Yesterday marked 3 weeks of being fully vegan! I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself for sticking to something I genuinely care about. A lot of people have asked how its been going and a couple other things I wanted to address so I figured I would do a little check in!
The first thing I want to bring up is the fact that it’s been A LOT easier than I expected. Finding things to eat is genuinely not hard! A common thing I’ve heard from people when I tell them I’m vegan is “its so hard to find food” or “what do you eat?” There are so many meat and dairy alternatives and also a lot of food is ‘accidentally’ vegan. Im going to do more vegan grocery shopping hauls where ill talk more about specific foods you can and cant eat. If you want to check out my first time vegan grocery shopping you can find it HERE.
One thing I did expect was that going out to restaurants would be hard, but not in the way I thought. I thought it would be impossible to find vegan foods when going out and to an extent this is kind of true. But I think for me personally, the hardest part has been asking for vegan things. Since I’m more of an introverted person, I get super uncomfortable when people don’t understand what I’m trying to say. For example, I went to a restaurant and before going I looked on their website to see what I could get and luckily they had an allergen menu. So I found that their veggie burger was vegan but it didn’t say anything about the roll it came on. If you’re not aware, some breads are made with eggs. So when I got to the restaurant I asked for the veggie burger and then I asked if the roll had any dairy or eggs in it and the waitress looked at me like I was CRAZY. She tried telling me that if anything the burger would have dairy not the roll and I tried to explain I looked at their menu online and she just was not understanding at all. She then continued to ask me if I was “like super allergic to dairy” and I think I probably stared at her for 30 seconds before answering because I was so confused. I just explained that I was vegan and basically she came back and told me the roll was made with eggs(lol). I don’t expect everyone to be super educated on what is and what isn’t vegan but I just got super uncomfortable and I don’t like to be in situations like that but you kind of have to be if you’re vegan. ANYWAYS that was probably not the last time i’ll be in a situation like that but your best bet is to check the menu before going to a restaurant and if you’re uncertain about something have the waitress or waiter ask the chef because they usually have more knowledge on the foods ingredients!
One thing I definitely did not expect was how HUNGRY I would be! So after realizing I kept getting super hungry at night, I did some research and basically when you’re vegan you have to eat more because vegan foods don’t usually have as many calories. I usually don’t eat a ton during the day because I get full quickly but I think that was my stomach not being a fan of dairy. I started eating a lot more and drinking more water and don’t get as hungry at night! So if you want to go vegan make sure you’re still getting enough calories in a day. The best way to do this is to track your calories through an app. You can find my favorite apps for that, HERE. I also lost 5 pounds since cutting out dairy which is exciting for me because I’ve been trying to loose weight for a while now and nothing I did was helping. I do eat healthier than I did when I wasn’t vegan, no more donuts and bagels with cream cheese every day!
I will definitely being doing more vegan updates on here but I just wanted to share a couple things that I’ve experienced so far. As always, if you have any questions leave me a comment or send me a message on Instagram!
xx,
Liv