Last week I ate vegan for a week. Not because I am planning to switch to eating vegan completely, but just to try what eating vegan is like.

Accidently my vegan week turned out to be at exactly the same time as the vegan challenge that runs through October in the Netherlands. In this month people challenge themselves to eat vegan for a the entire month.

I didn’t realize this when I came up with the idea of eating vegan for a week, but my vegan challenge was in the right month apparently 😉

To give you an idea of what my low FODMAP vegan challenge looked like, I kept a food diary for the entire week and I am sharing it with you today.

I want to stress that I only ate vegan for a short period. If you want to eat vegan for a longer period and you are following the low FODMAP diet at the same time, I strongly recommend you to consult a dietician.

This because eating vegan can lead to shortages, such as vitamin B12. Next to that as a Fodmapper, there are quite some products, which vegans eat a lot to get their necessary nutrients, that are not low FODMAP.

For example, many legumes are not or only limited low FODMAP and from most nuts, you can only eat a small amount as a Fodmapper.

Therefore, it is important to consult a professional dietician, just to make sure that you get the right amount of nutrients, vitamins and minerals.

Also, food diaries are very personal and therefore I don’t encourage you to copy my food diary and eat exactly as I did.

Every person is different and therefore it is important to tailor your diet to your own nutritional needs. I am sharing this food diary just as an inspiration 😉

*The quality of the pictures is a bit mixed because I took some pictures with my phone and some with my camera. 

Wednesday – The start of the vegan challenge

I came back from a weekend in London on Monday evening and I didn’t have any groceries at home. Therefore I decided to start my vegan challenge in the middle of the week, on Wednesday!

I start the day with a warm bowl of oatmeal (made of 30 g oats and 250 ml almond milk) with a banana and some cinnamon.

After that, I go to the gym. At work, I drink coffee and tea and I eat a TREK bar. This is one of the only bars that you can buy in the (Dutch) supermarket that is low FODMAP* and also vegan.

*Edit: I found out later that this bar contains soy flour. The amount of soy flour is very little, so I think it is still ok to eat on the low FODMAP diet. But it is smart to test whether you tolerate it or not. For me eating this bar once in a while is fine. 

For lunch, I eat a homemade rice salad with low FODMAP vegetables and a bit of soy sauce. In the afternoon I have two more cups of coffee (I know, bad habit at work) and I eat a package of corn crackers* (5 thin crackers in a package).

For dinner, I make my tikka masala recipe, but without chicken and with a lot of vegetables. I shared this recipe with you last Thursday.

*Edit: also in this case I found out later that corn crackers are only low FODMAP up to 12 gram per portion. At 24 gram they become moderate in FODMAPs. This package contains 25 gram and I would therefore not eat it in the elimination phase. 

Thursday

Today I started the day with oatmeal again. This time with baked banana and maple syrup. At work, I drink a cup of coffee and two cups of tea and I have another TREK bar.

For lunch, I eat leftovers from yesterday’s dinner: white rice with coconut milk, pumpkin, tomato and mushrooms.

In the afternoon I drink coffee and tea and I snack with some tomato, cucumber and sweet corn. For dinner, I cook sesame soba noodles with marinated tempeh.

I will share this recipe with you on Tuesday (edit: the recipe is now online). In the evening, I snack two homemade pumpkin bliss balls and later I snack a bit of nut butter from the jar (oops!)

Friday

Today I have black rice pudding with cacao, maple syrup and banana for breakfast. Super good! I go to the gym again and then to work.

At work, I have a TREK bar. For lunch, I eat a salad with marinated tempeh and vegetables.

In the afternoon, I snack on some corn crackers and I drink coffee and tea. In the evening I don’t feel like cooking, so I throw some leftovers together.

I make a salad with bok choy, corn, tomato, cucumber and olives and on the side, I have sweet potato fries with homemade tahini dressing and some mustard.

After dinner, I have a cup of tea and a pumpkin bliss ball. This time just one 😉

Saturday

I do an attempt to make the pumpkin pancakes, which I shared on the blog yesterday, vegan by using a flax egg instead of a normal egg, but that fails hopelessly.

My breakfast is, therefore, a mixture of pumpkin pancakes and half-cooked batter. For a snack, I have a banana with some maple syrup.

I have lunch at the Happiness café in Eindhoven where I eat a vegan acai bowl. Which wasn’t entirely low FODMAP, I realised when I got it, oops.

Yup, I still make stupid mistakes sometimes too. In the afternoon I snack on half a vego bar, a vegan chocolate bar.

My dinner is a black rice noodle salad with edamame beans, seaweed and cucumber. In the evening, I have a small bag of sea salt chips because it’s weekend 😉

Sunday

My breakfast is a homemade smoothie bowl of banana, almond milk and raspberries and a topping of spelt crunchy kiwi and pecans. After breakfast, I go to the gym.

In between, I have the other half of the vego bar and a dark chocolate rice cake. My lunch is a sandwich with homemade baba ganoush and vegetables.

I’ll share this recipe with you next week (edit: the recipe is online now).

In the afternoon, I feel like baking and I make gluten-free kruidnoten (Dutch spiced cookies). I enjoy a bit too many of them and therefore I don’t feel so hungry for dinner.

I was planning to make a pizza with a polenta crust with vegetables. I do still make it, but I only eat half of it.

Later in the evening, I feel like eating the other small bag of chips that I bought. Unfortunately, some air got into the bag and the chips taste horrible, so I throw it away after having eaten a few.

Monday

I have black rice pudding with banana and maple syrup for breakfast again. I’ll also share this recipe with you 😉 (edit: the recipe is online now). Then I go to the gym.

At work, I drink coffee and tea and I eat two rice cakes with dark chocolate as a snack.

My lunch consists of the other half of the polenta pizza and a rice cake with peanut butter. In the afternoon I drink coffee and tea and I have some of my homemade kruidnoten.

For dinner, I make oven-baked tomato rice balls with a salad on the side. In the evening I drink a cup of tea and I snack a few pecans.

Tuesday

My breakfast is an autumn smoothie bowl with pumpkin, banana, pumpkin spice and almond milk. At work, I have coffee and tea and I snack on two rice cakes with dark chocolate.

For lunch, I eat a salad with tempeh and vegetables.

In the afternoon I drink coffee and I eat a TREK bar. I have dinner a bit later than normal, so I snack on some pecans before dinner.

For dinner, I make a vegan burger with tofu and sweet potato which I eat on a sourdough spelt bun. I was planning to share the recipe on the blog, but I didn’t like the burger so much, unfortunately.

And that was my vegan week! I must say I am quite relieved that it is over. Eating a vegan or a vegetarian meal now and then is something I don’t find difficult at all, but eating vegan for an entire week was quite a challenge for me.

At several moments I almost ate something that was not vegan by accident and once I put a chocolate in my mouth and work and only realised later that this was milk chocolate and not vegan.

There were quite a lot of things that I missed eating and I found it difficult that my options of foods I could eat were even more limited in combination with the low FODMAP diet.

I am happy that I tried the vegan week. I am even more aware of what I put in my mouth now (honestly, when you follow the low FODMAP diet, you already have to be quite aware of what you put in your mouth and you already read every label in the supermarket) and I think it is good to eat fewer animal products.

I don’t think I will ever stop eating it entirely, but I do want to focus on choosing better products. Eggs from chickens that have a good life, meat from animals that have had a better life and so on. But I do believe that this is something you can do in small steps.

I once read on a vegan blog (free translation): we don’t want to force people to become a vegan too or to remove all animal products from their diet, but we are happy when somebody becomes more aware of what he/she puts in his/her mouth and when he/she starts to eat fewer animal products and I think that is a very nice way to see it.

Also with small steps and by making little changes in our habits, we can make the world a bit better.

What do you think about eating vegan? Would you try the vegan challenge?