I used to eat a lot of meat.
Like a lot. One time, I went to Natures Emporium and spent over $50 on just bacon because they had the best free-range, Mennonite-raised, sugar free, nitrate free, preservative-free bacon and it was 45 minutes from my house. My plates were filled with chicken, steak, pork, ground beef, ground turkey – I ate the occasional salad, topped with more ounces of meat than one person should eat in one sitting. I was #paleo. If you looked through my instagram you would see mostly pictures of meat – sometimes several types of meat with one meal. So trust me when I say that if you think you can never be vegan because you love meat – I feel you.
I like to think that I was always “into” healthy eating. I ate as consciously as I could, bought free-range organic meat whenever my paycheck permitted, cooked with healthy fats, I even did the whole 30. For those who don’t know about the #whole30 you should definitely check it out and read the book – there is lots of easy to read information on transitioning into a sugar free, real food diet. I always knew that eating real foods was the way forward, and at that time in my life I was eating real foods – just my real foods included meat.
I always scoffed a little at vegetarians and vegans
I felt they were pretentious and thought they were better than everyone because they didn’t eat animals. It was annoying to me at the time. And maybe a part of me resisted the change toward vegetarianism and eventually veganism because I didn’t want to seem that way myself. I didn’t want to “give in” so to speak. And I certainly didn’t want to be vegan to be trendy. The only thing worse than a pretentious vegan would be a pretentious vegan who only did it to be fashionable. Uch.
About a year ago I had been practicing yoga regularly for a while, and began dating my yoga teacher. Oops! He was vegetarian, so whenever we went out I would eat vegetarian because lets face it, I could never eat everything on my plate and lets just say he had a healthy appetite ;). After a while eating vegetarian became second nature for me, I was practicing yoga more, and was beginning my mindfulness teacher training. Something shifted in me for sure.
I had always eaten healthy.
I was conscious about my eating habits and put good quality food into my body. But something had changed and I wanted to nourish my body with food that would have me feel complete. I just didn’t see how eating an animal that had endured pain and suffering would have me feel wholly nourished. Being grounded in this was key to my success – I can’t say I’ve craved meat since that realization, so for me transitioning into vegetarianism wasn’t all that hard. Not to mention almost every restaraunt these days has vegetarian options. However, as my yoga practice deepended, something shift further and eating became bigger than me. It became an opportunity – with each meal – to make a conscious choice to consume foods that supported sustainable ways of living. A choice to refrain from being a part of animal suffering all together, and to have each meal be a part of a change that was bigger than me. So I became vegan and did the unthinkable – I gave up cheese. And all other animal products of course, but cheese seems to be the one that most people can’t part with. To be honest, by body doesn’t like cheese anyways, it makes me feel bloated and awful so once again, it wasn’t that hard.
People often ask my “Why are you vegan? Is it because it’s more healthy?” I always find this question sticky. And the answer is it depends how you define health. If you define health as the absense of disease, then there are many diets, ones that include meat, that would support this. My definition of health is more holistic, including the mind body and spirit. Being vegan for me has a lot to do energetically – like not consuming an animal that has suffered, and not being a part of the suffering of an animal in any way. It has a lot to do with animal agriculture being the leading cause of green house emissions, rain forest desecration, and a microcosm of world hunger. Being vegan also happens to reduce cholesterol, increase your vegetable intake (obviously…) which therefore increases how many vitamins and minerals you are getting, and a vegan diet is much easier on the digestive system. My poops are much better for it.
I want to be clear that being vegan isn’t the “right” way to live and eat, it happens to be the way that serves me.
The way of life that calls to me, that has me feel whole and complete, and that honors my view of life. This may not be the case for you, and that’s ok. Whatever your view of life, of food and eating, is ok and you are in the perfect place. I would however, encourage you to challenge your views, acknowledge that just as mine are not the truth, neither are yours. Maybe you will try on veganism, maybe you never will. You can’t force a flower to bloom anymore than I could attempt to “force” people to be vegan – so I wont even try. All I can do is share my views of life, and encourage you to challenge your views, and see where that leads.
