For those of you who are new here, you might now know my husband and I decided to switch to a vegan lifestyle back at the beginning of 2020. We watched a documentary about sports performance. At the time, my husband was on track to run the Virginia Beach marathon and hopefully qualify for Boston. When he asked if I wanted to try going vegan, I figured why not? I am already a vegetarian. I have been for almost 10 years now. I guess I should say pescatarian because I do eat fish now and then. I hadn’t drunk regular milk in ages and the only thing at the time non-vegan I was eating were eggs, cheese, and honey.
I would say the change should’ve been harder for my husband, but really it wasn’t that big of a switch. We were already the type of people who filled their diet with lots of fruits, veggies, grains, and nuts.
In place of meat, we relied heavily on chickpeas. I do mean heavily. I made everything from chickpea meatballs to chickpea nuggets. A lot of the time we just topped chickpeas on our rice bowls or our tacos.
Occasionally, we’d eat tofu and had our weekly veggie burgers. We steered away from “fake meat” and went more for sweet potato, mushroom, and quinoa burgers.
We found an egg substitute called Just Eggs that we’d use for breakfasts, but honestly, we just changed our breakfast choice altogether and went with oatmeal, non-dairy yogurts, and smoothie bowls.
I didn’t notice much of a difference in how I felt, but I assume it’s because as I mentioned before, the change was minimal.
Sam on the other hand… his running improved daily. He was running his fastest miles yet and could run half marathons in his sleep. It was pretty crazy to see.
We kept up the diet for a solid year, even after the marathon was canceled because...well, 2020 happened.
More recently, we’ve been lax and Sam will eat meat every now and then. I added eggs back in and then that’s where becoming a pescatarian began. We added in fish too.
We talk about going back to veganism again but try not to be too hard on ourselves. Our diet consists mostly of veggies, fruits, grains,
and alternative proteins anyway. I think we will when Sam starts really running again. The one thing I usually let slide is honey. I do use maple syrup where I can for sweetener, but I like to use honey for allergies, so I’ve added that back in as well.
I guess in short...no, changing to a vegan lifestyle wasn’t hard. It forced me to get creative with our meals and pay more attention to labels. It was a choice that worked for us and I’m glad we did it because overall we eat better now because of it.