Good morning beautiful people ♥️ I hope you’re all doing well!

As many of you probably know by now, I’ve decided to do a 30 day vegan challenge throughout the month of March. I started on Monday 2nd and intend to keep it up until Tuesday 31st.

Side Note: My birthday is on the 27th of March and I fully intend on having a piece (or three) of my fave cake that mum makes for me once a year on my birthday. Yes, I’m turning 31 is a couple of weeks and mum still makes me birthday cake every year – and I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

Before I start getting too excited about my upcoming birthday / cheat day, I thought I’d explain a bit about why I’m doing this and what I intend on tracking and so on. I am going to share my experience once the 30 days are up however, in the meantime, I’m going to give you a bit of insight on how it’s going so far.

I’m doing this for many different reasons; industrial animal farming for meat and dairy is a HUGE burden on the earth and consuming less meat and dairy is incredibly important. Animal exploitation; industrial farming methods are absolutely vile more often than not and the animals are treated horribly. Health; you don’t need to be vegan to be healthy and you’re not automatically healthy if you’re vegan; HOWEVER, increasing our consumption of plant foods is very very very VERY important for our health.

Moreover, I haven’t been feeling great lately – low energy, low mood, exercise has become a bit of a chore, being super busy my eating patters have become less than ideal and I’ve been getting really bad stomach pain (I had gastro-intestinal surgery a few years back so stomach issues are common for me). Going vegan won’t necessarily help but in doing this, I’m definitely going to increase my veg and fruit intake which always helps me feel much better.

This has been going on for a while so I want to stick to eating a vegan diet for 30 days to see if I notice any difference in the way that I’m feeling, my mood (our diet can have a very significant effect on our emotional state) and my energy levels.

Here’s how week one went:

Day #1 – My intention was to finish work relatively early, go grocery shopping and do some meal prep for the coming week. Instead, I worked much longer than expected, didn’t have time to go shopping for food as all supermarkets were closed by the time I finished work and ate a packet of vegan veggie crisps in the afternoon and my mum’s stuffed artichokes and a lot of rice in the evening.

Day #2 – My training session at 6.30 am was difficult but good; however I did spend the rest of the day feeling exhausted. I had really low energy and everything felt like a chore! Tuesday was a really busy and quite hectic so that’s definitely a part of it!

Day #3 – I woke up feeling really energized AND I woke up without coffee for the first time in forever!! Training was tougher than usual, possibly due to the lack of coffee which normally gives me a boost. However I really felt good for the rest of the day.

Day #4 – Thursday was an OK day; I woke up feeling good however felt very tired by the end of the day which is pretty typical for me regardless of my diet so I’ll call it a regular day.

Day #5 – Friday was a GREAT day! I woke up feeling energized, I had a morning training session which was AMAZING; mood was great (it was Friday after all), energy levels great… No complaints 🙂

Day #6 – We went to Gozo for some wedding planning and to meet friends on Saturday. I was feeling great; I actually found a vegan burger which was actually quite tasty and we went over to friend’s that evening where I we had some nibbles and wine; I of course couldn’t have everything but that was fine becuase I could have most things there anyway 🙂

Day #7 – We spent the morning in Gozo, woke up much later than usual, went for a long walk then lunch; I had cheese less mushroom pizza – I wouldn’t recommend it but that’s what I was able to have and that was fine. Spent the evening at home and felt great.

Overall, I’ve been feeling better in terms of mood and energy levels but it’s very hard to tell the cause of that so I’m going to keep monitoring this throughout these 30 days to see if there’s any real lasting shift. Training sessions also are starting to feel easier and I’m starting to feel more like myself again in that I want to do a lot of things again – I want to go out for a walk with the dog, I want to do yoga – It doesn’t feel like a chore and I’m thrilled even if this is the only change I experience.

Food has been a bit repetitive; options and ingredients are quite limited and this week has been quite busy so finding the time to cook something different every day has been a bit of an issue. I did prepare some brown rice, beans, a bean dip and a salad dressing that I used for wraps, Buddha bowls, large salads and so on.

For week two I do hope I manage to do more cooking and vary my diet a bit more as I found myself eating quite a bit of refined carbohydrates just to avoid meat and dairy – especially when eating out over the weekend. I don’t want to do that too often because I don’t want to feel bloated and replace meat and dairy for refined carbs like pizza and bread all the time. I will also be monitoring energy levels, mood, costs and weight more closely and share all of this and my detailed reasons for doing this challenge at the end of the 30 days – so stay tuned!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this – If you’d like to join me on my journey daily, follow me on IG and FB both @holisticnutritionninja – for updates daily 🙂

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Until my next post, be well xXx