Before we go any further, I’m going to admit something: I already know how this turns out. I’m writing this after the fact. Seven days after the fact to be specific. It was touch-and-go for a while and I needed more … info before I could explain it:

PAIN. The massive pain. The pain that makes me think “WTF? Is there anything in the world I can eat that won’t cause me misery after just three days? Is there something just that wrong inside me? (Don’t answer that; not sure I want to know.) Am I dying?

Because these are the thoughts that always go through my head after 3 of the most perfect days ever, ones in which I was positive that I had unlocked the secret to intestinal comfort and joy.

But while days 2 and 3 were marked by moments of feeling utterly nothing — at all! — for the first time ever in my gut, no pain, no misery, no rumbling, no nausea, no nothing, and day 4 started that way, by midday, it descended into agony.

It was like I was my normal self again. Only this time, more depressed because even fucking veganism doesn’t work for me.

So here’s how it played out: I’m out walking my dog sometime around noon on day 4 and thinking pretty thoughts like, “damn, my tummy feels good, maybe even like a normal human“ and “if this keeps up, I’ll never touch another animal product again forever and ever, except the freeze-dried liver in my pocket but that’s for my dog, promise” and “why did he shit 3 times on this walk?” (unrelated thought — and “he” is my dog, Butters) and “how much would I need to make per year if I wanted to retire comfortably by the time I’m 80 and what are the odds someone would actually pay me that?” (big picture view: it’s not really that far away) when I start to feel it. Stomach pains.

They’re just starting and mild, so I ignore it. Everyone’s gotta fart sometime. BTW, my vegan diet seems to have reduced that, although I do burp more.

But the longer we walk, and we’re doing close to 5 miles right now, the more uncomfortable I’m becoming. Still no big deal.

Until later that night when it just keeps getting worse and worse. I’m uncomfortable, annoyed, distressed, irritated, and frustrated.

So I eat a salad with 3 big handfuls of spinach, half a roasted red beet, a couple of stalks of celery, some cherry tomatoes, a kiwi with its furry little cover, two different peppers, kohlrabi, pumpkin seeds, garbanzo beans and some other shit thrown in. While delicious, it really doesn’t actually help.

I vowed earlier in this vegan experiment that I wouldn’t take digestive enzymes, probiotics, or acidophilus and I’m still holding strong.

But, dang, why does this hurt.

I go to bed eventually and wake up the next morning. My stomach still feels kinda terrible.

This lasts for about 3 days, probably a little longer. I assume it’s just a phase, although not one the internet has told me about, which seems odd because everything is on the internet. Even this:

Each day seems to progress the same: I wake up with some discomfort, mostly in the lower part of the stomach, which really isn’t the stomach at all — it’s that jumbled up colon zone, the tubes looking to deliver to the poop-shoot, whatever you want to call it, but it’s all post-tummy. It doesn’t really get rolling until I’ve eaten something though. Until then, I’m just feeling a bit full.

Which reminds me: one thing the internet has told me is that I won’t feel full on a vegan diet. According to everything I read, I will hate my life because of a lack of food.

This seems odd because act I started this game, I’ve been over-stuffed, sometimes to the point of discomfort. Or maybe usually to the point of discomfort. Since it looks like vegans usually consume fewer calories than omnivores, and I know for a fact that I am consuming fewer calories that I was before losing the animal foods, I assume that most of the stuff I’m reading about vegan diets is garbage written for garbage sites like healthline.com or verywellhealth.com that are focused on visits and clicks rather than valuable info (throw Harvard Health and WebMD in there too and obviously Livestrong shouldn’t be left out; one day, I’ll finally explain how and why these sites show up at the top of ever search for nutrition or other health info info and why you really shouldn’t trust the info you read there without carefully checking sources and conducting your own objective research and, of course, why marketing ruins everything). All of this is to say that I’m really not hungry at all.

I’m also definitely not constipated. And my actual stomach — upper tummy — only hurts when I fill it and then it starts processing the food (sometimes, I feel like I need to jump around or at least go for a walk to get stuff moving) and I burp and everything is groovy again, until that food hits the colon zones.

But after that, I have other discomfort and I just want to know why.

I cheat, and, after dinner on day 6, I take a digestive enzyme. It helps somewhat but the next morning, everything is back again.

Incidentally, by the time I write this report on days 4-6, I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed down the reason I feel this way discomfort, although it takes me easily five days to do that. I’ll cover all of that in days 7 thru 11.