I, an avid meat and ice cream-eater, have been eating vegan for the past week as a George Plimpton-esque adventure. Now, on my last day, I am literally counting down the hours until I am reunited with meat and dairy products again.

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal.

Lunch: I go with my family to Coast, the beach-side restaurant in the Shutter’s Hotel in Santa Monica. I look the menu over again and again, dreaming about all the food that I can’t eat. I want to order spaghetti until someone points out that a lot of spaghetti is made with eggs, which the waitress confirms. The waitress tells me that the only vegan item on the menu is a Portobello mushroom steak with barley rice. “Steak” is a major exaggeration – it is just a small, thin slice of Portobello – but the dish as a whole is delicious.

11 PM: No dinner yet. I’m holding out for midnight, at which point I am going to get chicken at El Pollo Loco and rainbow sherbert ice cream at a Rite Aid. The time can’t pass quickly enough.

I started this week knowing that it would be difficult to eat vegan, and it has been, but in a very different way than I thought it would be. I thought I’d have to cook at home a lot more, but this hasn’t been the case. I thought I’d be eating really bland food, and this also hasn’t been true.

On the other hand, though, I thought I’d lose weight and feel healthier, and this is absolutely not true. One of the reasons I’m excited to end this week is so I can go back to eating healthy. As a vegan, you’re stuck eating a lot of beans and carbs, and eating tons of vegetables and fruits wrecks havoc on your digestive system.

Yet, even though I can’t wait to eat an entire chicken, I’m going to take a couple things away with me that I learned this week. One is the amazing vegan chili I made; another is vegan restaurants like Real Food Daily, which I’ve now fallen in love with. Eating vegan definitely made me pay attention to what goes into the food I eat. Reading labels , studying menus, and just plain thinking about how food is cooked is incredibly beneficial when you’re trying to eat healthy. But I don’t believe that eating vegan is healthy. The diet is very unbalanced and, as one friend pointed out to me, soy isn’t actually that good for you.

If you’re absolutely obsessed with animals and want to save them all, then sure, eat vegan. Learn how to cook, try to eat a variety of foods from all the food groups, be prepared to have your body adjust for a couple weeks (my body definitely didn’t adjust within a week), and get used to not eating at restaurants when your friends do. If you want to be healthy and eat in a way that’s good for the environment (and, in turn, good for the little piggies and chickens), eat locally grown produce, eat meat sparingly and from free range farms, and eat less. Over-consumption and waste does much more harm to you and the planet than cutting out animal products will benefit it.

Now, the time has come.

Please excuse me while I go eat an entire roast chicken and a tub of ice cream.

[Image from Flickr]

No joke, this morning I woke up in a panic because I thought I’d eaten a ham and cheese sandwich last night. I’m not sure if this is because the rules of vegan eating are so strict you can break them on accident, or if I was just really craving a ham and cheese sandwich.

Breakfast: Trusty ol’ venti soy latte from Starbucks. The server looked like Christian Bale. Suddenly I’m very happy to be eating (and drinking!) vegan this week.

Lunch: Beer!! I go with a friend to the On the Waterfront Café on the Venice Boardwalk, an outdoor beer garden, and I enjoy a tall glass of brew. Some beers and wines are made with some fish product called isinglass, but I read online that German beers are vegan-friendly, so I order a German beer. This is by far the best vegan meal I’ve had in a while.

Dinner: I end up at Real Food Daily, again. I am now completely addicted to their Supreme Burrito. I highly recommend it. My friend gets a club sandwich. He is a huge meat eater and hates health food, but even he admitted that it wasn’t bad.

Does anyone know of any other vegan restaurants in Los Angeles that I should try? Or some vegan friendly products?

[image from veganvice.blogspot.com]

Welcome to day 6 of my week-long vegan eating adventure.

Breakfast: Wheatabix cereal with soy milk.

Lunch: I drag a friend to California Vegan Restaurant on Sunset. I get a sweet and sour seitan (wheat gluten) dish with steamed brown rice. The sauce is tangy and tasty with pineapple, which I always love. But the seitan has a weird consistency and taste, it looks like a cross between tofu and chicken and it kind of creeps me out.

Dinner: I go with some friends to Famima!!, the Japanese convenience store, to get some cheap dinner. I spend twenty minutes looking at all their boxed dinners, studying ingredients, trying to figure out what I could eat. I end up just getting a fruit plate. I watch my friends eat their food and think of a new annoying thing about eating vegan: you can’t try your friends food. I’m someone who always steals other people’s food, so this is incredibly annoying.

2 AM: My friends and I go to Norms diner in Santa Monica after dancing to exhaustion at Gas Lite. Everyone orders pancakes, eggs, ice cream. I order a salad. I get a small plate of iceberg lettuce. I don’t know how they make their salad dressings, so I stick with vinegar. Major yuck.

It occurred to me today that one great way to eat vegan would be through one of those meal-delivery services. Does anyone know of one that has good vegan options?

[photo from veganmenu.blogspot.com]

Vintage slips are a great way to get started. If the idea of buying someone else’s old slip sounds gross, try romantic stores like Anthropolgie or even just your local department storeand pick up one that has nice details, like lace trim.

The key is to not just wear the slip by itself, but to play around with layering. I have a cream colored slip that I like to wear under a sheer wrap dress, while my favorite lacy black slip looks great tucked into a pencil skirt and worn with a girly cardigan. This is a great winter look, especially, because you can wear your slip with tights for extra coverage.

If you’re feeling a little more bold, try a corset, or let the top of a lacy bra peek out from under a scoop-neck top. Play around with what you have, and check out stores like Only Hearts, which specializes in what they call “inner outerwear” (they have boutiques in New York and Santa Monica, plus an online shop).

Letting a bit of lingerie show is a great way to feel sexy and spice up your wardrobe a bit, no thong-showing required.