The Vegan Experiment - Day Four and Day Five

Woohoo!  Past the halfway point, and I'll have to say, this has been a very fun challenge.  Day four (I'm sorry to say) was just a regular day.  No struggle with my coffee or my family.  No tricky casein hiding in my food.  Just...a day!

I am sorry if you were looking forward to today's coffee story.  I did not have a coffee struggle, but I DID have a coffee breakthrough.  I got a vanilla soy latte from Starbucks.  I'm not the world's biggest fan of soy milk, but it was fantastic.  For what it's worth, Starbucks also has an allergy and vegan friendly interactive menu on their website.  I got a toasted multi-grain bagel to go with my latte and peanut butter.  With a morning like that, who could have a bad day?  (I'm hoping my blog is discovered by Sbux and they give me a lifetime of lattes for all of my free plugs!) 

Thanks, again, Starbucks!

My boss was nice enough to tell me that he would be cheering me on while he ate his 22 oz bone-in ribeye.  His sensitivity knows no bounds.  I guess the guilt got to him, though, because he was emailing me from his dinner asking about vegan scotch options.  It turns out that alcohol, which I thought was EASILY the second most vegan thing in the universe is something to watch out for.  Why?  The clarification process often uses animal by-products, so not only is the clarified product not vegan, so is the barrel that it was stored in.  I'm not interested in eating the barrel, but storing future alcohol in that same barrel taints the new batch of alcohol right off the bat.  Soooooo many rules!  

I'm really liking this lifestyle change.  I had a great realization yesterday compliments of my vendor.  He commented on my mood, and that got me thinking (more) about my whole experience.  These past four days have been the most guilt-free eating days I can remember since I was maybe a teenager.  Not a day has gone by that I thought, "Ugh.  I shouldn't have eaten that."  

I also think that there is something to be said about a vegetarian diet and cravings.  I have not craved my usual junk food.  It's very exciting when Eating to Live replaces Living to Eat.  No joke.  I caught a whiff of some cookies at a meeting, and I was confused by my own reaction. I thought, "Why don't I want one?  Come on, Body!  Want a cookie so I can tell you NO!"  I'd be interested in the feedback on that from a psychologist specializing in food addictions.  Not the lack of a craving, but my brain's wanting a craving so I could reject it.  Weird.

I left that cooking singing "I Want You to Want Me" to someone else!

Four days in, and even Jay has decided to support me.  He made some popcorn, and then he asked me if I wanted some before he poured butter on it.  So nice of him.  Shhhh.  Don't tell anyone.