We seem to be starting out the year with a few made up monthly challenges taking place. In January, we did a social media detox (which we would high recommend) and for February we decided to do a 30 day vegetarian challenge. I also have a year long challenge of reading 48 books (4 books per month average) in the works too. We’re a bit delayed publishing this post in March because well, this thing called coronavirus popped up that was worth talking about…
Why Vegetarian?
We watched The Game Changers documentary back in January and there was one scene in particular that struck us. Efficient blood flow is critical for athletes, as blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to our muscles. The Game Changers shows a blood test done on three NFL players after eating one meat-based meal compared to one plant-based meal, and the visual difference in blood thickness is shocking (see below). Eating animal products also constricts blood vessels up to 40%, whereas plant foods contain healthy nitrates that signal our blood vessels to open.
The film was filled with many other power scenes and stats but that one in particular got to the both of us. As (past/recovering/wannabe) athletes, it was interesting to see a plant based film based entirely on high performing athletes. It was really well done and we’d highly recommend it. We recognize most documentaries tend to err on one side of the equation but this was really well done and thought provoking.
We both love dairy products too much to do a completely vegan challenge (just yet) so we set out a goal to do a 30 day vegetarian challenge, meaning milk, cheese, eggs, etc. were allowed. I drink my coffee 90% milk/10% espresso, who doesn’t like cheese, and eggs are such an easy and simple way to get protein. We’re not ready to part with any of these yet.
The results are in, how did we do?
Now that the month is over, let’s jump to the chase. We failed. And the reason is SO LAME.
Let me explain.
In the middle of the month, I had our quarterly team meeting to attend and it’s always catered. This time the guys on shift decided to order a crap done of food from Popeye’s Chicken. So in come boxes upon boxes of fried chicken along with fries, onion rings, mac’n’cheese, biscuits, and apple pie. (Talk about heart attack in a meal…) I get in line to make up a plate and put 3 chicken tenders and a drum stick on my plate along with some mac. And I eat it all.
A few hours later on the way home from work I thought to myself “Oh no!! I just ate chicken!! What?!?!” Hours had literally gone by before I had even realized what I had done. In the moment I was not thinking about it AT ALL. Not once did I register that I was eating chicken when I wasn’t supposed to be. I told Nic and her response was basically “How??”. I have no clue how it never hit me in the moment. Naturally, we then felt deflated from such a silly move.
Nic was feeling a bit jealous (not sure if that is the right word?) that I got to eat chicken and she didn’t. So after asking for our amazing local Korean Crispy Fried Chicken a few nights in a row I finally caved and agreed to getting a half order (what feeds our family of 3) as long as we stuck to the vegetarian kick for the rest of the month. It was heavenly, as it always is (Finn ate two whole pieces). This has been our go-to place whenever we decide to eat out since it opened last fall.
So there you have it, I ate chicken twice and Nic ate chicken once during our challenge. Fail fail fail. So we are 1 and 1 with our challenges so far this year.
What did we learn?
I could totally see myself being a vegetarian. I used to be one for a few years when I was a teenager. Prior to this challenge, we were eating mostly vegetarian breakfasts and lunches and then eating meat ~4 times a week at supper. This challenge made us look up other recipes which was a nice change but it also meant more thinking which is tough for parents with a toddler whose brains are already fried due to lack of sleep and we don’t want one more thing to have to think about (I know, cry us a river). But our taste buds definitely appreciated the change of scenery!
Surprisingly, we ended up spending more money on groceries this month than we normally spend each month. I think a big part of this has to do with the fact that we have a deep freeze filled to the top with frozen meat we’ve purchased when there are crazy meat sales. Not being able to make something with this already stocked meat meant we were purchasing more overall groceries this month to supplement the main part of many of our dishes. I’m sure if we didn’t have the deep freeze stash the numbers wouldn’t look as odd.
What did we eat?
Here are some examples of food we ate more of this month that we typically don’t eat as often:
- Avocados – I think we crushed through at least 20 of these bad boys
- Stuffed Peppers – with quinoa, mushrooms, onions, cheese, and hot sauce
- Veggie Patties – I’m pretty picky when it comes to veggie patties and my favs definitely are Morning Star & Dr Praeger’s
- Chips and Salsa – Fresh Cravings Restaurant Style Medium Salsa all day. We could easily crush through 2-3 of these a week. Sounds like we need to figure out this recipe ourselves…
- Pizza – Nic has become a pizza making guru and has mastered amazingly crispy thin crust homemade pizza. She’s made pizzas ranging from tomato base + mozzarella cheese + onion + mushroom + crushed red pepper to truffle oil + garlic + grana padano cheese + oregano to Italian dressing based pizza to hummus base + smoked cheddar + falafel + olives + pickled turnips. You name it, she’s on it – dough and all.
- Pasta – Nic (clearly the chef of the house if you haven’t caught on yet) also took on making homemade pasta from scratch. And the accompanying sauces to go with it.
- Tacos – tofu tacos and we also made a yummy new recipe of chipolte sour cream, sweet potato, cauliflower, black beans, onion, & guac.
Next Steps
I’m a big fan of ‘everything in moderation’ and the 80/20 approach to things so I think it is very realistic to incorporate many more vegetarian meals in our line up but still have a meat based meal a few times a month so we don’t feel like we are “depriving ourselves” by going cold turkey. Going forward, I think a happy and realistic medium will be to slowly deplete the meat in the deep freeze by cooking 1-2 items inside of it each month rather than 1-2 items each week. (And splurging on our beloved Korean Friend Chicken each month too…) Once the deep freeze is empty of meat products (it may take a whole year), we shall see if we want to keep going with that setup or give up meat all together at that point.
Meat eaters – do you think you could complete a 30 day vegetarian challenge?
Vegetarians/Vegans – Do you ever get the “urge” to eat meat? If so, how do you fight that urge?
If you have any yummy not super obscure vegetarian favourite recipes of your own, please provide a link to the recipe (or the recipe itself if you don’t have a link for it) in the comments!
Can you come up with any more challenges for us to undertake this year?
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I forgot you were taking on this challenge and so excited you did. After many years of being the typical prairies guy eating meat and of course so many steaks (corporate oil industry salesman meant lots of meals out) the transition to vegetarian has been very easy for me. My wife and daughter have joined on with me as well and we are at almost 2 years in now. We do eggs, occasional cheese and occasional milk (coffee shops) but stick to a meat-free diet. Quickly to your question about having urges, I think we are fortunate as we have zero urges to have any red meat or pork. Sometimes not being able to have Asian food with chicken has been a bummer but we love tofu as an alternative and we will sneak in sushi maybe every other month. If you can cook at home and willing to experiment you will be a rockstar at this, I hope it last for your family.
Thanks Chris and love the encouragement. I too feel like I could be totally fine without red meat and pork, chicken will be the tough part for me as that’s the meat we primarily consume. We are trying to be conscious about our decisions over here and I’m glad to hear you’ve been 2 years strong 💪💪 We will likely do this challenge again at some point in the year to ensure we’re continuing to think about it
I really loved seeing this challenge! I’ve been vegetarian for over 6 years (and on and off again for several years before that… so I know what it feels like to “fall off the wagon”). Not to mention I’ve been mostly vegan for the past couple of years (again, falling off the wagon here and there). So trust me when I say that I know the struggle is real! But honestly, the goal is not perfection here, it’s about progress. Every meal is a choice, and even if you only ate meat once or twice the whole month, think of how many meals that you did NOT eat meat at! That’s wonderful!
There are so many reasons to eat vegan/vegetarian… for the animals, your health, the environment, etc. (Side note: many of these virus pandemics are traced back to animal markets, so if nobody ate animals or animal products at all, who knows, maybe all this could have been avoided? We’ll never know). However, I do want to say that the reasons WHY we eat these products can’t easily be ignored… tradition, social acceptance, convenience, taste preferences, etc. Our society is not set up to support those of us trying to go against the grain (for example, if I you had been eating vegan during that Popeye’s meal, there is literally nothing you could have eaten, there was meat or dairy in all of it!). So social functions, catered lunches, etc make it more of a struggle for sure. Holidays are the hardest! Also, most of us have been raised on learning how to cook/prepare animal-based foods. How many of us can say that they know how to prepare tofu or tempeh, or know proper egg substitutes for baking? Not many!
As far as the “urge” to eat meat, I personally have completely lost the taste for meat (the thought of eating an animal’s bloody, fatty muscle… no thank you!). The thought of eggs also is unappealing to me now. But dairy is still a bit of a struggle for me (because things like (traditional) pizza, croissants and nutella all have dairy! lol). Although I will say that it is easier to eat more plant-based now than it ever has been. Even in the last 5 years, options have exploded. So many restaurants now offer beyond meat or impossible burgers. Ben & Jerry and Hagen Daz both have excellent non-dairy options. Most people actually KNOW what vegan or plant-based means now. The world is slowly catching on!
I will say that over time, it gets easier, practicing with new recipes and ingredients, and learning new tips and tricks. I love making scrambled tofu with turmeric and black salt sprinkled on at the end, it tastes just like eggs! One big tip: always plan ahead and be prepared! (assume there will be little or nothing to eat at work lunches or social gatherings… even salads often have cheese all over them). We also cook from scratch way more than we did before, because you can’t rely on convenience meals or options quite as much. We eat a lot more fresh fruits and veggies now, which is never a bad thing!
Good luck on your journey! 🙂
*Bonus, because this comment was so long, you can probably count it as one of your monthly books for April. Check, check! LOL!!!
Hahaha yes I think this counts as book #3 for April! 😂 But seriously, this is great info! And to your point re the additional benefits – totally agree. I read We Are The Weather along with The Future We Choose this year which really brought to my attention the environmental issues eating meat entails too which really meant a lot to me as I am very eco-conscious. And like you said, if we can shift from 4 meals/week to a few a months that’s a huge improvement! Trying to continue to make those conscious decisions to eat less meat now that we’re 1.5 months post challenger 🥰
While we don’t *totally* agree about Game Changers being unbiased (they did present a fair amount of simply “convenient” data), I do strongly believe veganism and vegetarianism have their merits. Both Adam, my fiance, and I have tried going completely vegan before and I failed due to becoming severely anemic and he failed due to malnutrition, oops. But Game Changers did inspire us to get back to some more plant-based meals. I saw the movie right around the new year and made it one of my resolutions to have one vegan meal per day, every day. So far, it’s going great! I have a strange newfound love for tempeh, though it has always seemed quite disgusting to me in theory. Unfortunately, full on vegetarianism doesn’t seem like it’s in my near future, as the most delicious-sounding thing of your entire post was that Korean crispy fried chicken …say what?!
Elise
Haha I’m telling you our local mom and pop Korean fried chicken with their amazing spicy herb sauce just may keep be from being a full on vegetarian too. Have you ever had Korean fried chicken?
Yea, we caveated that we recognize most documentaries are not unbiased and typically lean towards one side of the equation.
I really like that idea of one vegan meal per day. That seems like a great way to go about it. I read We Are The Weather and he was basically saying if you can refrain from meat until super, you’re doing great.
I LIVE for tempeh! Soooo good!!
LOL that sounds like something I would do re: accidentally eating the chicken hehe. I like the idea of 80 / 20 or slowly introducing more veggies into the diet. I can’t see myself ever being 100% veggo, but def would cut down a heap. Us two are about the same as you guys and mainly have meat for dinner a few times a week at this stage.
Hahah it was a total oops!! Yea I think realistically if we can shift 80% of our current meat meals over to veggies I’d be very happy. And realistically that’s a happy medium I’m trying to get to. That way I wouldn’t feel deprived or upset if/when I did eat meat – especially our beloved Korean fried chicken haha.
Haha! Yeah, it’s definitely a good mindset to go by – especially for the Korean chicken!!
Hahaha oops, I feel your pain- whenever we’ve said we’re consciously going vegetarian for a week/month we always stuff it up – whereas if we just eat what we eat sometimes we can go for weeks at a time without eating meat 😂 (admittedly not so much now because of our son!)
Totally! Good point – if we don’t make such hard rules, we are likely to see better results! For now, I’m hoping to stick to non-meat meals 80% of the time 🥰
Made my way over here from the ChooseFI Canada Facebook page and was laughing over/shaking my head at your prelude of, “What was it like to try and be a vegetarian for a month? Were we able to do it?”, because as a vegan, people are always telling me, “I could NEVER do that!”. So the thought of someone – ie. you, who I assume to be privileged enough to have the choice of where their next meal comes from, and who has strong willpower demonstrated by how they save money – questioning if they could not eat meat for just one month was kind of laughable. But oh man, you got me good because I was not expecting that fail. I laughed really hard. Thank you for being human and for sharing your challenge with us. It also brought me back to when I first went dairy-free and we went to a game board cafe and ordered a huge fancy chai tea latte and then realised it was pretty much all dairy milk. So we just played our game without touching the latte and then VERY awkwardly returned the full mug when we cleared our table LOL
My husband and I both really enjoyed The Gamechangers. We are both very active (rock climbing and mountain running) and our fitness levels as well as recovery times have improved substantially over the time we’ve been vegan. To the surprise of most, including my doctor, my iron levels are better now than when I was an omnivore! I credit this to eating a more well-rounded/balanced diet and being more mindful of what I eat.
We find our grocery bill to be very low but we eat a lot of beans, lentils & tofu which didn’t seem heavily featured in your meal plan. Here are some of our fave meals using those proteins:
Tofu: in stir fry, in curries, tofu crumble (like scrambled eggs, can be eaten alone, as a breakfast hash, or in a tortilla), breaded tofu or smoked tofu strips (our toddler niece is crazy about tofu cut into strips lol)
Black beans: quesadillas, burritos
Chickpeas: chana masala, quinoa salad
Lentils: lentil soup, sloppy joes, daal, shepherd’s pie
Minimalist Baker has awesome simple recipes.
As for your question to the vegetarians and vegans, do they miss meat/animal products? For my husband and I, never. A huge part of it is because my number one reason for being vegan is because I truly love all animals so I can’t fathom eating them, or taking anything from them. It’s hard to explain and it sounds weird but when I see meat I don’t even see it as food anymore. It’s just something I’d never put in my body. I still have 0 willpower over (vegan) candy and chocolate so it’s not like I’m just good at saying no though!
Anyways, in conclusion, great job on your challenge and thanks for writing it up to share with all of us! I’m going to check out the books that you mentioned once the library opens again. I really believe that if everyone made small changes that those small changes would add up to big changes for the world. There’s really nothing to lose with reducing meat consumption – if done right it makes you healthier, makes the world healthier, saves the lives of animals, saves you money, and so on. And as you get going it becomes a bit of a snowball effect, it gets easier and easier! Happy Plant Eating!
So much info here, thanks so all of this detail! I’m glad you could relate to my “doh!!” moment with your chai tea latte story – at least you realized it before consuming it! I blissfully ate so much chicken and it literally took HOURS before it sank in haha ah oh well!
It’s great to hear your vegan story as it relates to fitness to see that The Game Changers has a lot of provable points coming from someone first hand, not just from hearing it on a documentary.
We eat some beans (mostly as Texas Caviar), lentils (lentil soup), and tofu (tofu tacos). Our daughter also loves plain quinoa so we have that weekly and we also make a quinoa Greek salad which we really enjoy. She’s also a big fan of seaweed snacks which I’ve slowly become accustomed to. These are more so staples in our home so I didn’t think to include these on the list in the post! And you’re right, these are extremely filling, good for you, and not expensive compared to meat products. Love the idea of smoked tofu strips – will have to look up a recipe for that along with many of those other recipe ideas you mentioned, thanks for that list!
As for the books, it looks like We Are The Weather is available as an ebook or audiobook in addition to paperback from the Calgary Public Library if you have a card there (the other one isn’t but personally I preferred this book more).
OMG how did I miss this post on your blog being a vegetarian (striving to be a vegan)? First, do not feel like you “failed” at the challenge as it is NOT easy to go cold turkey. I was the biggest meat eater in my unhealthy past (ate meat at each meal, no joke) and it took me a several months (at least 6) to finally eliminate the meat cravings (although I think it was more psychological then physical for me). Everyone is different, my partner on the other hand just turned the meat switch OFF and didn’t look back once. Second, I think it’s great that you gals like to challenge yourself and this is a GREAT challenge not just for improving your health but also saving animals from being slaughtered and in a round about way saving the environment…..don’t get me started lol.
As for yummy vegetarian/vegan recipes, I have a great place for you to go to on YouTube 😉
Thanks for sharing your vegetarian journey, I will be following up with you on this topic soon!
Martina
Martina! It was surprisingly easier than we thought it would be. Since the challenge, we found we are eating less meat overall. It’ still a part of our diet, but makes up a much smaller amount. We’ve slowly been depleting the meat in our deep freeze and have not been replacing it with more meat which is nice. We find that we are eating more soup and pasta instead. And trying to replace some of the unhealthy snacks throughout the day with fruits and raw veggies.