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After repeated encouragement from my doctor, my wife and I decided to try a vegan diet he was recommending. Going on this diet wasn’t about losing weight, it was about living healthier. The rules were extensive: no meat, no dairy, very little or no processed sugars, no white flour, no caffeine, no alcohol, nothing that has been overly processed, and we could only cook 15% of anything we ate. As you can see, it’s pretty strict! The only up-side was that we were able to eat as much as we wanted as long as it didn’t break the rules above. The idea is that while we put a lot in our bodies we’re not getting much out of the food we eat. Because of all these rules, this diet forces you into a position that you’re eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables. My wife Kate and I agreed to try this for 30 days and, while difficult, it was manageable. Believe it or not, we were able to make it all 30 days with only breaking a few rules a few times. So what did we think of the diet?

Image by C.P.Storm

There were many good side-effects to the diet and at the end of the month we both felt incredibly better. Some of the improvements we saw included:

• No headaches. I wouldn’t say Kate or I have a serious headache problem by any means but we both occasionally get them and not getting one for a month is worth mentioning.
• Clearer skin. This was to the point that both of us were getting repeated compliments.
• Improved eyesight. It might be hard to believe but it’s true! Kate had two eye appointments scheduled, one before and one after our 30 days on the diet. The workers at doctor’s office were shocked to see a significant improvement in her sight on the second visit. I feel that my eyesight improved as well although I don’t have any real way to measure the difference. (One note here: this is probably related to the amount of carrot juice we were drinking which was recommended with the diet).
• No stomach pain or indigestion. This was strictly a symptom I had been having. I believe this diet brought to my attention that milk actually causes these problems in me as when I tried milk again after the diet, these problems came back. Switching back to rice milk and once again the problems disappeared.
• General improved feelings of health. In most ways, even those areas where we weren’t having problems, we simply felt better. It’s hard to qualify this but simple things like body aches seemed to entirely go away.
• Weight loss. Again this wasn’t the goal but Kate did lose weight. I’m skinny as a rail so I was actually worried I would lose weight but if I did it wasn’t noticeable.

There were some health issues that the diet didn’t help as well as other side-effects of being on the diet:

• No improvement in a lack of energy. This was disappointing for me because a major motivation for trying this diet was due to feelings of tiredness. I didn’t feel like I had lost any energy on the diet, but I didn’t see any gains like I had been hoping for.
• Sleeping Issues. Kate has classical insomnia that tends to come and go and while on the diet she experienced these symptoms as she normally would.
• Hunger. I would often feel just as hungry after a few apples as I did before. Dinner would consist of a huge salad and a few hours later it wasn’t uncommon to feel hungry again. Raw fruits and veggies are healthy for you but they seem to keep hunger away far less than other foods!
• Cost. The cost of buying fresh fruit and vegetables in amounts to make up 85% of your diet gets very expensive…especially when you’re feeling hungry often!

I’m glad we tried the diet but at the end of it we both agreed that the diet was too strict for us to stick with permanently. Instead, we’ve tried to cut our meat eating down to just a few times a week. We are eating bread again but do try to stick with whole wheat when we can. We are also keeping caffeine out of our diet, keeping our sugar in-take low, staying with rice milk over dairy and continue to try to avoid heavily processed foods. We are also continuing to juice, a key part to the diet we were on. Finally, we’re going to continue taking some supplements that were a part of the diet.

If we felt like a “10” on the health-scale being fully vegan, I would say we feel like a strong “8” with our new modified diet. My feeling is I would rather be content at an “8” as opposed to miserable at a “10”. Having lived both a traditional American diet and a diet heavily concentrated on fresh fruit and vegetables, I can say with confidence that how you eat will affect how you feel. That may seem like stating the obvious but how much better we felt caught both of us by surprise.

Image by Muffet

We never experienced any issues that many of our friends warned us about because we wouldn’t be getting calcium from milk or protein from meats. We were using a supplement with the diet so perhaps that made the difference but all the warnings never became real problem. Again…we were only on the diet for a month so we’re probably not in the best position to comment on this. I will say that much of the information we read online said even people on “regular” diets rarely get the recommended amounts of calcium, protein, etc.

If you’re considering trying a vegan or vegetarian diet for improved health, I’d say go for it. Be prepared to spend a little more and expect to feel some hunger but also be prepared to feel much, much healthier. I would also say consistency is important: Kate and I have been eating poorly for the last week or so and many of our old symptoms have already come back. Finally, I’d really recommend getting a juicer as this made the diet much more interesting.