30 Days Plant Based

Originally published May 2022

For the month of May I will be challenging myself to eat a completely plant based diet. I purposely say plant based because of the connotation associated with the word “vegan”. Plant based eating means that most of the foods I’ll be eating are from plant sources like fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and oils. All animal products will be removed from my diet.

I can already hear my mother, “why would you do that, I’m never ever giving up milk”. An immediate shut down of any new ideas or new information. To many people the idea of not consuming animal products is a political issue or they have been so indoctrinated with well funded marketing to think that the only way to be healthy is to eat meat. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do, I simply want to share my own journey and hopefully I can impart something new through my experience.

So why go plant based? For the past 10 years I have been pescatarian and have slowly been cutting out fish more. I have recently been exposed to a lot more research about what a plant based diet does not only for our health but also for the planet. Thanks to people like Rich Roll and Simon Hill, scientific research and information is significantly more accessible these days. Basically, I’m curious and following that curiosity. I’m interested in how eating plant based will improve my overall health including recovery and extreme exhaustion.

Maybe more importantly, I love our environment. I love our planet. I’m scared of what we are doing to our world. The other huge driving factor to this experiment is that animal agriculture is the leading cause of green house gas emissions. Eating animal products not only hurts us it hurts our planet. So instead of just talking about it, I’m doing something about it.

I’ll be sharing my journey and experience with eating a completely plant based diet. I’ll share how I recover, how it impacts my triathlon and marathon training, the challenges of eating at restaurants and with family, recipes, and all the other facets of this journey.

Just like we look back on past generations and can’t believe that they smoked or didn’t wear their seatbelts, I firmly believe that in 10-20 years the younger generations will think it was absurd that we consumed animal products so vigorously. We are just beginning to understand the impacts our food choices make on our overall health and the health of our planet.