On February 10th, 2020 I flipped my diet 180 degrees and switched to being vegan. The goal was two fold at the time, 1) lowering my blood pressure, and 2) lowering my weight.
Here on April 10th, 2020, I’ve managed to stick with that diet and drop 22.5lbs as of this morning. I was down another 2lbs earlier this week, but had a slight gain in the past two days. My current goal is to get down to 220lbs, if I can get there, we’ll see if I lower the goal further. Based on the progress in the last month, I would imagine it will take me 3 months to get down to 220lbs, but we’ll see.
My blood pressure earlier this week was below 120/80 every time I checked it, so at this point I would say my blood pressure is doing great. I’ll send my results electronically to my doctor just so she’s aware of the current status and hope that she continues to agree that I don’t need to take any medication to lower my BP.
So overall here are a few thoughts on the vegan change. I didn’t actually imagine that I would be able to stick with being vegan for any real length of time, to me, 2 months was way more than I thought I would go! At this point, I don’t have any plans to change my diet back, I will note a few things though.
1) I realized that I haven’t been 100% vegan. So early on I read about “honey” because I have a bunch of Honey Stinger waffles that I used to take with me for fuel on longer bike rides. I read that Honey technically isn’t vegan, so I have left those waffled in the cabinet. What I failed to realize though, was that Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey is made with real honey… At this point, I have decided that I am NOT giving up on my JD Tennessee Honey, so if that makes me not a vegan, so be it, I will still strive to eat a plant based diet, and I’ll drink my Jack and enjoy it 
2) I really miss a few things. The other day I was totally craving a good burger as I drove by Steak and Shake. I don’t mean I was craving SnS though, the last burger I had was from there and I was underwhelmed as I mentioned in my post on February 18th. I also craved Chick-Fil-A the other day. And most of all, CHEESE. I love me some cheese, and we have some extra sharp cheddar in the fridge that isn’t getting eaten now, boy do I want to crack into that. One day I just might (it’ll hopefully spoil before then) but for now I’m staying away from dairy.
We’ve been getting meals from Purple Carrot for the past few weeks, they send some meals I would NEVER go about making, but because they send the ingredients and recipe, I prep each and every one and eat them. Of the 10 or 12 meals we’ve had so far, I believe that only 1 of those underwhelmed us. While I did put the service on pause for next week, that’s only because we have 4 meals that we haven’t prepped/cooked yet, and our fridge was packed. We’ll turn it back on the following week and likely crank it back to 3 meals a week instead of 4 as we were running about a week behind. It ends up running about $12/serving, but I am very pleased with the service and the meals, and hope to continue it.
So here we are, two months in. I look forward to another two months of this, and then more after that!