Plant based January: My results 
About a month ago, I decided on a whim to go plant based for the foreseeable future to see how it would affect me. After seeing a friend in November who did this and me personally seeing visible improvements to his life, I decided to go vegetarian in December. After noticing higher amounts of energy, I decided to go all the way in January to see how it would affect me.
I can confidently say that this is been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me, and I will continue doing it because I feel great with it.
What is my diet?
I try to follow “Nothing bad added, nothing good taken away” when making my diet. This is pretty much in line with the “Whole Food, Plant Based” diet. In particular, it consists of:
- Loads of veggies (the more colorful, the better)
- Loads of fruit
- Whole grains
- All beans and legumes
- Small amount of seeds and nuts
This means that I don’t eat the following:
- No meat
- No dairy
- No eggs
In addition to that, I try to avoid these as well:
- Fat (This means using minimal fat when pan frying things, probably around 5ml max).
- Salt (I usually don’t add extra salt at all to my food now, except for the occasional dose for Iodine).
- Sugar (Pretty much any form of food that has added white sugar in it is off
limits. Fruits are OK and encouraged
). - Processed foods.
Strictness
I really try and follow my diet as best as possible. That means that I will (annoyingly) check all labels of foods to make sure that there’s nothing bad in it. Of course, in an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to look at any labels at all, since this almost always means that the food is processed.
This also means that I started to make more food myself, since I know exactly what’s going in it. After I started avoiding fat and salt, I really noticed how much of them restaurants put in their food, since I start to feel uneasy after eating fatty, salty food.
Finally, I don’t get mad at myself if I ate something I wasn’t supposed to. These are meant to be guiding principles, and if I don’t follow them, I take note of it for next time and try to follow them more diligently.
Alignment
I feel like my body is generally more aligned. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it feels like I have more focus, energy, and am overall in a happier mood. I have felt a noticeable difference from two months ago, and it has been a positive one.
In addition to having more energy, I’ve also lost weight in January (Around 10 pounds or 4 kgs). I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing, I’m just saying that it happened. I haven’t noticed any significant health differences, but I will be keeping an eye out on how I feel in the future in case this becomes too much.
Another aside: I am taking vitamins just to be on the safe side. My readings were fine before I started the diet, and I want to make sure that everything is still good. That’s why I’m going to go to the doctor’s soon and get my blood checked just to make sure my levels are all good.
This diet in relation to veganism
As part of this diet, I of course have been looking at veganism and the arguments with this lifestyle. I agree that eating dairy is strange; why do we drink the milk of other animals in the first place? After starting this plant based diet, eating dairy is now such a strange concept to me, and it’s weird how it has become so normalized in our society.
Also, the fact that we keep billions of animals locked up in factories just so we can kill them and end up in supermarket aisles just so people can eat meat every day seems very wrong to me. Not to mention it’s so unhealthy. There can’t be anything good about eating an animal that’s locked in a cage all day and that’s fed low quality feed.
Who knows, the ideal diet might even include a bit of meat in it. But the overabundance of meat in our diets is definitely not sustainable, both for our planet and our health. Meat should be enjoyed as a treat, probably only occasionally, and it should probably come from wild sources. Wild deer, for example, is probably a good choice since it is abundant in a lot of parts of the world, like for example North America.
Final words
I want to end this by saying this is obviously not scientific proof that this diet is better. If I really wanted to see if this was the cause of me feeling better, I would go back to my old diet and see if I feel worse. However, I don’t want to do that, because why would I deliberately do something that might make me feel worse?
In reality, there could be other factors that might make me feel better now. I should report back in about four months if I decide to continue doing this and see if I indeed maintain the same amount of energy.
