Mircea Paşoi

Vegetarian in Vancouver

Like I promised in my previous post, for the whole month of February I ate only vegetarian (meat-free) food every day. It was a very interesting 30 days trial for me, so I want to share my experience.

Why veggie?

I’ve wanted to try vegetarian food for quite some time, mainly out of curiosity. My girlfriend and a bunch of other people I know are vegetarian, so I always wondered what I’m missing on.

There weren’t any ethical reasons behind my trial, I only wanted to find out if there are any health benefits to such a diet.

Veggie-friendly

A decisive factor in finally trying out this experiment was that North America is so vegetarian friendly! I know from many restaurant trips together with my girlfriend that in Romania the only vegetarian food you usually find a is a veggie pizza or maybe a Caesar salad.

Here, the situation is completely different. Every single restaurant I’ve been to has at least a few vegetarian dishes. The range of possible food choices is huge, so this made my trial very easy (I easily get bored eating the same thing).

Some examples of vegetarian foods I ate:

Pizza, Lasagna, Pasta, Burger, Vermicelli
Vegetable sushi: rolls, tempura and tofu-based dishes like tofu teriyaki
Indian food, Thai food
Falafel, Spinach pie
Mexican food: tacos, burritos
All kinds of salads

… and the list could go on!

How was it?

This was far from being a scientific trial, so any personal observations and conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt. With that out of the way, here’s what I noticed:

Eating vegetarian made me feel ligther. No more feeling drowsy and sleepy after eating and no more feeling like I’m about to explode when I eat a bit too much. It seems vegetarian food is much easier on the digestive system.
I often times felt hungry after eating, at least in the beginning. I’m a firm believer of the eat only 80% full principle (because you live longer and healthier), so I think of this as a plus. I should really do it more often.
I lost weight. Didn’t really measure how much, but it was physically visible there was some weight loss going on.
I generally felt better, although this is very subjective, and hard to correlate with the diet.
Interestingly enough, it took me over 20 days to actually feel any of the effects I mentioned. Others have reported that there is a period of detoxing and overcoming cravings, so I guess it’s pretty normal.
As a bonus, I spent less money on food because vegetarian dishes are usually cheaper.

What’s next?

At the end of the trial, I switched back to my regular diet (with meat). The deal breaker for me was that some meat foods are just more tastier than anything vegetarian I’ve tried. There was a benefit to going back to eating meat - it helped me realize all the differences between the two diets and I am now convinced about the health benefits of eating vegetarian.

Consequently, I’m not giving up on this! In the very near future, I want to do a semi-vegetarian (may include fish and sometimes poultry) 30 days trial, maybe that will stick!