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Turning vegan for 2 weeks

Have you ever watched a documentary called What The Health? I think it's still showing on Netflix now.

The show popped up when i was in Singapore having dinner with a couple of friends... they mentioned that they are trying to eat healthier (who isn't??). But instead of the usual 'less carbs less sugar etc', they were trying to eat less animal products. My friend Nai joked that he was trying his best but he was basically a "non-practicing vegetarian"... hahaha.

I must admit i was pretty sceptical of the whole documentary while watching it and even after. I believe that if you wanted to find 'studies' to support any claim, you will be able to! But what definitely stuck in my mind were the people in the show who had so much improvement in their health just by eating vegan for 2 weeks. They reduced the amount of medication they had to take by half or more, and they just had more energy and less ailment. Granted, they were mostly the older generation (50s till 80s i think) but still it was pretty impressive to see.

My hubs and i decided then to try it out for ourselves for 2 weeks, cold turkey. If any of you know us, you know that we are big meat eaters!! We love our beef steaks, lambchomps, hamburgers, sambal chicken, beef curry... you name it. So it was quite an undertaking to turn vegan for 2 weeks... No meat and fish, and also no dairy (cheese, eggs, butter)....

We took about over a week to prepare for the 2 vegan weeks. We got rid of all the animal products in the fridge and pantry and started to make lists of what to buy and planned every meal for the next 2 weeks (September 2017).

I actually documented some of our meals on Instagram Stories and it was quite interesting how quite a few of my friends texted me to say they were also interested and to tell them how it went after 2 weeks... I guess we were not the only ones who were thinking about this move to consuming less animal products.

This also meant that Lennox (2+ years) would be joining us in this journey. And he is not the biggest vegetable eater... He's at the annoying toddler stage of refusing meals (even before he tastes it... ugh) and he just wants to eat what he knows and is not adventurous at all.

After (almost) 2 gruelling weeks here's what we learnt:
  • turning vegan is not just about the eating, it's really a lifestyle change as well
  • food and recipe preparation is everything
  • it's much easier eating vegan when at home than outside (at parties etc). There are vegan restaurants but not a lot of choice... This for us was the biggest challenge esp in the weekends when we were out
  • vegan food can actually be really tasty
  • having warm oatmeal in the morning is really yummy
I definitely broadened my cooking repertoire during the 2 weeks. There were many recipes which we really enjoyed and there were also some misses. Here are a few of the pictures i took of our 2 week journey and our menu for those days:







 



We lasted the 14 days... almost... haha. On day 13 we ordered in a pizza for dinner and that was that. Oops.

I must say though, that after the whole experience we now cut back quite a bit of meat and dairy from our diet... and we haven't missed it that much!

I plan to do another write up after a couple of months... And see how our diet has changed after this 2 week cold-turkey experiment.


xoxo
Siti







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