Journalist and writer Decca Aitkenhead shared her personal experience.
Decca Aitkenhead (Decca Aitkenhead) Guardian journalist, author of All At Sea.
At the beginning of 2017, I couldn’t leave my bed. January has just begun, and I have already failed to keep my New Year’s resolution to go to the gym again due to a bad flu. I had to ask friends to look after the children. When they arrived, I crawled towards the front door. One glance at my pitiful figure clinging to the radiator in the hallway was enough for them to gently reproach me and advise me to take better care of my health.
I didn’t lead a completely unhealthy lifestyle, but I never thought much about health. By nature I am quite lazy and love to eat. And until the age of 40, health was maintained on its own. I went to the gym from time to time, watched my weight, and did quite well without spirulina smoothies and a health food store discount card. It never even occurred to me that one day this approach would no longer work.
After a difficult course of chemotherapy in 2015, I gained excess weight, and all that was left of my immune system was its name. The flu was the last straw. It was time to take radical measures. I needed help. I found a small company called Detox-Fit that provides the services of a personal trainer and nutritionist. Only they offer not just healthy food, but exclusively veganism.
Previously, I had not thought about my relationship with animals. She loved to eat meat, and considered veganism to be empty talk. Then I asked myself: is it possible for me to eat healthy without becoming a vegan? Why not just listen to your body? For most this is a reasonable decision, but not for me. My body regularly requires two Mars bars for breakfast and a chocolate bar on top.
The owners of Detox-Fit looked like a model of physical ideal, and I decided on a three-month experiment with a personal trainer and a vegan diet. Just in case, I took part in the Women’s Health magazine challenge and took a photo of myself before the challenge. Such challenges have always seemed very effective to me.
Nothing motivates you to stay away from the refrigerator more than the anticipation of an “after” photo.
At the end of January 2017, I started working out with a trainer three to four times a week. Rory Lynn used to be a professional rugby player. He dispelled all my preconceptions about personal trainers. Previously, they always seemed to me simply a symbol of lifestyle.
I’ve never been attracted to the idea of paying someone to yell at me at the gym. So I worked out on my own, doing the same exercises for almost 25 years. They weren’t much different from what most gym-goers do: a few sets of weight machines, a treadmill, and some Jane Fonda-style kicking in the air. It never occurred to me that all this was practically a waste of time.
There was nothing like that in training with Rory. I plunged into a new unfamiliar world: bear walk and burpees, Turkish get-ups and Russian crunches, one-leg glute bridge and crab walk. Some of them were similar to movements from everyday life: climbing onto a platform, throwing a medicine ball onto a mat, walking back and forth with a heavy load.
When Rory demonstrated these exercises, they seemed simple and even fun. But when I started doing them, after a few minutes I was already lying on the floor trying to catch my breath. “When will we move on to the simulators?” – I asked pitifully. It turned out never.
But that was not the main surprise. Working out almost to the point of nausea with Rory was much easier than hanging around the gym on her own. By temperament, I am usually not inclined to give up control to others. And it came as a complete surprise to me how much easier it is for me to study when everything is decided for me. The difficulty is to force yourself to come to the gym, and then not sneak out of there after 20 minutes. Because of this, you spend the entire training fighting with yourself. But when you have a coach, you can simply forget about it.
You come when the coach says and do what he says. No willpower is needed here.
Somehow, unnoticed by me, other useful habits took root. I started getting up at 5 am and starting the day with a 15-minute cold bath. This was recommended to me by a friend who also went through chemotherapy. They are believed to improve the functioning of the immune system. The first time I screamed at the whole house. I soon realized that I needed to climb into the empty bathtub and gradually pour water. I wouldn’t call it a pleasant experience, but the feeling afterwards is comparable to taking class A drugs. Sometimes the high lasts until lunch.
A massage with a dry brush is also a great way to help you feel alive. It is useful for lymphatic drainage and removal of toxins. It’s very simple: massage your entire body with a dry brush for 10 minutes, and after a few days you begin to glow.
Another surprise awaited me. Veganism does not complicate life, but simplifies it. An omnivorous diet is an endless debate between your inner angel and demon. Everything you eat requires decisions. And so you only need to make one decision – not to eat animal products. Then you hardly think about food. Advertising calls to eat something harmful stop working. Fast food can tempt you as much as you want, you won’t succumb anymore.
If you eat only plant foods, the likelihood of eating something very harmful is minimized.
Vegetables, seeds, legumes and fruits become an integral part of the diet. You no longer need to think about how to fit them into your diet. Of course, you can overeat with popcorn or French fries. But these foods, unlike fried chicken or cheesecake, are not artificially created to trick your senses into eating more and more. Therefore, there is not much harm from it.
It is, of course, more difficult for vegans to go to cafes and restaurants. The Happy Cow app helps me. Almost anywhere in the world it finds establishments with vegan cuisine. Even in the American city of Spokane, where Krispy Kreme donuts come first, Happy Cow found me a juice bar with vegan rice dishes. In Melbourne, with his help, I came across an amazing place called Lord of the Fries, which sells vegan chicken schnitzels and bacon burgers. And in London I was able to satisfy my need for fast food at the Sanctuary restaurant. They have an eggless frittata on the menu and amazing tofu fish fries that taste like cod.
App not found
Veganism didn’t give me any trouble until my friends invited me over.
I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position. I naively believed that it was enough to ask them not to prepare anything separately for me. It turned out that my fear of causing inconvenience was nothing compared to the panic of the hosts at the thought that their guest would eat only bread and lettuce. They prepared a delicious vegan dish for me. And although it was amazingly tasty, I felt awkward.
I used to always think: why don’t vegans eat what they give at a party, and the next day just go back to their diet? But then I believed that they would secretly be happy to eat something harmful. It seemed to me that I would feel this way if I were in their place. Since it wasn’t compassion for animals that led me to veganism, I thought that I wouldn’t worry if I snapped and ate something meaty.
But here another surprise awaited me. When I look at meat now, I have no desire to eat it. And not at all because of the harm to my body, but because of the thought of what happened to it before it got to my plate.
As soon as you start to think about where meat comes from, you realize that it is unacceptable to eat it.
Of course, a bacon sandwich will still seem delicious to me. But keeping a couple of slaves at home would also be very convenient, but no one in their right mind would do this.
After three months, I could no longer return to my old lifestyle. Rory and I have extended the sports challenge until the end of the year. Over time, my only complaint about living a healthy lifestyle became my tendency to become complacent. My previous careless attitude towards health disappeared. I even began to enjoy the new lifestyle.
By the end of the year, I had lost 18 kilograms, built muscles I didn’t even know I had, and felt physically strong again for the first time in years. It was much more enjoyable to take photos with the results for Women’s Health magazine. But the main change came when I came to terms with my new self. At first I was uncomfortable admitting that I was a vegan, but now I love it.
I love that I am no longer complicit in the horrors that lie at the heart of the modern Western diet. I like to take myself and the planet more seriously.
Now I’m just worried about where this will all lead. Recently, friends from Los Angeles came to visit me. They were always fanatically concerned about their health and were quite critical of my diet. I wrote to them in advance that dinner would be gluten-free and vegan and asked if they had any other dietary preferences. To be honest, I was more interested in impressing them. What other preferences could there be besides “vegan” and “gluten-free”?
“Now we only eat foods that suit our blood type,” my friends answered me. When I laughed it off, I felt uneasy. Is this really what awaits me too? If I write about nutrition based on blood type next year, please someone order me a Big Mac.
