I know some of you are sucking your teeth and rolling your eyes as this update is LONG overdue. I promise that this update will be worth the wait. What took me so long?! Well, I wanted to come back with a true and honest update that wouldn't be some nonsense. Deciding to transition to Vegan wasn't something that came to me quickly and in fact, I feel like it's something that I had been considering for the greater part of 2015. Watching a Scope from Mattieologie is what gave me that final push but Lord knows, this has been on my mind for some time. Interested in seeing how all that is actually going? Keep reading.
Can't lie, initially things were not going as well as I had hoped. I felt since I already had a diet HIGH in veggies + fruits that the transition would be easy. WRONG. Just because you eat tons of veggies and fruits doesn't mean jack. You still have the option to eat meat or even small amounts of meat by products like broth. Yes, even beef and chicken broth is out the window for cooking when Vegan. So, things started off rocky after the first week. You know that first week you're on a high with lots of excitement... thinking "this shit is easy"!! Then the weekend hits and cravings begin because for some reason, cravings always hit on the weekends. You can be so determined and disciplined Monday through Friday, Saturday comes along and just wreaks havoc on any progress you've made. I began to crave meats like nobody's business. I wasn't happy and I began to doubt my decision. Instead of giving up, I decided to modify my transition and slow down. You see, although I was calling it a "transition", I was trying to do things full blown, cold turkey. Like I immediately stopped eating all meat, dairy and meat by products. So, eventually I decided to modify my diet to 5 days a week Vegan, 2 days Non-Vegan. The days that were Non-Vegan weren't binge fests actually. I think because I had given myself the option to eat meat again, my body no longer craved it as much. So weird and I can't explain it but that's honestly what happened. On those Non-Vegan days, I ended up having things like eggs for breakfast or fish for dinner. This modification actually worked out REALLY well for me except I wasn't losing any weight!!
Now if you read my post on why I decided to transition to Vegan, then you know it was for dietary reasons solely and to get my weight down. As I began transitioning Vegan, one thing I noticed is that although my diet had become super restrictive I wasn't actually losing any weight or inches. They say 80% of losing weight is diet well Veganism is one of the most strictest diets out there so I felt like the weight should have been falling off. It wasn't. Eventually, I took to the internet and the first thing I realized was that my carb intake was high. Not in an unhealthy way but for instance, I had a piece of toast with my breakfast (or half a bagel), then pasta for lunch and for dinner maybe pasta again. The one thing that did not change when going Vegan was my carb intake and then it dawned on me... what if my issue all along were carbs?! I'm not even a huge meat person to begin with so I'm not sure why I ever thought that was the issue but when I realized I was not losing weight, I knew I had not found the true culprit of my weight gain. So early January 2016, I decide to take a week off of Vegan and cut my carbs. I know plenty of people will ask why couldn't you just stay Vegan and just cut carbs?! That's just not the way my will power is set up. No meat. No dairy. No Bread. No Pasta. No Rice. No Carbs at all. Yeah, I wouldn't have made it past day 1 lunchtime. For real! So, I did this for a week with no problem at all. I think once you try Veganism, any other dietary change seems easy! LOL. Not eating the major Carbs (bread, rice, pasta, etc...) proved easy for me and after that first week I had lost 4 lbs. Yes ma'am. That was enough for me to say, YOU FIGURED IT OUT FINALLY!
Of course, I could've stayed completely Vegan and just given up carbs instead but I didn't feel that was the route for me. Attempting Veganism showed me such a better way of eating that although I'm not 100% Vegan, my eating habits are 100% better and I would say 75% of my meals are still Vegan. I'm looking at the ingredients that I buy on everything and my intake of processed foods are minimal. I don't look at my journey as failure but rather a bridge I needed to cross in order to see what my issue truly was. One thing I will say is that I have also cut back on sugar altogether as well. I don't add it to anything and I don't drink beverages loaded with sugar. On a daily, I'm drinking lots of water and my coffee with soy milk. I believe it's a combination of all these changes that is contributing to my weight loss. Each day I'm waking up in disbelief at the changes I'm noticing in my stomach. I wish the weight would come off faster but hey, it took over two years to pack it on so I have to be patient. I hope this update and transparency will help someone else out there. Just because you don't 100% succeed at what your initial goal may have been, don't just give up altogether. Take it day by day, step by step until you begin seeing the results you want. I'm telling you, once you start to see those results it's so motivating and you will have no problem pushing forward.
Until next time. XOXOMCS
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