and stored up for a line of waiting customers, and there would be a time-saving in serving each customer, meaning that more customers could be served.
  3. What if Apple had an inbuilt feature that meant photos could be easily exported and the photos were then printed and sent to your house? (Angelique said this already exists!) Looking at the App Store, there’s quite a few apps that do this. One that stands out is Photobox’s free printing service – apparently you get 50 free prints a month – you just pay for delivery. Pretty good deal! I’ll check it out and report back.
  4. Sonos is a pretty good product. The app could be better for searching for and discovering new music but one thing I’d love it to do is play from my phone via bluetooth. Add bluetooth please Sonos!
  5. Apple photo file formats are now in HEIC which makes it hard to upload to apps like Moonpig which only accept JPGs and PNGs. Couldn’t Apple just give an option to save/export photo files as JPGs or PNGs? (Joint idea with Angelique)
  6. Pulses and grains tend to come in plastic that you have to tear. How about putting them in a tetra pack so that you don’t spill grains out every time you open and then reseal them.
  7. What about having food labeling that as well as highlighted calories and nutritional make-up such as protein, carbs and fats, we also could see how nutritious and good for us (or not) that this food item was?
  8. What about some kind of organisation designed to tackle loneliness in the UK, especially the elderly who live on their own? Our local nursery organises trips to local care homes for the kids to spend time with the residents.
  9. If vitamin D is beneficial in Northern European countries, then could we put it in the water similar to how we put fluoride in water to help protect teeth?
  10. Why can’t we provide laptops for all kids whose families can’t afford them? Say there’s a million kids this affects, then couldn’t the public and private sector join together to fill this need? Chromebooks can retail for around £200 each. Even at this RRP, that’s £200m to equip kids with a necessity.
  11. Could utility companies be persuaded to give free fast internet to the most disadvantaged homes? Could they give free internet to libraries?

Wednesday

  1. Why does painting walls need an undercoat? Can’t they just make the paint thick enough?!
  2. Is there a way to make baby food purees that are 100% nutritious, in recyclable jars, and that are cheap?
  3. Why does toothpaste come in such small containers? Surely bigger sizes of package would be better in terms of packaging waste?
  4. Could Apple give old phones that still work well to developing nations? This would connect millions of people (assuming the internet is good) and would also mean that Apple has lots more people in its ecosystem?

Thursday

  1. Watching Inside Bill’s Brain, a Netflix documentary on Bill Gates, and he needed $6bn to try and eradicate polio. Why wouldn’t governments give him that? That’s a drop in the ocean compared to what we spend for bailouts. For such a momentous goal, shouldn’t governments have lined up to give him that?
  2. In the current Covid social-distancing world, there are queues to get into places. You never know when there’ll be a queue outside the supermarket. You’ve just got to turn up and hope that there isn’t one when you get there. What if the Google Map entry for the supermarket had a current status of how big the queue is?
  3. To grow your email list, do it one by one. Ask people to share it.
  4. What if there was a question that you could ask and be asked when meeting someone for the first time that would accelerate the building of rapport?
  5. What if we built hostels for homeless people and they didn’t have to pay anything to access them? The hostels could help them with health, education/training, being on the system with bank accounts and an address. Come to think of it, why doesn’t the government underwrite funded bank accounts for the unbanked?
  6. Is it possible to make pans with non-stick that never comes off?
  7. Can tissues come in smaller sizes as generally one blow of the nose doesn’t fill it, and throwing it away is a real waste?
  8. Bill Gates has a week called Think Week where he goes off and just reads and thinks. What if we implemented something similar in our own lives?
  9. What if aggression isn’t a bad thing? What if we taught healthy, channelled aggression to kids?
  10. What if we made opera and ballet free in the same way that art galleries are generally free? You’d get much more exposure to what is a public good?
  11. What if we made a week of social work mandatory for schoolkids in the same way that they have to do work experience. It might reduce loneliness and also increase kids’ awareness of the lives of others in the community.

Friday

I forgot!

Saturday

  1. Instead of a tweed suit, how about a hemp suit? Sustainable?
  2. What about a legal version of Money Saving Expert, a resource aimed at the normal person in the street? Written by lawyers. Questions such as Do I need a will? What makes a will legal?
  3. What about an easy way of buying and holding other currencies such as CHF, HKD, AUD which might appreciate against GBP?
  4. Can we double the number of trees in inner cities to reduce pollution and increase residents’ well-being?
  5. What about a National Poetry Day? (Doh it exists!) National Poetry Competitions?
  6. What about bring Spelling Bees to the UK?
  7. Public speaking for 6 year olds?
  8. What about opening up a lot more space for allotments so that town people can grow more food?
  9. More urban farms to bring nature to the cities?
  10. Outdoor Film Festivals during summer in London parks
  11. Opera Festival during summer in London parks

Sunday

  1. What about sofas and chairs made for short people? So that we can put our feet firmly square on the ground!
  2. There’s a shop for big and tall – what about a shop for small and short?
  3. What about some kind of tag put in each of a pair of socks so that neither would get lost?
  4. What about a free or subsidised compost maker for every household?
  5. What if meditation was taught in schools at an early age?
  6. What if we fully funded fact-checking charities to help deal with fake news and questionable statements in the public domain?
  7. What if it became government advice to walk 10,000 steps a day, in much the same way as 5-a-day fruit/veg advice?
  8. What if we found a good value way to offer people solar panels to put on their roofs to reduce reliance on normal electricity?
  9. If companies are the biggest emittors of greenhouse gases, what if we offered tax credits to those companies who hit certain green targets?
  10. What if cows wore something on their backsides to capture the methane and stop it going into the atmosphere?

Things I’ve found

Sometimes the ideas flow, other times they’re hard to come by. Sitting at my laptop and trying to think of ideas isn’t always easy. It really is like a muscle. You’ve got to strain and flex and keep going when it’s uncomfortable, just like doing weights.

You feel really ‘on it’ once you’ve done 10 mins of thinking and idea-generating. When you’re making connections, it’s like you’re fitting a idea onto other potential candidates. For example, with the toothpaste coming in bigger packages, that was because of a gadget I saw which was an ice cube mould that made big icecubes. I’d never seen that before and I immediatlely wondered why they weren’t the gold standard of icecube moulds! Easier to balance in a home freezer and they last longer. What else could this idea fit? Toothpaste packaging? Shower gel packaging?

Got any other ideas?! Let me know in the comments below!

How to go from couch potato to half-marathon in 52 days

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Between Zach being born at the end of December 2019 and the end of April 2020, I did zero cardio. I went to the gym once or twice before lockdown but that was just to do some weights. I caught Covid in March, and, throughout April, I did zero exercise.

Come the 1st of May, I decided to get running again. Little runs, regularly, with a few longer runs rolled in.

52 days later, I did a half-marathon (13.1 miles), admittedly not very quickly at all (2hrs 26min) but still a half-mara.

Running east past Mortlake, South-West London

If you haven’t run in ages, here’s how you can do the same. You can do it!

Get the Strava app

Strava is free with a paid-for premium option. The free option is good enough for most people and you simply use it to track your runs. Lace up, hit record on the app, and get moving. Don’t forget to turn stop recording at the end of your run (annoying if you don’t as it messes up your data) and watch as the miles add up.

You can get the Premium tier for around £40/year and this allows you to set weekly running mileage goals. I set mine to 16 miles a week. The app tells you how many miles you’ve got left to hit your goal that week and it’s surprisingly motivating. It’ll get to Sunday and I know I’ve still got 3.5 miles to do and I’ll lace up and do it.

There’s also a great social aspect to Strava. You can follow your friends on it and they can follow you. You can see their runs and they can see yours. It’s motivating to see your friends have been on a good run and you can give each other encouragement.

Start off little and often

Don’t worry about stopping and walking during your runs. I did it all the time and I still do it during a run. Over time, the stopping becomes shorter and less frequent. If you can’t run at all, just aim for a 2 miles, or even 1 mile. But do this 5 times a week.

Find a good 3 mile route and stick to it

You might think that 3 miles isn’t long enough but it’s long enough to feel like a proper run and it’s short enough that you won’t be too put off going for a run when you don’t feel like it. It should only take between 28 and 35 mins.

The beauty of doing the same route as your bread and butter is that you don’t even have to think about it or spend time finding a new route. That would sap mental energy and might give you the excuse to not go for a run that day.

Add a longer run each week

See if you can do a 5 miler, then a 10k (6.2 miles). Then do an 8 miler, then a 9 miler. 9 miles was the longest that I did before doing the half-marathon. Don’t worry if you need to stop and walk; you’re just looking to build up the mileage in your legs. It also builds the confidence in your mind – you know that you can do longer runs. We’re looking to get to 9 or 10 miles as the longest preparation run for tackling the 13.1 run goal.

Find a good route for the half-marathon

You don’t want to be running along lots of busy roads, having to wait at traffic lights, dodging cars, breathing in exhaust fumes. I found a river route that reached Chiswick Bridge as the halfway point. I recommend quiet routes with not that many people around so that you can just run.

On the half-marathon itself

Eat a good meal beforehand. Don’t set off at too quick a pace. Try to run the first few miles slightly slower than your normal pace. You’ve got to leave something in the tank for the final few miles. If you need to stop and walk, just stop and walk for a bit. Don’t beat yourself up for this! The goal is just to finish the overall run.

Hopefully, this shows what’s possible even from a standing start. I’m not in the best shape. Far from it. I’m probably 2 stones overweight, but if I can do a half-marathon in 52 days following a period of time where I did no cardio at all, then you can certainly do it!

7 days of meditation. Here’s what I found

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My next 7 day lifestyle experiment was to give 7 days of meditation a go. I’ve always found meditation hard. My mind wanders so much and it was a real effort to try and quiet my mind.

But I want some of its purported benefits such as improved concentration and focus, increased creativity, and overall mental happiness.

I got a week-long free trial to use Calm Premium, a meditation app and found a 30 day course called How To Meditate by Jeff Warren.

7 days of meditation using Calm app

Day 1

The course is guided and narrated by Jeff. I sat in a chair and relaxed my face and different parts of my body with each exhale and tried to view my thoughts as things that just happened and not to get frustrated when they came and when I got distracted by them. By distracted, I mean that I got carried away by them. If I started thinking about lunch, for example, I’d think about what was in the fridge, if I needed to go to the shops etc. Literally being carried away by the thoughts instead of just observing them and bringing my attention to what was going on in the moment. When I opened my eyes, I smiled involuntarily and widely. A good sign!

Day 2

The second session was about establishing a ‘homebase’, which is something that you can always bring your attention back to if your mind wanders. The instructor recommends using your breath as a homebase. Watching and observing the breath in and the breath out. He likens meditation to building a mental muscle of concentraion, which is simply being able to focus your attention on what you want to focus on.

I also did a ‘Love and Kindness’ meditation session on the app, which gets you to feel love and kindness to yourself, then to direct that feeling to someone you feel affection towards, and finally to direct this to the world.

Both times, when I opened my eyes, I felt relaxed and peaceful.

Day 3

The third session of How To Meditate in the Calm app is about ‘popping out of your thoughts’ in the same way as if you were in a Greyhound bus and you hopped out and sat in a chair next to the highway and watched Greyhounds pass by. You establish your ‘homebase’ (as in Day 2 above) and when you notice yourself caught up in a thought, just return your attention to your homebase. My homebase was my breath again and it felt like I had a stronger sense of my breath or a greater connection to what it was that I was focusing on (a bit vague I know but it’s hard to explain!)

Day 4

Today’s session was all about developing ‘equanimity’, or as Jeff explained ‘feeling a sense of smoothness’. Not focusing too hard on your homebase or even on concentrating on the meditation itself. Just giving everything the gentlest of your attention.

Days 5, 6, 7

It felt easier to just focus on my homebase (my breath) and to quickly connect with it. I can just close my eyes and focus gently on my breath. Breathing in, breathing out. Feeling the breath on the way in through the nostrils, feeling my stomach expand and my chest raise, and my head moving upwards at the end of the breath in. And on the way out, the way my belly and shoulders fall.

What changes have I noticed?

Nothing really yet. I’m happy that I’ve enjoyed the sessions throughout the week. The Calm app is really easy to use and the instructor is someone that I could relate to. The sessions are well-planned and definitely not repetitive. I think I’ll have to do this for 30 days to really see what changes daily meditation could bring. I’ll report back in a few weeks!

Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried meditation and what it did for you!

I went vegan for a week. Here’s what happened

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I’ve been looking for lifestyle experiments that last a week. Ideas so far are daily meditation, daily ice-cold showers. And I’ve recently had this nagging feeling that I should try veganism. I couldn’t imagine doing it for a month (as I did when I stopped drinking alcohol for a month), so I decided to become vegan for a week.

Now I LOVE meat (ribeye steaks, all forms of pork, fish, shellfish etc) and I love dairy products (all forms of cheese, eggs, milk, butter, mayonnaise etc), but Angelique is always trying to get me to cut down on my red meat and animal fats. She says it’s bad for my cholesterol.

I’ve always resisted trying veganism because I love the food groups that it cuts out. However, it’s well documented that there are health benefits to eating a more plant-based diet and cutting back on animal fats. Devotees of veganism swear by it.

I read Rich Roll’s book Finding Ultra, where he documents how eating a nutrition-rich plant-based diet and becoming an endurance athlete changed his life for the better, turning his life around from someone who couldn’t get up the stairs without wheezing at 40 years to becoming one of the fittest men on the planet. He is an evangelist for a vegan diet and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me to give it a go!

What I’m hoping to get from the experiment

  1. A bit more mindfulness about what I’m eating
  2. Exposure to new foods I’ve never eaten eg mung bean sprouts and tahini
  3. Feeling like I have more energy
  4. A better functioning digestive system – basically even better poos
  5. Clearer skin
  6. Bit of weight loss – maybe a kilogram over the week

Rules

  • No meat, fish or any animal at all
  • No dairy – so no eggs, milk, butter, cheese
  • (not really a rule about veganism but I don’t want to be eating just processed food that happens to be animal-product-free like crisps and chips)

Concerns

  • Where was my protein going to come from? This is stuff that I worry about. I don’t want to lose muscle mass.
  • Would I see a drop in testosterone? I’ve always believed that testorone is produced at night using fats, and where better to get those fats than from a juicy steak.

Preparing to go vegan for a week

  • Get rid of all the milk in my fridge
  • Ditto cheese
  • Finish or freeze all the meat products
  • Buy veg for the week:
vegan for a week
Never bought tempeh or puy lentils in my life!

Day 1

Breakfast – Frozen berry, banana and oat smoothie

Lunch – Puy lentils, tomotoes and olive oil, with some southern fried nuggets (which left me feeling a bit gross)

Dinner – salad (lettuce, carrot, courgette with hummus dressing), roasted sweet potatoes with tahini dressing

My energy levels were pretty good throughout the day (except for that period after eating those nuggets). I didn’t run today as I planned a big run for tomorrow.

Day 2

Breakfast – Kale, banana, pear and oats smoothie

Lunch – Puy lentils stewed with kale, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots.

Dinner – Leftovers from lunch, some hummus (“me too” brand), some sauerkraut, some Afghan naan bread with olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar, some tofu with soy sauce, tahini and finely chopped spring onions.. (Angelique said “gone are the days of having a meal based on a single cuisine!”)

I did an 8 mile run in the morning which felt fine re energy levels and strength. Some Plant Power (according to Rich Roll)!

Day 3

Possible TMI alert: I had a pretty watery poo this morning. I didn’t expect to have this whilst eating vegan as I thought the extra veg and plant-based foods would increase my fibre intake. Will monitor this.

Breakfast – some muesli with some pea protein milk (I didn’t like this at all. It looked almost grey. Looking at the ingredients, it’s mostly water. Pea protein is the second biggest ingredient at just 4% and there’s some sunflower oil, strangely, in long list of other ingredients. It looks like all these non-dairy milks have weird ingredients like gums, thickeners and oils in them. It just doesn’t sound that appetising really and I might leave out any kind of milk substitute for the rest of this experiment. This got me thinking about what other foods I eat that have lots of additives and unnatural things in them.)

Lunch – quinoa, with chopped tomato and cucumber through it with some olive oil. Fried tempeh slices.

Snacks – a pot of mung bean sprouts (surprisingly delicious! Fresh, crunchy, and felt like each mouthful was doing me good!

Dinner – Stir fried broccoli, tempeh, noodles

Day 4

Breakfast – avocado and hummus sandwich (hummus replacing the butter!)

Lunch – spaghetti with tomato and garlic sauce

Dinner – Stir fried broccoli, tempeh, noodles

Day 5

Breakfast – Smoothie of kale, oats, beetroot and spirulina (I got this recipe inspiration from Rich Roll). The spirulina makes it almost black.

Lunch – sandwiches with lettuce, mushroom-based sausages (actually delicious!) and vegan mayonnaise (not too bad).

Dinner – couscous salad with capers, cucumber, onion, black eyed beans

Day 6

Breakfast – banana, kale, beetroot, oats, spirulina smoothie

Lunch – mushroom-based sausages, pan-fried cavolo nero, puy lentils

Dinner – leftover quinoa, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots

vegan for a week
Mushroom-based sausages – these actually tasted quite natural
vegan for a week
This plant-based mayonnaise wasn’t actually that bad!

Day 7

Breakfast – leftover quinoa and last night’s roasted sweet potatoes

Lunch – Jackfruit burrito with vegan toppings from Tortilla (I felt so full after eating this. Fuller than after a medium burrito normally.)

Dinner – chorizo-flavoured mushroom sausages from Sainsbury’s, some runner beans pan-fried with olive oil, sea salt and garlic, some boiled potatoes.

Effects or benefits on becoming vegan for a week

I actually really enjoyed this experiment. I liked trying new foods that I’d never normally eat like tempeh and mung bean sprouts. It’s been to good to know that I’m not ‘dependent’ on a meat diet. (It sounds crazy to think back to those times where I’ve considered trying a vegan diet and I’ve said “I can’t give up cheese” or “I can’t give up pork”!

I’ve definitely become more aware of what I’m putting into my body. That came from looking at what ingredients are in alternative milks. We bought some pea protein milk that had some unnatural-looking ingredients in it, whereas cow milk seems to be made up of, well, cow milk!

It made me think about what else I mindlessly put into my body. Like store-bought pizza or even pizza from Pizza Hut, what’s in the dough or in the cheese? Or what’s in the ice cream or in the bread?

Were there any health benefits? Nothing that’s stark and that stands out. It was only a week, but I didn’t lose any weight. It didn’t impact my running (I still cracked out my target of 16 miles in a week and this included an 8-mile run). My energy levels were pretty consistent and I didn’t get any energy slumps that tend to happen when I eat a lot of stodge like a giant burrito or some KFC. I did get one energy slump after eating those Southern-fried tofu bites that just tasted so processed. I did feel ‘clean’ and kinda ‘virtuous’ when munching on salads and sprouted mung beans (which are delicious!).

Was it easy or hard? It was pretty easy actually, particularly when you’re eating at home a lot.) I can imagine that if you’re out and about, it would be tricky to find vegan food. There would be some vegetarian options but few vegan options.

You need a carb source which happens to be mostly vegan anyway (pasta, noodles, lentils, bread), a protein source (tofu, tempah, quinoa, beans), fats (olive oil mostly), and things to make nice dressings out of (tahini-based mostly, or mustard-based).

Is it expensive eating vegan? I’d say it’s comparable to a meat-eating diet and maybe even cheaper. A 285g steak at Sainsbury’s is around £5 – £6. A 200g block of tofu or tempeh to replace that meat component is around £2.50. Lentils, quinoa, beans, pasta and rice are all cheap. Mung bean sprouts are around £2 for 225g, which isn’t too bad. Tahini is around £7 for a jar.

What did I miss? I was surprised to find that I didn’t actually crave any meats, fish, cheese, milk. I did have a hankering for my favourite mayonnaise, Kewpie, but I could live without it for a while. It’s odd not putting things into food such as parmesan or fish sauce. I missed my eggs in the morning, scrambled in butter, but the pang wasn’t that great.

Will I continue with the vegan diet? I’ve actually enjoyed the new foods I’ve discovered such as quinoa, tempeh, tofu, sprouted mung beans. I’ll definitely keep eating these and have a vegan-based diet but with some selected non-vegan foods added back in. (That just sounds like a normal omnivorous diet doesn’t it?!) I can go days and maybe even weeks without eating meat and dairy now, something that I wouldn’t have even countenanced before this experiment. It’s amazing that going vegan for just one week can have this effect.

I’ll have a vegan-based diet that includes plenty of veg, quinoa and lentils. I’ll add back in some quality meat like decent steak, well-made sausages, some quality salmon and definitely some full fat cow’s milk. Oh and kewpie mayonnaise and parmesan for sure.

Final thoughts on going vegan for a week

It’s possible to be vegan and eat really badly. If you’re just trying to cut out meat and dairy, you could do so by eating loads of heavily processed food that’s designed to be a meat or dairy substitute eg the deep-fried tofu nuggets.

It’s also possible though to eat nutrient-dense vegan foods like veg-filled smoothies, buddha bowls of roasted sweet potatoes and beets, sauerkraut and kimchi. If you’re looking to refresh or reset your relationship with food, then give this experiment a try. Try going vegan for week!

I’ll write an update below when I have my first meat and dairy and report if I feel a boost or a negative effect. My gut feeling is that it will taste great but that it might feel heavy in my stomach and that I might have an energy slump, but I’ll report back here.