For a few years now I have been a keen reader of NoMeatAthlete.com and earlier this week Matt Frazier posted a blog about Lift’s Quantified Diet Project: The Largest-Ever Measurement of Popular Diets. This intrigued me as one of the diet plans is simply to become vegetarian for 4 weeks. Although I am not looking to lose weight (I have already lost over 70 pounds) going vegetarian for at least a month ws something I had already decided I would do from 1 January this year so I decided I would also sign up for Lift’s project.

Why have I decided to become vegetarian?

The answer is simple. I feel better when I feed my body with plants. Since I started my journey to regain my health in September 2009 I have steadily increased the proportion of my diet that is based on whole plant foods and significantly reduced the amount of meat and processed foods I consume. The more plant based my diet has become, the healthier I have felt. In fact, during 2013 I decided to try a month as a vegetarian to see how I felt and although it presented me with a few challenges I found that I did indeed feel better as the month went on. However, shortly after the month ended I was in Brazil for my day job where one of my favourite places to eat is Fogo de Chao — a churrascaria steakhouse and my time as a vegetarian promptly ended.

Thing is, as much as I enjoy eating meat, I prefer how I feel without it. Hence I have decided to once again try a period without meat. This time I am trying to remove all animal products from my diet, although I must confess I have eaten a small amount of cheese since the year started.

At this stage I am not sure if my switch to a plant based diet is permanent, but as I am currently training for the London Marathon and I find I can train harder when I exclude animal products from my diet, I am pretty sure I will go beyond the 4 weeks.

Challenges with trying to follow a plant based diet

The biggest challenge I’ve noticed with trying to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet is avoiding junk food. This is not a problem when eating at home, but the position is quite different when eating out or travelling.

An example of this happened to me late in 2013. I was attending a conference and had requested a vegetarian meal for the conference dinner. When the waiting staff were bringing the main course I was deep in conversation and failed to notice that a plate with chicken, polenta and vegetables had been placed in front of me. I called the waiter back and advised I had requested vegetarian and he promptly took the plate away. When he returned from the kitchen he placed a bowl of processed white pasta in front of me that was swimming in cheese. As there was not a plant in sight on this plate I politely asked if I could have the chicken after all. Confused, and advising me that chicken is not vegetarian (as if I didn’t know) the waiter then kindly returned the original plate. I did eat the chicken, but to be honest even if I hadn’t I would still have preferred this plate for the delicious polenta and broccoli that was on it.

I really do wish there was an option for “plant-based” instead of “vegetarian”.

How To Overcome Obstacles

I think the most important thing in overcoming obstacles when trying to embrace a lifestyle change such as becoming plant-based or starting juicing is being committed to your goals. When I was interview by the Tips of the Scale podcast I was asked to provide a motivational quote:

“Whatever you do, always give 100% — unless you’re donating blood.”

I truly believe that you must commit to and focus on your goals if you are to overcome the obstacles or challenges you may face. That said, if you slip up or make a few mistakes please try to accept them and move on. Making a few mistakes is not a reason to quit.

Earlier this week I decided join around 5,000 people who did a 3 day juice cleanse based on the new book by Joe Cross from Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. I knew this would give me challenges as I had a busy work week with travel and overnight hotel stays. To make sure I stuck with the program I did two main things:

1. I made juices in advance. Although I prefer to drink my juices as fresh as possible, I knew that I would not be able to make juices throughout the day and so simply got up earlier and made juices for the whole day. These were stored in airtight containers, ensuring the containers were full without any air trapped inside.
2. I took a juicer with me to the hotels. While the other hotel guests were down in the restaurant digging in to their full English breakfasts I was happily making juice on the desk in my room and then cleaning the juicer in the tiny bathroom sink.

The key point here was preparation.

I have further travel this month and am already researching juice bars and vegetarian / vegan friendly restaurants in the locations I am due to visit. If you are able to preempt your obstacles, it certainly makes it easier to plan how you will overcome them.

If you have any tips or thoughts on this post I would love to hear them on my Facebook page or Twitter.

Oh, and if you want to join Lift’s Quantified Diet Project you can sign up at https://lift.do/quantified-diet