New Years Resolution - Temporary Vegan - Or: Let's See How Long This Lasts

Since Thanksgiving, I've been giving myself a free pass to indulge in whatever food I want. This has brought me to a point to where I am falling back into the old bad habits of eating when I'm bored, and eating whatever I'm craving regardless of whether or not I actually need it for sustenance  (usually not).

I have heard of more than a few people doing temporary month-long switches to a vegan diet. (for the purposes of this context, I will define the vegan diet as no meat or dairy or animal products - except for my gummi multivitamins, as it is the only multivitamin I have ever managed to remember to take.) My understanding is that Oprah and a lot of her staff did it, which is of course easy when you can hire a private chef to make your food. I have had "vegan days" which I've done to reset myself from days when I've been particularly "bad" and I always feel better on those days. I may not have a private chef, but I live across the street from the Wedge Co-Op which has more vegan options than most places.

Therefore: my goal is to stick to a vegan diet from January 1, 2013 through January 31, 2013. There may be a steak dinner on February 1, 2013.

Tofu. Ish. We hates it.

One degree of difficulty is going to be that I absolutely detest tofu. We hates it, precious, we hates it! Actually I'm not entirely enthused by any non-meat product designed to look and taste like meat (except for the damn tasty black bean burger)... or cheese. Fake cheese just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It reminds me of those high bouncing balls you used to get from gumball machines (maybe you can still get them, I don't know). I am willing to try tofu prepared by a competent chef (I'll try it at Common Roots cafe) but I'm mostly sticking to rice and beans and lentils and the like.

One degree of simplicity is that I already basically eat a vegan breakfast - nearly all of my pimped out oatmeal recipes are vegan - it's just oats, fruit, nuts, and spices. Another degree of simplicity is that I already like almond milk.

I guess it will be interesting to see how long it takes me before I'm willing to commit a felony to get an ice cream cone. I'll keep you posted.