Vegucated

Welcome to Try-Athlete the blog where I try the latest fitness and diet trends so you don't have to. Last week I watched a very informative documentary called "Vegucated." It was about a young woman who is a vegan and got 3 New Yorkers to become vegan for 6 weeks. It was a very inspiring film and I learned a lot about how farm animals are treated in this country. Some of the scenes in the movie where hard to watch because they showed the inhumane treatment of the animals. At the end of the film all 3 of the people stayed vegan.
I decided hey I should do that, I already eat mostly fruits and veggies. I do indulge in the occasional turkey burger with cheese, which would have to be cut out. I realized that not everyone knows what a vegan is when my co-worker brought ceviche (fish) to our employee party and said he thought it was vegan. A vegan is no meat (including fish), poultry and dairy. Vegan's don't purchase leather or any animal products to wear as clothing as well.
I decided to try a week of being vegan and see how I felt at the end of it. I usually eat oatmeal with almond milk for breakfast. No meat or dairy to start my day. Almond milk is a fabulous milk substitute and it's delicious. I work at a breakfast/lunch joint which serves epic bacon. I haven't had a piece of bacon in probably over 6 months but I serve it everyday. This week I felt conflicted serving bacon after I had watched what happens to pigs in the film. The restaurant I work at serves local farm fresh food so I was optimistic that the bacon I was serving was treated with respect. All week at work I was bothered by how much meat and dairy people ordered. Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day and all these people were starting their day with grease, fat and cholesterol.
Lunch was a little hard because the kitchen staff makes our lunch and they made a salad with cheese covering it and fried chicken sandwiches. I didn't eat either of them instead I waited till work was over and went to our local organic cafe Palm Green and ordered a hummus wrap. No meat, no cheese and it was amazing!
The week started to fly by and I didn't really struggle with being a vegan because when I saw meat or thought about it I remembered all the horrible but true facts I had learned about in the film Vegucated. One night I made myself a smoothie with spinach, banana, mango, coconut oil and almond milk and I got all the protein and nutrients needed and was full just from eating a smoothie that was 100% vegan.
At the end of the week I decided to stay vegan for another week, it wasn't that much of a challenge for me any more to eat vegan so why stop. I challenge everyone to research where your food is coming from especially the meat products you are eating. If everyone saw what was happening to animals behind closed doors they would be vegan too.
Overall I recommend becoming a vegan I had more energy this week, so until next time stay fit!