When I came home from college in May, my best friend was quick to inform me of her summer goal: to “get tan and skinny” by the time we returned to Charlottesville in the fall. How did she plan to do this? Well, she’d get tan by spending a lot of time in the sun (obviously), and she’d get skinny by going vegan.
Understandably, she focused on the "going vegan" part of her goal way more than the "getting tan" part, and she talked about it nonstop. She had all these plans about how once she went vegan she would “eat an entire melon for breakfast” and sustain herself on “raw food.” Every time we hung out, somehow the conversation would snake its way into the realm of her vegan dreams.
I thought she was crazy, extreme, all talk and no action. And I was right. Just after a few weeks of talking herself into her vegan diet, she talked herself out of it.
However, her constant blabbering about meat-free, dairy-free eating became increasingly intriguing to me as she continued to talk about it. While no one in my immediate family follows any restrictive diet, I have been exposed to the idea before: I have a cousin who is currently vegan and one who used to be years ago, and a handful of my friends are vegetarians. As I thought more about going vegan, the idea became less and less outlandish and more and more realistic.
One very normal morning I was reading the newspaper and came across an article about Bill Clinton’s campaigning for Hillary’s presidency. For some totally unrelated reason, the article briefly noted that due to heart problems, Bill became vegan about a decade ago.
For another totally unrelated reason, I read these few lines as a challenge: “If Bill Clinton can be vegan," I thought, "I can be vegan.” And so, fueled by just weeks of buildup and the extraordinarily indirect challenge of a 69-year-old man, my 14-day vegan journey began.
The next day, I accompanied my mom to the grocery store and loaded our cart with what I believed would support a vegan diet: almond milk, chia seeds, a giant container of kale. Even though I didn’t really know what I was doing, I felt a huge motivation to go vegan, and the more my friends and family teased me with their doubts of my ability to maintain my new diet, the more determined I became.
Afterward, I went on a hunt to learn all I could about the "vegan life." I read blogs about being vegan and researched recipes using vegan-only ingredients. I listened to Ellen DeGeneres talk about why she became vegan. Per her request, I watched the first 30 seconds of trailer to the movie "Earthlings" (I’m too squeamish to watch the whole trailer, and way too squeamish to watch the actual movie.)
I found that many people become vegan because they want to take a stand against animal cruelty. While I have learned a lot more about the horrors of factory farming in my research endeavors, I just cannot make myself feel passionate enough about it to fully explain my vegan change.
Just as many people, if not more, become vegan for heath-related benefits. A vegan diet helps reverse and prevent a slew of diseases, especially heart disease, obesity, and cancer. I also read a lot of stories about how becoming vegan made people feel more energized and sleep better, as well as cleared their skin and strengthened their hair and nails.
These past 14 days, my vegan diet has been fueled by the prospect of feeling more energized and looking healthier. For every piece of kale I ate, I imagined my insides eagerly soaking in the leafy greens and revitalizing my body from the inside out.
So, after 14 days of veganism, here’s what has happened: absolutely nothing. I feel the same, look the same, sleep the same. I’ve exhausted tofu recipes (despite what the Internet claims, there really is only so much you can do with flavorless, ground-up, dried-out soybeans) and every night I have such a strong craving for chocolate that I feel like I might explode if I don’t eat some ASAP. Sorry to make you read this whole article for a sub-par climax, but thanks if you’ve stuck with me anyway.
On the bright side, so far, I’ve hit no major roadblocks. The biggest difficultly has been having to cook my own dinners every night, and I attribute this more to my own laziness than to the diet being difficult to maintain; this lifestyle change has been much easier to stick to than I anticipated.
Other positives: for the first time in my life I’ve found an excuse that stops me from eating junk food. I've also found that eating vegan is a challenge that lends some productivity to my summer days. Really, adhering to a vegan diet has not been overly difficult thus far, and although I have yet to see tangible results, I see no reason to stop.
