Nine months later, I'm bringing the vegan diet experiment to a conclusion.

Today is my 36^th birthday and marks the end of my 9-month 100% plant-based diet experiment.  I’d say it was a success.  It’s been a wonderful experience and I’ve learned more in the last nine months about the food I eat than I realized I would.  It started off as my annual Lent challenge—even though I got excited and started two weeks early—and turned into something much bigger and better.  While on this diet, I have set a personal record for time at a 50-mile ultramarathon, a 70.3 Ironman triathlon, and ridden my first (and second, and third) century bicycle rides.  I need to thank Rich Roll for the inspiration and Brett Blankner and Christine Lynch for guidance along the way. 

So why am I changing things now?  There are a couple of reasons I am integrating meat back into my diet.  For one thing, my wife and I are going to Greece at the end of October for the Athens Marathon and it seems like a shame to vacation in Greece without getting the full culinary experience while we’re there.  Because of the race, I don’t want to shock my system with red meat, seafood, and cheese all of a sudden, so I’m easing into it.  Furthermore, while it was never my intention for this to be a permanent dietary change, in a way it really is because I am positive that the things I have learned over the last nine months about nutrition and balancing my diet are going to stay with me and have a lasting effect on the way I eat for the rest of my life.

After nine months of munching on grass and grains, am I going to celebrate with a thick juicy steak?  Not at all!  I’ve fairly well decided that red meat is going to be a rare occasion food.  The trip to Greece is a perfect example of this.  I feel mostly the same way about poultry, although I’ll generally pick it over steak if I have to choose between the two.  I can see myself having eggs every now and again and certainly that would open up a broader range of foods that use egg as an ingredient.  As for dairy, I plan to use it very sparingly.  I’ve made a permanent change to almond milk and I’m happy with that.  As much as I love cheddar and creamy cheeses, it’s the simple truth that my cholesterol dropped by about 100 points when I changed my diet and cutting out dairy was the biggest change of all.  I’m seeing more studies that say that dietary cholesterol has no effect on blood cholesterol, but that goes against everything I’ve been told and it seems to go against my own personal history, so I’ll await overwhelming evidence.

Over the last nine months, the one kind of meat I have actually missed occasionally is fish.  There have been several times when I would have enjoyed a nice salmon steak or a few choice pieces of sushi.  That is probably what I’ll have for dinner tonight.  I’ll be sure to tweet it, whatever I decide J  I’ve used the phrase ‘vegan’ on occasion for simplicity’s sake, although I have never truly considered myself one, aside from my menu choices.  While I chose not to eat any animal products and I’ve always looked for chances to encourage others about the benefits of an all-plant diet, I’ve been very self-conscious about not pushing my experiment on others and I have no problem with the guy next to me eating a big bacon cheeseburger.  The irony of adding fish to my diet is that fish are the animals that I do concern myself with about sustainability.  For instance, I consult my Monterrey Bay Aquarium seafood guide on my iPhone before buying fish or ordering at restaurants and I do plan to ask the waiter where the salmon on “tonight’s dinner special” came from.  I suppose I can thank Bruckner Chase for introducing me to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s sustainability guide.

All told, it’s been a good ride.  I’m very glad I did it, and while I can’t say there was a huge boost in my health (mostly because my health was just fine when I started) I’m certainly no worse off for the experience and I probably would not have the appreciation I now have for kale, quinoa, almond milk, olive oil, or tempeh if I had never tried it out.  If anyone reading this is considering trying a plant-based diet, I think you should give yourself at least 3-4 weeks at a minimum to really get in the groove and let me know if you have any questions.  I can recommend quite a few good cookbooks, food suggestions, or other resources to help you along the way.