My next challenge: Vegan 30
Soooo….I have just finished watching the ‘What the Health’ documentary, by film makers Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn. It was recommended to me by a friend who is a passionate environmentalist and vegan. I consider myself to be open minded, and having already changed my eating habits somewhat over the past couple of years, I thought it would be interesting to watch. And it was.
I think I need to watch it again – and take notes! – to fully recall the content of the approx 1.5 hr doco, plus I have a list of questions that I’d like to research further. The film made several pretty bold claims (all around the impact of eating meat on both the environment and our health), and while I don’t doubt that they are based on some scientific research and studies, I am a believer that there are always two sides to every story, and issues are not often as black and white as presented – usually for dramatic effect.
However, in saying all that…what convinced me to set out on my latest challenge were the brief interviews Kip conducted with athletes, right at the end of the film. Hardcore sportsmen like the UK Ninja Warrior Champion Tim Shieff and ultra endurance athlete Rich Roll, who have both been vegan for a number of years and claim it has had a huge positive impact on their physical performance and appearance.
I decided it would be interesting to try a 100% plant based diet for 30 days and see the impact it has on me. So I start on Monday.
For those of you who wonder, the rest of the family is not coming on this journey with me – however, we will be reducing their meat consumption and sourcing better quality meat, as I have for some time felt that we eat too much and rely too much on supermarket fayre.
This will take some planning as I need to ensure I have the right nutritional balance, and have compliant foods to hand and so on, so a few days of research, menu planning and shopping will ensue. Plus I plan to increase my knowledge about veganism and the issues around meat consumption over the 30 days too.
Any tips, great recipes, websites etc that you can point me to at this stage will be much appreciated!
I’ll report back with updates throughout my journey, both here and on my Facebook page! Wish me luck!