Deal With It, or the Vegan 30-day Plan

Welcome to my Spring experiment - the Vegan 30-day Plan.

Here's the deal - I love meat, primarily pig. It's juicy, comes in a variety of cuts, and is relatively affordable. I also love cheese. Parmesan is my favorite. I eat eggs for breakfast quite regularly. I make smoothies with yogurt. And, I love cookies, especially home baked chocolate chip goodness. So why the drastic departure from my every day line up?

I'm 37, don't smoke, exercise regularly and have a well-balanced diet. I stay away from sodas, have tried to eliminate high fructose corn syrup from my food line-up, and don't eat fried foods (other than french fries with a burger). Yet, I've long been interested in doing a Spring detox to swoosh out the system and start the season fresh. In March, I attempted the Master Cleanse after three friends at work tried it out. Only one person made it through the recommended 10-days, subsisting exclusively off a lemon juice-water-maple syrup-cayenne pepper potion, the occasional salt water wash and laxative tea. Without doing much research, I decided to try the cleanse myself. I made it three days and stopped for a variety of reasons. Mostly, that particular cleanse didn't seem healthy to me. I wanted to detox, but I didn't want to sacrafice eating for nearly two weeks.

Enter the Vegan 30-day plan. It's my attempt to 'detox' or rather, to take a break from the meat, dairy and eggs I love to allow my body a chance to rest from the work of digesting these foods. It's also a chance for me to challenge myself in a way that I can embrace. Just call it the reverse of Morgan Spurlock's 30-day McDonald's experiment. I call it the Vegan 30-day plan.