12 Week Plant Based Diet

12 things I learned from 12 weeks of eating vegan

Having been vegetarian since the age of 7–8, oddly the thought of going vegan had never crossed my mind.

Until ~28 years later…

On a flight back from Tanzania in early Jan this year, I watched a documentary called Beyond Food.

In particularly, I found the stories from Rich Roll and Darin Olien on a plant-based diet truly inspiring.

Sadly, in 2012 my dad died of cancer, at the age of 56, having been very physically active and eating a healthy vegetarian diet.

To be honest, I've never been able t o get my head around this — and always felt like maybe there was more I could have done to help him. I realise that means finding a cure to cancer (which is a tough ask!), but even so it felt like there must be a better way than chemo with no long-term hope of recovery...

Having just turned 36, only 2 days before the flight — my new found information on the vegan diet made me curious. Sub-consciously I think there was also a thought of, I don't want to only have 20 years of my life left.

Whether this could have helped my dad or not, it's too late to say — in many ways I find it hard to believe there was much more he could have done — but if there was anything I could do to improve my own health, I wanted to learn more and try my best to give it a go.

Today is officially week 12 of eating vegan, so here's 12 things I've learning during that time:

1. Setting low expectations helped — I never said I was going to be vegan forever, or even doing Veganuary (I started on 8th Jan, so was too late anyway). I just tried to be vegan for one day, and if I liked it, I'd do the next day… I still haven't set any targets even now. Currently I'm enjoying it, so I'll keep it going.
2. Getting through early challenges was key. My first lunch time I went to a local cafe who did a great vegan lunch that I had last year, I got there and they'd taken it off the menu. The closest option was a pre-made salad with feta cheese. Normally I'd feel very fussy and would just eat it, this time I still felt fussy, but I couldn't fail by lunchtime on day one, so I left and found a lentil soup somewhere else. At this point I thought it might be too difficult to find vegan food, but looking back that was more of a one-off, than the norm.
3. I felt ill from days 2–3 — stomach pains, tiredness and a feeling that this simply can't be good for me. Something told me to keep it going though, so I stuck to the smoothies and coconut porridges etc. That feeling had left by around day 4. Also, looking back now, almost everyone I know has been ill at some point during the start of 2018, I haven't even had a cold (touchwood).
4. I'm surprised / amazed how I haven't missed eggs and cheese. These were a huge part of my diet last year, milk too — so to completely drop this has been a big change for me. But by focusing on the replacements (smoothies, porridges and good veggies) I've been able to let the dairy products go without missing them.
5. So many regular foods have dairy in them, it's a bit crazy. Supermarkets are generally the worst for this. e.g. I bought a guacamole which I didn't realise had added cream, croissants containing milk etc — who knew? I didn't… But there's definitely more to it than just skipping the cheese, milk and eggs. In some ways it's probably helped in terms of trying to keep things as plant-based as possible, as then it's pretty clear.
6. Improved fitness / reduced recovery — on average last year I went to the gym twice a week. I would say I've stepped this up a little this year (adding in at least a weekly swim or run). I also badly injured my knee ligaments 3 years ago, which has slowed me down (literally) — but I've found the recovery time needed between workouts/runs is getting much shorter. There's lots of studies on this showing that vegan diet helps to reduce inflammatory, and I would say that's definitely been the case for me.
7. Prepare for bigger events ahead of time and pack some snacks— I've had to plan ahead for going on a stag do, attending a wedding, travelling to Kiev, evening dinners out etc… As long as you can have some options, plus some snacks as a good back-up plan, it makes it easier. Another thing I did was to not worry about eating what you see as traditional breakfast food in the morning. On a stag do I had an avocado wrap from Pret, and in Kiev I had a sweet potato hot pot — both would normally be lunches, but were better options vs the non-vegan alternative breakfast foods on offer.
8. I've read more labels in 3 months than the rest of my life, but my rule has been if I still don't understand why it's not vegan, I'll eat it. My plan was to start and learn as I go along — if I wanted to know everything from day one, I would never had started. So I keep learning new things, and adding new food/meals into my diet which has helped.
9. I've had 2–3 non vegan meals and I'm ok with that — I don't see this as being 100% perfect, more continual progress. I've had a couple of occasions where it's been easier to just eat dairy. It's always been in relatively small amounts, but as long as I see them as small blips and not a disaster sign that I should give up completely, it's been easy enough to get back on track, and I'm learning new ways to plan ahead / avoid in future.
10. My taste buds are changing — green juices used to taste disgusting to me (even towards the end of last year), now I look forward to them. Coconut porridge, again I put that off— it sounds too healthy, that can't taste good… Well, it does — in fact I'd say I prefer it to regular porridge now.
11. It feels like the right thing to do — the impact to the environment is hugely important. I've always been vegetarian because I didn't like the taste of meat, and my motivation to eating vegan was for health reasons. But understanding how animals are treated and the impact on the environment, has made me think more carefully about how every £ I spend is a vote for funding something.
12. Vegan / plant based education helps to keep motivating me — in a short time, I've watched a lot of Netflix documentaries (What the Health), read Finding Ultra by Rich Roll, plus listened to a large number of his excellent podcasts. I've read How Not to Die, Superlife and more + followed a lot of vegan accounts/hashtags on Instagram. Surrounding myself with continual information and learning has helped to motivate and keep me going.

Results so far…

To steal a phrase from Nike, "there is no finish line" — but 12 weeks is a nice milestone to take stock.

Overall, I'm confident the long-term health benefits are much greater from the lifestyle changes / decisions I've been making.

The short-term gains are always encouraging to see, and I definitely feel like these are easily sustainable given that it's come from smaller lifestyle changes which I'm confident can be continued.

Here's some comparisons from 5th Jan (just before I started) vs today (2nd April 2018):

• Body weight dropped from 72.5kg to 67.5kg (5kg weight loss since Jan)
• Body fat percentage dropped from 20.8% to 18.5% (2.3% lower)
• Metabolic age from 37 to 29 (I'm 8 years younger within 3 months!)

I certainly feel fitter and with more energy, most of my clothes no longer fit (which is both good, and annoying!).

It's definitely been a positive change so far. I'm looking forward to what the next 12 weeks (and beyond) brings…

Update: 6 months later… (22nd July 2018):

Please note: start date on these charts is Oct 2016 — so's over the last 18 months+

The headline stats across the 6 months are:

• Body weight dropped from 72.5kg to 64.9kg — 7.6kg weight loss since Jan, which puts me into a BMI of 22.5 (if I'm honest, at this stage I don't worry about this number fluctuating too much).
• Body fat percentage dropped from 20.8% to 12.2% — 8.6% lower, this is the result I'm most proud of. It was achieved initially with a drop in fat mass and more recently with a gain in muscle mass.
• Metabolic age from 37 to 21 — instead of being 1 year older than my real age, I'm now 15 years younger! I like this one :)

Oxford town and gown 10k in May, 2018

My big learnings in this time:

• I've had increased energy, which has helped me to exercise better — and the more I exercise, the more likely I am to eat well — so it's a positive cycle that helps to keep me motivated / improving…
• My aim is to eat plant based— I've never liked any fake meats, and you can certainly still be unhealthy on a vegan diet — but I'm conscious of what food I'm putting into my body as a fuel. If it's fruit, veg, nuts, legumes, seeds etc (essentially the base of a Mediterranean diet) it's pretty clear — plus I still try not to be too strict about it, if it's better than the alternative and close enough to what I'm aiming towards, that's good enough for me.
• It's a lifestyle, of which diet is just one part of that — I've really enjoyed reading/watching/listening to Dr Rangan Chatterjee's work around the 4 pillars (relax, eat, move, sleep) and I've been more conscious of trying to relax / sleep better of late, to add more balance in the areas I'm weaker in.
• Early stages = large loss in muscle as well as fat. I've recovered from this dip (shown in chart), with a conscious effort on strength training at the gym + eating more protein rich foods (chickpeas/hummus, lentils, black beans, smoothies) and in volume I would say I'm eating a lot more food now than I have previously.
• Continuing my education has helped — by continually learning new ideas and recipes it helps to know there's still so much more I can improve at, which keeps me motivated to keep going.

Kevin Gibbons is co-founder and CEO at Re:signal , a digital marketing agency in London — connect with him on LinkedIn , Twitter and Instagram .

12 Week Plant Based Diet

Source: https://medium.com/@kevgibbo/12-things-i-learned-from-12-weeks-of-eating-vegan-4581d8f4e43e

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