I am H-ANGRY

So the first week of the Vegan Challenge has ended. In that week there were lots of new experiences and personal insight that made me feel like I expanded within myself. I have lots to talk about as usual, so I think I am just going to break it into digestible chunks.

The blogs I will publish this week are based on The Vegan Challenge - Week 1 and  Dealing with Hunger.

And today's sub topic is ‘I am H-ANGRY’

The first week of my Vegan Challenge can be described in the amalgamated expression of ‘H-Angry’. It was a constant and epic battle that played out between my old self and the self I wanted to be. And managing the cause and effect emotions from  ‘H-Angry’ is one of the things that needed to be addressed.

Hungry is the first part of ‘H-Angry’. During the week, I constantly thought of food and was

persistently hungry. My work revolves around a desktop so the lack of physical stimulus brought on by physical labour and exercise made me more sensitive to the groans and aches of my stomach. The hunger would be amplified by seeing my friends eat their usual snacks and food around me.

Fighting the hunger was sometimes a losing battle. I found myself getting up a few times to graze for food. My brain was interpreting the sudden animal fat deprivation it was encountering with a call to arms and this alarm manifested itself sometimes into bouts of panic eating.

The Angry part of ‘H-Angry’ was the frustration simmering to a boil. My brain had expectations of what it will have to make it satisfied and I was disappointing it every opportunity I can – CONSCIOUSLY! When hunger struck, the Vegan in me was only able to respond with greens, soups, and what I used to dub as ‘blah food’.  During the time, I was going through some real withdrawal symptoms. I felt agitated, fidgety, lacked focus, I was temperamental, I had insomnia, and I was getting headaches. The hunger would be so intense that I would suddenly bang at my desk for no reason at all other than frustration boiling up. But I never took it out on my colleagues I hope, but my friends were definitely getting some of it!

 In terms of advice dealing with these issues, the best advice I can give is FOCUS on the task, find distractions that benefit your well-being, and EAT.

What is getting me through the days is the satisfaction I get from being brave enough to make this attempt at Veganism. No matter what people say about this being a stupid challenge, or that I can just as easily cheat, or that it is just to get attention, in the end I don’t care. I am chasing my Better Me. Food is a very important part of my life and my experiences recently has made me realise some important things about myself. 

And here I am - focused on making it to the last day of the month and making sure I learn everything I can in this amazing journey. 

NOTE:

I will talk about the other ways that I deal with hunger in the next blog. Recent feedback indicated my blogs were too long. But if you want more content, check out my videos section because I just placed a video there on lunching with the guys at the end of week 1 and us talking about another random topic 'What is death by natural causes?'.