Clutching to my veggies, I could only hope to survive my self-imposed week as a vegan.

A vegan diet contains no animal byproducts. No eggs. No milk. No honey. No ice cream. No pizza. Not much of anything.

It’s more of an obstacle course than a main course as I found out almost immediately.

The Saturday I started my culinary excursion coincided with the Grady debate tournament.  I drove from my house to get coffee around 6:30 a.m. and then continued to Grady.  After reaching the school, I realized my half-empty mocha tasted so delicious because of the cream  infused by the barista. Strike one.

I spent the rest of the day running around Grady to help out with the tournament we were hosting.  The only thing I ate that day was an amazing bread laid out for parents in the theater.  Remembering my vegan pact, I asked what was in the bread.  Low and behold, the bread contained cheese.  Strike two.

After the long day I went with some others to the famous Majestic Diner on Ponce de Leon Avenue. Starved from the sparse diet of cheesy bread, I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu.  It was only after gulping down an entire egg and cheese bagel that I realized the error of my ways. Strike three.

One day into my week as a vegan, and I had already struck out.  Undeterred by my initial failure, I rededicated myself to veganism and redoubled my efforts to avoid animal products.

The next day I went out with my mom for a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes at Radial Cafe.  Buckwheat pancakes are, perhaps expectedly, a poor substitute for their fluffy buttermilk counterparts, and I was forced to drown my meal in a deluge of maple syrup.

After shopping for a weeks’ worth of vegan supplies, I was ready to continue on my journey.

I was also surprised that a good amount of what I already ate was entirely vegan. Chex Mix was  a constant companion on my voyage into veganism as was spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Not all my meals, however, were so cut and dry. I also tried to experiment with new foods like the “wheat meat,” Seitan.  Seitan is a replacement for meat that uses no animal products. Not to be confused with tofu, Seitan has a chicken-ish texture and smells like a chicken might if it had been seeped in water then confined to a can.

Another proxy meat I used during the week was Tempeh.  After artificially flavoring my artificial meat with barbecue sauce and putting it into a taco, the flavor was masked enough to be tasty.  The meal was more lively than the seitan and it taught me an important life lesson: to avoid fake meat.

Through the trials of veganism, I discovered food is genuinely better with a little animal in it.  Butter makes everything taste better.

But the bliss of a vegan diet is about more than how the food tastes. No one would consider converting to veganhood so they could gorge on buckwheat pancakes.  The beauty of the diet lies in its simplicity.

In today’s society of rampant obesity, vegans avoid all unnatural foods and the health consequences that accompany them.  As a result of my vegan diet, for example, cholesterol vanished from my diet.

It may have been inconvenient, but veganism pushed nutrition to the front of my mind. So even in my more carnivorous future, my week as a vegan will make me consider more carefully what I eat, leaving me healthier and happier in the long run.