SB reached her breaking point this week, but she's not giving up.The stress of maintaining a vegan diet, when added to our other daily concerns and stresses, is proving to be too much.
It started last Saturday. A large group of her coworkers wanted to go out for dinner, and with great foresight and courtesy, they called ahead to make sure there were vegan options before settling on Rosie's Italian Grille.
The restaurant came highly recommended, and the locals told us we had to try the Hot Mamma Bread. Our table put in an order and enjoyed the hot, cheesy entree, except for us.
Nine-tenths of their menu had meat or cheese dishes on it. SB ordered a house salad, and I had a bowl of whole-wheat pasta with marinara. Both were extremely disappointing.
Earlier this week, SB ran out of vegan salad dressing at work. She had to remove, read the label of, and replace almost every stray bottle of dressing in the refrigerator before finding a watery, fat-free italian dressing.
Lastly, there were going-away, welcome-back, birthday, and retirement parties at SB's work this week. Each had pizza, cake, cookies, or other non-vegan treats that she had to avoid.
Her frustration is my frustration, and it sucked having to miss all that. On the flip side, that was a lot of empty calories, sugar, and junk food we avoided by going vegan.
SB said she likes the way we're eating. Vegetable heavy meals, grains in the morning, nuts for snacks. She said she could go vegan six days of the week with the exception of parties.
I wonder if it'd even be worth trying to eat vegan at that point.
Going vegan is a challenge, and it certainly was this week. Seven more days, and it's all over.
Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Cheese-Less Flatbread Pizzas - Tommy Basil & The Super Veggie
Looking forward to hearing the final assessment at the end of the month. It'll be interesting to see how it effected the way you both feel, health, weight, energy level, etc.
ReplyDeleteA friend of ours went vegan. She's a 50 year old who does a lot of running.
Not long after she went vegan, she was underfueled after a run, and with the female stuff going on in her life, she ended up in the ER. Apparantly she's got it under control now, but was definitely an adjustment.
Damn, that's scary. I can only stick to one crazy attribute at a time. Vegan runner? No way.
DeleteSB's been concerned about how much iron she's getting. It's easy to be anemic without all that red meat.
Worth noting, you picked the shortest month of the year.
ReplyDeleteStep up next time and pick a Real month to go vegan.
It's the only way I could get SB to go vegan with me!
DeleteI think it was Eddie Murphy, back when he was funny, had a schtik about Black History month being the shortest month of the year. I was trying to play off that.
ReplyDeleteNow that I am finally mastering how to type in the anti-robot password, I will try to not abuse my commenting privileges .
I don't think you should look at all of the things that you're missing so much as all of the things that you're gaining.
ReplyDeleteAs far as wondering whether it would be worth it to go vegan only 6 days a week, I think it would be. I also think it would be much easier to maintain. I've been going near-vegan 6 days out of the week since the Feb. 2nd when your challenge inspired me. That one day allows a way to vent all the frustrations from the week. It also gives you something to look forward to. "oh man I could really go for a cheeseburger...........on Saturday." I was afraid that Saturday, my omnivore day, would be just filled with gluttony. I was right, for the first one, but every Saturday after that has been less and less.
I also think I might be a little masochistic so I might be just getting off on being withholding, not sure.