For today’s post I decided to do something a little different. Normally I like to give travel tips or recipes, but today I wanted to talk to y’all about a pretty big change in my life that will be affecting the blog a bit.

I have recently made the decision to attempt becoming a plant based vegan. The more research I have done on this the stronger my conviction has grown.

BIG DISCLAIMER HERE: I am not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, etc. Please make sure to consult your doctor before making any changes to your diet.

Now for any of you who know me personally or who have been following me on social media you know that I LOVE meat, cheese, ice cream, cookies, and bread. Soooooooo this is going to be a very difficult for me, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

I think that a lot of people are trying to eat more vegetables, eat healthier, or at the very least cut back on their meat consumption. So I am going to be posting A LOT more vegan meals on here. I will of course be keeping up with my snapchats of what I’m cooking and when I go out.

I made the decision to try going vegan November 22. That’s less than a week before thanksgiving lol. (I didn’t really time that well.)

 

If you are interested in my transition since then, this is what’s been going on:

That first week after I decided on transitioning to a plant based vegan diet was definitely the hardest. Seriously?! Why in the world did I choose to be vegan the week of Thanksgiving?! I ate mostly veggies with a bit of meat here and there.  I’m sure there was cheese in everything and of course I ate all the desserts because it’s homemade dessert and when grandma makes her famous miniature pecan pies you eat at least two (I may or may not have taken about 6 home for me and the hubs. Don’t judge.) The next week I had meat twice the whole week, I think I had one egg and some leftover dessert. I was feeling pretty confident at this point and decided to take that final step. The following week I had absolutely no animal products what so ever. It was surprisingly easy. I made some delicious recipes I had found online. I made sure to eat plenty of beans, legumes, nuts, and complex carbohydrates. I thought, “Hey! I can totally do this!” Then the last day of the week I started to feel super lethargic and hungry. In fact I almost passed out. I’m not sure what I was missing, but I was definitely missing something. I ended up eating a frozen breakfast sandwich because it had egg, sausage, cheese, and bread. I figured anything and everything I wasn’t eating had to be in that combo right? I immediately felt better and knew something was amiss. So, since then I have been eating meat about 2-3 times a week and a limited amount of processed grains. I have also had a limited amount of eggs in some of the baked goods I have made. (I really don’t know that I can give up ice cream AND cookies.) After adding these very limited amounts of animal products and processed grains back into my diet I have decided that my body was most likely in shock from such an extreme change in diet. I am therefore going to let my system adjust to a very limited amount of animal product before completely cutting out everything.

 

If you are interested in learning more about transitioning into a healthy plant based diet with me make sure to follow along. I love to test out other people’s recipes and tweak them to my personal tastes. I will be linking the original recipe as well as inserting a printable version of my recipe for you to try. Even if you aren’t looking to go completely vegan these recipes will be full of yummy veggies and flavors that you can easily add meat to or use for meatless Mondays.

I often post pictures of my meals on Instagram and tag the original recipe developer if I’m not making my own version. So make sure to follow me @girlndacoconut. I’m also on Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook.

If you are vegan, especially if you used to NOT be vegan and made the switch, i would love to hear your story.