Dry veganuary: the frontier of the january resolutions and tips to survive it

After the binge of the Christmas holidays, January has always been the month dedicated to detox and to establish healthier habits. Among the initiatives that I discovered as being considered cool by wannabe Instagram celebrities that I follow, there are “Veganuary” and “Dry January”. As the beginning of the new year was approaching, I also thought to fill the void in my life enduring a strict 30-day-long resolution that no one cares about but that would give me the feeling I had accomplished something. 

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco

However, none of the above two challenges struck me as significantly hard to achieve. I have been eating broccoli and chicken breast without salt nor oil every single day for the past 12 months, which is such a dull meal that it qualifies as vegan. Practically speaking, I have been vegan for the past year without even realizing it. Going vegan for 30 more days is such a low entropy event that it is not worth documenting on Instagram, which means it is not worth to be done at all. When it comes to alcohol, I don’t drink that much already. It happens rarely that I drink more than one glass of wine per week and this held true even during the holidays. Going one month without alcohol would have on the contrary relieved me of some social pressure when people look at me in disbelief when I order mint tea for apéro. 

Bref, none of the two most fashionable challenges on Instagram would have put me in such distress to, first of all, show off my virtue and, second of all, distract me from the truly hard things I need to face in my life. How to solve this problem?

I had to ask myself what is really the activity that would make my life miserable had I not practiced it for a month. The answer came immediately and I didn’t like it how that a-ah moment felt. My muscles completely froze and I could not move for few seconds, I felt my blood pressure dropping, my wrists started shaking and my stomach cringed… It was sex I had to give up for a month! 

Photo by Dainis Graveris

I started making excuses explaining to myself why not having sex for a month was not the right challenge for me. But it was all bullshit. I knew it was the right resolution: the anxiety and the general despair this created was the proof that this is what I needed to do (well, not to do) in January. I have also coined a very Instagram-friendly name for this challenge that I am really proud of: “Dry Veganuary”. Dry is clear: I am giving up sex, so I am saying no to any sort of fluid exchange. Vegan because… well, how would you call a woman that does not have an active sexual life in a politically correct manner? Vegan, of course!

I am proud to say that I made it. I had to rethink my definition of dignity to go through Dry Veganuary, but at the time of writing this blog post it is early February and I feel super proud of myself. I know that this resolution sounds enticing to all of you readers, hence I put together in the following all the strategies that I used. Without further ado, let’s go through them.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Get Covid. Go to a restaurant packed with people on Last Year Eve so that you catch Covid. Then be in bed sick and in pain for a week. I assure you that sex won’t be among your thoughts for the whole week. 

Resume your workout routine. Do you remember the workout routine you had before work became crazy prior to the Christmas holidays? Yes, baby. Resume that workout routine and, if you can, even enhance it. You have some extra time left now and some endorphins to release in a way or another. Endorphins reduce the feeling of pain. And a body longing for sex is, scientifically speaking, a body in pain. I personally have worked out 3-4 times a week lifting weights and training a lot my core… and felt I needed no man afterwards.

Start a diet. Together with working out, you could start a diet as well. For me it meant to be strict on the chicken and broccoli meals and allow for no exceptions. The goal is not necessary to lose weight (even though this is a welcomed byproduct). Instead, the goal is to be hungry all the time… so that hopefully the other type of hunger becomes negligible. 

Photo by Anna Pelzer

Let your hair grow. Everywhere! Not only down there, that is obvious. What is less obvious is to let your facial hair grow. Try not to pluck your eyebrows so that hopefully you’ll grow a unique huge eyebrow (il monociglio, in Italian). The idea here is to scare men away with a creepy facial expression. If you manage to successfully grow the mono-eyebrow, you won’t make any effort saying no to men. It’s men who won’t dare even talking to you. 

Get an accountability buddy… Explain to a close friend of yours that you are doing the Dry Veganuary challenge and that you need somebody who checks on you daily and whom you can contact in case of despair. It is in these crucial situations that the accountability buddy is supposed to encourage you to keep going and to resist.

… and change him/her often. You torture the accountability buddy with voice messages where you scream that your life is unbearable and night phone calls where you complain that you cannot sleep. After a couple of days like that, the accountability buddy is exhausted and wants to get out of this role. He/she will tell you that the whole resolution was a stupid idea and to go to a bar and bring home someone, anyone. This is when the accountability buddy is no longer serving his/her purpose and you should find a new one. And, after a couple of days, a new one again.

Photo by Bekir Donmez

Practice spiritual activities. It is during moments of crisis that we rediscover our spirituality and attempt at establishing a connection with nature, God, our inner child, the stars, the moon, they have all been blown out, you left me in the daaaaaark. Yep. Start with something simple. Find a YouTube video with Tibetan bells being played, light a candle, unroll your mat and go ahead with some yoga positions. Feel the benefits of the downward facing dog, the warrior one, two and three, episodes IV, V and VI, the pyramid, the fish… and remember that the pigeon pose releases a lot of emotions. So, if you find yourself rolling on the yoga mat, screaming and banging your fists on the floor… pigeon is to blame!

Lockdown during ovulation. Ovulation is the most critical part of this challenge. Mark on your calendar when these days occur and set up your home as if it was an anti-atomic bunker. Prior to the ovulation days, go to the supermarket and buy fresh and frozen vegetables, a lot of chicken breasts to store in freezer, two kilos of brown rice and few jars of yogurt. Make sure you have put a tick on all the activities that eventually require you to go to the post office, to the doctor and even to your inner yard where you take out the trash. Yes, make sure you have already emptied all the trash bins because the goal is to not even open your apartment door. When ovulation starts, bury yourself at your place and trust that it will soon be over.

And there you are the strategies I used to successfully endure the Dry Veganuary challenge… Do you feel that something is missing? Yep. You might be asking yourself why the most obvious strategy wasn’t in there. Why not talking about masturbation, you may wonder? Because we all know that this calms you down for a couple of hours only and then you’re back at square one ;)

Quote by Kangana Ranaut

Now I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever been in the situation where you needed to find very strict expedients to break certain paths, regain your energy back and focus on yourself again? Do you think you’ll ever use the Dry Veganuary technique? Let me know in the comments below and subscribe to the Breaking Thirty Newsletter for more blog posts.