A Month of Eating Plant-based: Rebecca’s Story ‘it’s a lifestyle choice, not a diet’

My friend’s story on being plant-based vegan for January was so inspiring and significant for her own health, and had inspired me to do the same with her, that I decided to turn this into a blog. That’s not Rebecca in the image above by the way.

Rebecca decided to try eating as a plant-based vegan for January after being inspired by conversations with her family and having watched Game Changers, a documentary on the benefits of eating natural, plant-based foods. Even when she had been vegan before she still maintained a tendency to reach for pre-made, packaged food she could easily put together and put on the table, and wanted to try this more natural approach to food instead.

“My diet had consisted of bland, carb-heavy, and wheat-based foods”

As I detailed for myself in last month’s blog Rebecca also made a note of how she felt over Christmas in the lead-up to January. Here are her reported symptoms: low energy, coughs/colds, constant lethargy. It would be fairly typical for her to have one bowel movement every six days making her feel very uncomfortable.

“My diet had consisted of bland, carb-heavy, and wheat-based foods. I would have wheat-based cereals for breakfast, then biscuits or chocolate for a mid-morning snack, lunch would typically be a cheese on white bread sandwich with crisps and chocolate or biscuits with tea and milk for afters. Mid-afternoon snacks consisted of chocolate, biscuits or pastries. For dinner it would be pasta with sauce and cheese or pizza, then dessert. I might have salad in a sandwich a couple of times a week. It was a lifetime of eating this way”, she says.

“Watching Game Changers, I realised that being in my mid-30s if I continued to eat as I had been there would be no change in how I felt, and that it is my responsibility to make changes for my health. I also watched Forks over Knives and did some research. Suffering with a lack of energy and not really knowing what foods would help combat this was another motivator. Having a gym membership with no energy to use it was also very frustrating.

Another deciding factor was the lack of education around what foods to eat to manage my acute anaemia. I wanted to change I just didn’t have the knowledge to do so. I wanted to lose weight naturally and safely and eating this way really appealed to me to achieve that.”

“After eating plant-based meals for the first week my cravings for chocolate and pizza reduced by 80%”

“The Forks over Knives meal planner app made the radical diet change easy to do. I never thought I’d enjoy the preparation and cooking, and the app does account for busy lives.” For someone who is not confident in the kitchen this is a huge turnaround, but it has also led to a new attitude towards food, and coming away from food as convenience thinking. “Being told what to eat on the Forks over Knives meal planner app, what to buy to make it and step-by-step instructions to do that really helped. I’m not keen on bland food. I love flavour and the Forks over Knives recipes give just that.”

“After eating plant-based meals for the first week my cravings for chocolate and pizza reduced by 80%, and after a month I am feeling confident and motivated to continue.” She is having bowel movements every day or every other day now and is sleeping much better, finding it easier to fall asleep and waking up earlier in the morning naturally. She is glad to have lost just under a stone in weight just from eating plant-based and with no special effort. Her cravings for biscuits have gone, and she feels nauseous thinking back at what she used to eat. There’s also been a huge improvement to her mood and energy, with a desire to go to the gym. “Everything I was hoping to achieve came about within weeks of eating plant-based.”

Food Heaven!

Her favourite, newly discovered, delicious sounding recipes are: Cincinnati Chili made with kidney beans, cocoa and cinnamon, Italian Spinach Pizza, Warm Spinach & Farro Salad, Falafel Salad, Fudge Pudding Cake, Tomato Quinoa Vegetable Soup, and Muhammara Sauce (a traditional Syrian spread with red peppers and spicy flavour) with Quinoa. They all sound amazing to me and she’s clearly getting a good balance, and an increase of, vegetables, fruits, protein and fibre from eating this way.

It goes to show that sometimes significant changes to our lifestyle choices can be the right way, in that it quickly shows us how our body’s response to it is different than to how we were eating before. I think the key point that I would like to show to my kinesiology clients is that changing what you eat can be easy and enjoyable, and the extra effort is very much rewarded. Any steps to increase natural foods in our diet, whether dramatic or small will only be helpful.