So my 7 days of being a Vegan are complete and I have to say it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t miss meat at all and previously I was eating at least two different meat products a day. Towards the end of the 7 days I did start to miss eggs but I LOVE eggs. I found that I woke up with loads of energy and fell asleep really quickly which is a surprise to me as I do struggle to fall asleep. I didn’t feel hungry during the day and I was having between 3-4 meals a day. I normal eat around 7-9 small meals a day but I get so hungry. The only downside was the IBS flare-ups I experienced during this but the more I think about it the more I believe it was simply my digestive system getting used to eating vegetables and fruit which I haven’t had for a long time. I started comp prep on 1st December and finished competing on 10th June – no fruit was consumed then and the only veg I had was either spinach or green beans. After comp I didn’t introduce fruit back into my diet and didn’t really add anymore veg – so the 7 days of fruit, vegetables, pulses, lentils and wholewheat carbs was quite a shock to the system.

I would personally recommend trying it as I have learnt a lot about foods, especially the nutritional values of pulses and lentils and how to experiment with meals adding colour, texture and different flavours. I used to have your regular boring salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber with a bit of beetroot if I was feeling fruity. Now I have grapes, mango, roasted aubergine, nuts, lentils, pea shoots with different spices and the flavours are unreal.

So carrying on with my experimental stage I am now going to complete a week of being a Vegetarian and see what happens to me as I carry out my not so normal life. I know a week is probably not a long enough period of time, but I have learnt so much from my Vegan week that for me it is enough.

For those of you who are interested before I completed my Vegan week I was on a high fat and high protein diet consuming around 90-100g carbs a day. On my Vegan diet I was consuming around 250g carbs, 40g fat and 50g protein a day! I didn’t get watery, I didn’t get bloated from all the carbs and I didn’t put on weight. In fact I lost 3lbs. Previously I thought I was ‘sensitive to carbs’ and that I couldn’t tolerate or use them effectively. That doesn’t seem to be the case and it means that I can consume more carbs which can only help with my training and not make my life as restrictive in terms of what I think I can eat. Everyday is a school day

If you would like any info on the foods I ate or the online sources I used to plan my food let me know.