[bwb]

Steve wrote an article a while back about using 30-day trials to find the best diet for you. I followed his advice, and I'd like to share what I've learned.

Just one short year ago, I was as big a meat-eater as any good, red-blooded American is expected to be. I felt like I was missing something if a meal didn't include a nice heaping pile of flesh, sliced or skewered or deep-fried or marinated and charbroiled to delicious perfection. On a few occasions, I openly derided veganism, parroting "facts" I'd heard, like "your body won't get enough protein" and "nobody can be a long-term vegan without doing permanent damage to their body". Pass the flesh, please!

But last year, I was dating a woman who had been a vegetarian (with exceptions for milk, eggs, and fish) for most of her life, and so when I prepared meals for us, I would make something we could both enjoy. For a while, when we ate out, I'd have meat and she'd have veggies or cheese or fish, and then I started to notice something... I no longer enjoyed eating meat. I still craved it. I still ordered it. I just stopped deriving any pleasure from eating it. So after about a week of eating meat that I didn't enjoy, I decided to give vegetarianism a 30-day trial. I still craved meat for a while, but I knew that I didn't really want it. After a few weeks, the cravings faded away.

Eliminating mammals and birds from your diet turns out to be surprisingly easy. Dining out was never a problem, as you can find pseudo-vegetarian items on the menu at virtually any establishment. I felt better and found that I enjoyed eating more than I had before. I still had the impression of veganism as being "fringe" and somewhat nutty.

Late last year I started reading Steve's and other bloggers' writings on veganism, and later someone recommended that I read The China Study. I picked up a copy, and I wasn't even 50 pages into the book before I thought about the last meal I'd eaten (cheese pizza and ice cream), visualized what it was doing to my body at that very moment, and felt the desperate urge to vomit it all back up. My New Year's resolution was to give a vegan diet a 30-day trial.

Being a junk food vegetarian is easy almost anywhere on Earth. Being a vegan in this decidedly non-vegan world is not. Most people, when I told them of my new diet, were surprised, and immediately demonstrated their ignorance by asking "so where do you get your protein?" or worrying that I was going to "waste away". Funny, I would have counted myself among that vast ignorant group not too long ago. I found very few people among my friends and acquaintances who were supportive, so I just stopped talking about it unless someone asked me a direct question. I ordered more than a dozen copies of The China Study and started handing them out to people who were curious about why I was doing this. Several people made changes to their diets as a result.

Dining out, which had become a frequent occurrence from busy work schedules, became contentious now that I was declining to dine at any establishment where I couldn't order anything but a green salad, and this eliminated nearly every restaurant that my then girlfriend and I frequented. I found myself on the receiving end of a lot of resentment for being "inflexible" until I searched around and found several vegan or vegan-friendly restaurants that were mutually agreeable. Asian restaurants tend to be pretty safe, as there is usually a decent tofu or veggie dish, and milk and cheese don't feature prominently in most Asian cuisines. Most traditional American and European restaurants will be unaccommodating, but a few may be willing to make substitutions, and if you're fortunate enough to be in a major metro area, you'll likely find a handful with designated vegan dishes on the menu, or that are willing to make many of their regular dishes vegan on request.

By day 30 of my trial period, my feelings were mixed. On the one hand, I felt great! I'd lost nearly 10 pounds, mostly excess bodyfat. I'd not had a single experience of overeating to the point where I felt like I was going to explode (an all-too-common experience in the days of eating cheesebomb pasta dishes with buttered bread and a cheese-sprinkled salad on the side).

On the other hand, being vegan is hard if you don't know how! I remembered how I felt when I learned just what animal products do to my body, and resolved to give it another 30 days.

I sought out resources, reading blogs and articles and books. I bought a whole shelf full of vegan cookbooks. I restocked the pantry and the fridge with all kinds of things I'd never thought to try before. I cooked, every day, sometimes spending hours in the kitchen. And I was amazed: from scrambled tofu to sauteed brussels sprouts to Mac And No Cheese, there are thousands and thousands of things you can prepare, from very simple to very elaborate, with no animals involved!

By day 60, I noticed that I had new feelings about food, and about animals. The thought of eating meat or dairy made me a little queasy. I started to wonder how anyone could ever want to eat that stuff. I found it somewhat difficult to reconcile my feelings with my own former eating habits.

Another major effect was that I felt far greater compassion for all the creatures on this planet, now that I was no longer eating them! I'd read stories about the unspeakable cruelty that is commonplace in modern factory-farming, but in the past I'd just think "okay, I'll only eat free-range eggs" or "I'll just buy organic milk". Of course, I still ate at restaurants that, very conscious of their costs, surely sourced their meat, cheese, and dairy from the low-price, low-morals providers. But hey, out of sight, out of mind.

On a couple of occasions after becoming vegan, I described to my friends the conditions in that their eggs, milk, or chicken wings originated. The reactions were "I don't want to know", "not all of it is that bad", or "none so righteous as the newly converted, eh?". I'm pretty sure that the human mind is designed with defense mechanisms against this kind of guilty cognitive dissonance, i.e. "What I'm doing is wrong, but it's normal, and more importantly, it's what I'm doing, and I'm not a bad person, so it can't be THAT wrong, can it?" We seem to be hardwired to discount or ignore evidence that our behavior is in conflict with our values. More extreme examples of this kind could include the Stanford Prison Experiment, lynch mobs, ethnic "cleansing"...


Despite all the trouble it takes to adapt to this lifestyle change (and a diet this far removed from the mainstream really is a lifestyle change), I think that most people who do adapt will find that not only is it very much worth it to make the change, but that with all the compelling reasons now clear they'd never even consider going back.

And what are all these reasons?

* You'll lose weight and feel great!
* Everyone will tell you how good you're suddenly looking.
* You'll discover all kinds of new foods and dishes that you'd probably never experience otherwise.
* You'll feel a greater sense of connection to, and respect for, all living things.
* You'll no longer be supporting industries that profit from cruelty.
* You'll no longer be responsible for tremendous wastes of energy and damage to the environment from the production of food animals.
* You won't be eating foods that promote diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, and you'll be eating a lot more of the foods that help prevent them.

As I see it, this is a wonderful "limited downside, unlimited upside" proposition. If you really, really, can't give up meat forever, surely you can try for 30 days and then go back to your old diet. If you take the time to find animal-free foods that you enjoy, I'm sure you won't want to.

-Brian