My Dry Veganuary: Week 4

What happened to week 3?

Well, the good news is I didn’t buckle on either count, but as it was such a Godawful week for other reasons I just couldn’t bring myself to write. So here I am, almost at the end of this month’s journey. Has it been difficult? Has it been awful? Will I be making any lasting changes to my diet and drinking habits?

In short: no, no and yes.

Things I have learned

• For me, it is all to do with mindset rather than willpower. Happily, I was in the right mindset.

• I can face pain, loss, stress and even being overwhelmed without resorting to alcohol. This has shown me I am stronger than I thought.

• I enjoy planning and cooking meals again - in fact, I love it. It feels new and exciting, healthy and guilt-free because I am not exploiting animals in doing so.

• My running has not been adversely affected. Two weeks ago I ran 12k in the wind and driving rain, and felt strong for every second of it.

• You can get meltingly glorious vegan chocolate but it costs loads. Such is; I’ll just have it less often.

• I can go out for an evening meal and enjoy it fully without giving alcohol a thought, as long as I am with people in whose company I can completely relax.

• Pizza Express serve a vegan calzone which is genuinely the nicest thing I have ever eaten there (and I love their pizzas!) The coconut sorbet is lush too.

• I know I will drink alcohol again, though I cannot pinpoint precisely why (conditioning, probably). I hope to be able to make it an occasional treat, but have my doubts about my own capacity to manage this. As I have said before, alcohol has no interest in being consumed in moderation. Time will tell …

• I know with even more certainty that I will not consume meat, fish, eggs or dairy products again.

Hang on - back up! Never?

I know myself pretty well, although the last month has thrown a few pleasant surprises my way. I am a faddy person, given to exciting ideas for new projects which rarely come to fruition (ask me how that novel’s coming along, for instance, or the French A-level I swore blind I would be taking this summer. How about my plan to live on a barge? My pledge - series of pledges - to get the house sorted and live in minimalist tranquility?) I set unrealistic targets for myself and then, naturally, fail to meet them. Or I go off the idea in a matter of hours or days because it’s actually not as important to me as I’d hoped because I’m just not that interesting.

There have been a few exceptions, however, and when an exception comes along I can still spot it. Learning the piano was one (OK, this started when I was 9, but I did take it all the way to degree level. It counts!) Running is another, and that started far more recently. I know I will be a runner, albeit a slow one, for as long as my little legs continue to carry me.

Veganism (I need to learn not to shy away from the word, like ‘Voldemort’) is another exception. I think I knew at day 5 that I would not return to being an omnivore. The reason is simple: basically, the blinkers are off now, and I couldn’t put them back on if I wanted to, which happily I don’t.

Like all decent folks, I recoil from the footage of slaughter houses and dairy farms (even the ones that are supposed to be humane), because it is horrific to see. “I know I’m a screaming hypocrite”, I used to think, feeling peeved and got at when a vegan friend posted those videos on Facebook. “Leave me alone. No-one wants to see that! This isn’t the place for it anyway.” What I ate was my choice and I wasn’t breaking the law.

I had a good point, which is why I will never try to persuade anyone else to become vegan. “You do you”, as the young folks seem to be saying these days (always sounds a bit rude to me, but there you go). I won’t preach about veganism on social media or to my friends and extended family (or to my immediate family, but I continue as I started, which means not cooking separately for them. Who has the time!?) I will speak about it just this once, on my little blog which is read by precisely seven-and-a-half people.

The footage was worse than I had feared, and I will not detail any of it here because it is too upsetting. The only reason I was able to watch it at all was because I was no longer complicit in causing it, and never will be again.

Moving on quickly to a brighter note, this busy and life changing month has turned up all sorts of wonderful finds and a wealth of information. I have researched, armed myself with science, watched more documentaries and unbiased medics’ dissections of those documentaries, and come to understand for myself that a vegan diet is completely healthy - amazingly healthy, actually, if researched and planned properly - as well as easier and more delicious than I ever thought it would be. Along the way I’ve shed four pounds (which, actually, is probably thanks to the absence of alcohol) and experienced my first pain-free period (bonus!) It’s also pretty special to know that I have taken the biggest step I can to tackle climate change.

There is something both empowering and liberating, especially for a quiet person like me who is often a bit of a pushover, to know that I am on the right path and that nothing - not issues of taste (“Ohhhh, but cheese ...?"), nor inconvenience, nor well-intentioned criticism, nor rolling eyes, misplaced worry about my health or anything else - will change that.

So I’ll end here and raise a slightly pre-emptive glass of vegan prosecco to you for reading.x