My Journey Toward A More Plant Based Diet

As you may already know, diet plays an incredibly important part in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. However, for many of us, the first thing that springs to mind when we hear the word 'diet' is weight loss plans such as Slim Fast or Atkins. Would you agree?

In my opinion, diets like these are great for short term rapid weight loss - but I'm not convinced that they work if you're looking for a long term solution to your health and weight goals. The reason for this being that they are often unsustainable, and as with any habit, a change in diet needs to be sustainable if it's going to have a long lasting impact.

Now before I begin, I'm not suggesting that you should change to a plant based diet tomorrow. In fact I'm not suggesting that you should change to a plant based diet at all. Instead, I'm going to talk you through my journey to introducing what I believe to be a highly sustainable and healthy diet (that is mainly plant based) into my life.

For as long as I can remember, I've made a conscious effort to eat well. I push away any gremlins that sit on my shoulder and tell me to eat junk food, I don't have a huge sweet tooth and I love vegetables! So far so good right? Not quite...

In 2019, I watched a highly influential documentary with my parents called Game Changers. This documentary outlined the potential health risks of eating animal based products and spoke about the benefits of a plant based diet.

After watching the documentary, I reflected on how much meat I ate and realised that pretty much all of my meals were focused not only around meat, but other animal based products too. This was quite a shocking realisation for me so I wanted to make a few changes to my diet.

So, before embarking on a journey toward a fully plant based diet, we decided to watch a few more documentaries (including What The Health which is very americanised but none the less, has some interesting points) and my dad also recommended the website Nutrition.org which sends out regular emails with facts and information about nutrition.

As a family, we were fascinated by the findings. Not only did we find that there were huge health benefits of cutting out animal based products, we also got an insight into the positive environmental impacts - so it seemed like a no-brainer to give it a go.

Now, I was very lucky, as not only were my parents on board, my boyfriend was too. So I had a great support network as I explored my plant based eating habits.

I've always been a foodie and really appreciate good food. I also love to cook, so such a drastic change in my diet was always going to have a big impact on my daily life. Here are some of the concerns that I had in the early days:

• I loved milk! The idea of not drinking cows milk seemed out of the question. I'm one of those people that will happily drink a full glass of milk on a daily basis. So how was I going to cut this out of my diet?

• I eat meat at least twice a day so what will I focus my meals around?

• Will my energy levels drop if I'm not eating meat?

• Will I be missing out on any nutrients that my current diet provides me with?

• What will I eat when I go out for dinner? Most of the time, I don't even give the vegetarian options a look in - so how will this change my eating out habits?

Now if you're considering a more plant based diet, you may have your own concerns. It's normal to question how this sort of diet change could impact your life but the great news is, all of my concerns were put to ease throughout the process and hopefully yours will too.

Plus a huge bonus for me was that I could still eat hash browns! (I love hash browns and would have found those incredibly hard to give up.) What is it that you simply couldn't give up?

How did I go about getting started?

It just so happened, that I decided to go plant based in December 2019, then in January 2020 there was a national marketing campaign for plant based food. This meant that we got to explore a huge range of plant based meals whether that be in a restaurant, at a vegan market or through the widely expanded ranges that supermarkets began to offer.

For the first few months, we were very strict on what we ate. For my mum and I, we did crave animal based products (particularly chicken for me) but my dad and boyfriend found it really easy to cut it out. They haven't missed meat at all!

Now as time went on, we started to explore our boundaries with this diet and I'm pleased to say that overall we've stuck to our no meat policy. However, my boyfriend and I did re-introduce some dairy into our life - not because we craved it- more because it seemed to restrict our cooking quite a bit. Having to search high and low in supermarkets for alternative dairy products or substitutes became very time consuming and costly.

So around about once or twice a week, we added some dairy and fish back into our diet (fish is one thing we both really missed and didn't want to fully give up).

I know what you're thinking - this plant based diet is looking rather non plant based now. And you're right. I am not a vegan, nor a vegetarian. But I'm pleased to say that I have massively reduced, if not pretty much eliminated meat from my diet and have hugely reduced my dairy and fish intake. Not to mention, the few times that I have eaten meat, I found it to be a very dissatisfying experience and almost felt guilty!

Plus, one of my concerns at the beginning was that I wouldn't be able to find a suitable milk alternative but I did! It took me a while to find one that I like, but now the only milk I drink is Oatley Barista Oat Milk. (If you haven't tried it, I'd highly recommend it, it's delicious in coffee). So bye bye cow's milk.

Overall, how did I feel after changing to a more vegetarian / plant based diet?

I trained for my first half marathon at the same time as switching to a mainly plant based diet so the benefits I found may have come from a combination of the two - nonetheless, here's what I found:

• I didn't notice a huge difference in my energy levels but I think this is because I was already fairly active and healthy before hand. (The impact on energy will likely be much greater for someone that generally has a less active lifestyle)

• I stopped feeling bloated and sluggish after eating

• I started losing weight quite rapidly which did concern me at first but I've plateaued and am now settled at a constant weight

• I did notice that I started to develop a sweet tooth but soon overcame that by ensuring that I consume plenty of calories eating foods such as mixed beans, lentils and other pulses

• I felt proud to not only be making a positive impact on the environment but also my own personal health

• I also felt more confident as time went on that this new way of eating was right for me. The reason being that I had learnt how to eat a plant based diet that was just as, if not more nutritious than an animal based diet. (Part of this did involved taking vitamin supplements)

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If you're considering changing your diet to a more plant based one, then I'd highly recommend it. It's been an interesting and fulfilling journey for my family and I.

To get you started, here are 3 of my favourite plant based recipes:

• Sticky Noodles With Homemade Hoisin

• BOSH Nice Spice Rice

• Bangers & Mash with Naked Sausages

Enjoy!