The first week was actually much easier than I expected. I'm not yet bored of the few things I've figured out I can eat and am looking forward to finding out more. I don't feel weak and feeble and am not craving meat at all.

The hardest part of the week was coming to terms with what beer I could drink. This was a quiet week socially and I only drank on wednesday. Of the beer in the pub the only one available to me was Heineken. Most beers use Isinglass, an extract from fish swimbladders for clarification. There are plenty of beers that don't use this though. These lists have been my shining light this week.

Wednesday was my first potentially "socially awkward moment". Normally on a wednesday I'd go for a run with the club, have a kebab on the way to the pub or a burger in there, have several pints of Guinness and then depending on how drunk I was stagger into the chip shop/Ealing Kebab and gorge myself on something filthy. I didn't really bother when all those around me ordered pies and burgers, I was fine with my average lager.

I have learned a lot about food this week though and long may it continue in the coming weeks. So far I have learned;

That fish have special bladders for swimming
Tofu gives you man boobs
Soya milk is not as bad as I thought but is not healthy
3 Flavours of pringles are vegan friendly, oddly Taxas BBQ being one of them
Waitrose do these lovely 3 packs of snack sized hummus
Badger Beers are Vegan friendly too and they have a fantastic website and you can buy T-Shirts and go and visit their brewery

But I still get asked quite a lot why I am doing this and I feel like I should have an answer but I really don't know. Anyhow, I've though of another possible one.

EXPLANATION FOR ALL OF THIS NUMBER 7

I need to eat heathier, that is a fact. I never want to be super healthy, I still want to drink and eat some crap but I have recognised that I don't really know how to eat heathily even if I wanted to.

So, instead of "cutting back" or "moderating" the bad things that I eat I've decided to rule them out completely for a few months which will then force me into learning pretty quickly how to eat healthier. With no option of animal products I am going to hit a really steep learning curve on nutrition, being thrown in at the deep end as it were. If I were to gradually get into it I would too easily back out and not learn a thing.

Kind of like being thrown into the desert. You'll quickly learn what it takes to suvive there (or die). The correct way would be to practice in a sand pit, then a sand pit on a warm day, then maybe a beach, then maybe a beach on a warm day. Then tackle a sand dune in winter, then a sand dune in winter with a jumper on, then a sand dune in summer, then a sand dune on in summer with a jumper on. Charting each of these experiences and logging every possible piece of data.

Yeah, I thought that way was boring too.

RunningandStuff