I´m going VEGAN (almost) – And I could REALLY need some help! (A Steemit experiment)

HOLY COW! I cant believe I´m doing this. I´m going VEGAN! (almost)

If you knew me well, you´d go: “You!? Going vegan?? Haha! You don’t fool me! You´ll never make it!”

Yeah, if you knew me you´d know I spend a whole lot of time in my BBQ shack doing stuff like this:

and this..

and this..

Yeah, you get the drill..

So why on earth, you may ask, would you go vegan (almost)??

Well, that´s a very good question!
It all started about half a year ago. I was at this organic food festival in Oslo and had the pleasure of hearing an awesome Swedish chef talking. He has a couple of restaurants and they more or less ONLY do vegetables (sometimes with a little meat or fish as garnish).

He does this experiment on the audience. He says; Imagine the best piece of meat you could get. Now take some time and think of how you´d cook that piece of meat and what you would do with it.
Now, imagine a carrot. Go home and do with the carrot what you wanted to do with the meat!

I found it really inspiring and went home and did a couple of experiments.
They turned out pretty good, however it didnt take long before I was back on the meatwagon.
But since then I´ve been building up inspiration and motivation and have been more and more primed to go veggie/vegan!

I´ve off course also seen a lot of those food documentaries that tell you meat and dairy is the source of all evil and will cause death and destruction to you and the planet we´re living on.
Those films have a double effect on me.

On the one hand I really believe a lot of the things being said is true. A lot of it is backed up pretty well in big peer-reviewed studies. I let myself be inspired and they motivate me to wanting to eat much more veggies, fruits and nuts and less meat and dairy.
On the other hand I tend to think that food science is extremely complex and our bodies are extremely complex and I don’t swallow everything being said in those docus.

Another thing that´s pushing me to try this is my own health and wellbeing.
Over the last 3 years I´ve gained almost 20kg (44 punds) and I´m starting to think I really need to do something now. It´s not that I´m extremely over weight but I have this feeling that if I don’t do something now it will just be harder and harder to change my lifestyle.

There are other things that motivate me as well, but I wont go into more right now.

My plan is to take it step by step. Meaning: I´m starting with ONE week. 7 DAYS.
To me that feels manageable. And having that feeling is really important!
If I´d go; “I´ll be a vegan for the rest of my life” at this point.. I would fail.

SO! Now we come to the part where I need YOUR HELP!

The experiment is this:
Will the Steemit community be able to help me, a more or less complete stranger to most of you, to accomplish my goals??

I know myself pretty well by now.
I´m a hedonist. I want to enjoy life and EVERYTHING it has to offer. Gluttony is my deadly sin..

I´m 100% sure that this will not be very easy for me.
And I`m 100% sure that I cant do it alone.

WILL YOU HELP ME?
What can you help me with?
Although I´d very much appreciate your upvotes and resteems, what I would like the most is your comments.
Comments about awesome recipes.
Comments on how to get 3 boys age 1-7 to eat vegetables (This is a never ending discussion around our dinner table…). I´m not turing them into vegetarians or vegans, but would be awesome if some of you have some tricks up your selves on how to get them to eat a bit more vegetables.
Comments about how your transformation from meat to veggies were.
Comments of encouragement.
Basically anything you think could help me based on your own experience.

So am I going VEGAN or VEGETARIAN?
Well, I´m going to try to lean as much as possible to the vegan side, but I´m not going to be 100%. So an egg, some cheese or some dairy products here and there is ok. I´ll probably not buy any myself, but if I´m offered and there´s not much else to have I might eat it.

I will be trying to do one post each day about the progress.

BONUS GOALS:
Work out 3 times this week and NO candy, chips, beer, snacks etc.

DAY 1
Today I had my first day and it actually went pretty well. High motivation helps a lot! (I´m expecting that to drop substantially on the days to come...)
I had some cheese though. It was on a wholemeal baguette I had for breakfast.
For lunch at work I bought a salad, an avocado, some nuts and dried fruits.
For dinner I made home made tomato soup with tomatoes, vegetable broth, kidney beans, lentils, garlic and red onions. Wholemeal bread with some butter on the side. That soup turned out quite good, but my two oldest boys (who usually love the “tomato soup” you get in the stores, you know the powder crap that you add water to) didn’t enjoy it much…

I also played football (soccer) for 1 ½ hours! It was really intense (haven’t played for a very long time!) but a lot of fun and a really good feeling to be that exhausted again!

Alright everyone!

Let´s see if this experiment will work! Will the Steemit community deliver? Will I deliver??

I have faith.

Peace, Peter