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Fifteen years ago on December 1st, 2001, I implemented a decision that would forever change my life: I decided to go vegan.<\/p>\nFifteen years ago on December 1st, 2001, I implemented a decision that would forever change my life: I decided to go vegan.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years later, I’m still joyfully vegan. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Previous to taking the plunge\u00a0to follow a vegan lifestyle, I had long struggled with the idea of eating animals.<\/p>\n
One memory comes from when I was very young — I’m guessing I might have been about four years old (and certainly no older than five). \u00a0At that point in my life, I had never yet eaten a particular kind of meat that my dad’s side of the family would often prepare and eat as part of the Sunday Family dinners we would have at my father’s parents’ house… a meat they referred to as “spare ribs”. (As a reference point, my parents had separated when I was about three and a half years old, so it’s no wonder I had developed the habit of\u00a0referring to my family as either my mom or “mom’s side” versus my dad or “dad’s side”.)<\/p>\n
As a child, this “spare rib” meat looked gross to me. It had big bones poking out of it. It obviously came from an animal, and I was afraid to eat it.<\/p>\n
It was during one of these Sunday dinners \u00a0my dad and grandparents — although I think it was more my grandfather’s doing, come to think of it — had decided enough was enough… it was\u00a0time to push my child food-pickiness aside and make me eat spare ribs.<\/p>\n
I remember how I really<\/em> didn’t want to eat it. Sure, I had never tried\u00a0one before, so how could I know I wouldn’t like it? But the mere idea of eating it just tore me up inside. “Just try it, you’ll like it,” they insisted. I was adamantly stubborn and not wanting to eat it, but they kept persisting. I remember feeling so strongly about it I was\u00a0crying, literally in tears. But they wouldn’t stop and leave me alone until I had at least one taste.<\/p>\n I finally gave in. I reluctantly took a\u00a0bite of a slimy looking spare rib. Getting myself to take a bite seemed like torture at the time. And…<\/p>\n …It wasn’t awful. I didn’t die. And it was okay, actually. I guess I liked it?<\/p>\n The indoctrination was complete. Eating parts of cooked, dead animals\u00a0was normal, I was supposed to like it, want it, and eat it… and so I did.<\/p>\n I had a long and difficult struggle in terms of having a healthy relationship with food before adopting a plant-based diet.<\/p>\n The food I was fed\u00a0by my family and parents while growing up was not the healthiest.<\/p>\n Since my mom had sole custody of me (my dad had visiting rights every second weekend, and I would spend the night at his place on those weekends), my primary source of food was from my mom and her side of the family. Nearly everyone on my mom’s side is obese. Genetics surely plays some factor, but so does learned behavior, such as food choices and eating habits.<\/p>\n Looking back, whole grains, fruits, legumes and vegetables were not abundant in my youth. Fruit usually consisted of sad macintosh apples… the kind that had a thick wax coating, were often bruised and mealy, and were definitely not a pleasure to eat. Maybe there were bananas on occasion, but usually it was just sad, crappy apples. Fresh produce was usually limited to iceberg lettuce (typically reserved for making taco salad), carrots (which were somehow pretty bad, too), and an occasional tomato (which was also usually specially reserved for taco salad as well). Everything else came from a package, can, or a box, or was meat or dairy (and sometimes egg). I grew up on Flintstone vitamins, second hand smoke, Kool-Aid and a plethora of BPA-laden canned foods.<\/p>\n I was given the responsibility of making my own lunches around the age of six. One time at daycare, I had traded some component of my lunch for someone else’s… I can’t remember now what it was… half a sandwich for a cookie? Or maybe it was one of those bad, crappy apples for a cookie… I can’t quite recall. One of the daycare supervisors witnessed this and tattletaled on me\u00a0by informing\u00a0my mom of the trade. The resulting consequence or punishment that followed would be the responsibility of making my own lunch would forever be mine. …I’d even end up making my mom’s lunch on occasion, too.<\/p>\n Learning to enjoy\u00a0and even desire\u00a0healthful foods did not really start happening in my life until I made the decision to embrace a vegan lifestyle. High quality fruits and vegetables were rarely ever present\u00a0in my life before then. My dad’s side of the family tended to eat relatively healthier foods with more vegetables, but these were often very bland and over-cooked — in true English tradition. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n Growing up, my favorite foods were spaghetti, Kraft Dinner (aka macaroni and cheese, Kraft brand), and cheese. In regards to cheese, my favorite cheeses were old cheddar (only available at my dad’s — my mom preferred mild cheddar) and Kraft Parmesan. Sometimes Cheeze Whiz (which is another Kraft product)… which again, come to think of it, was typically only at my dad’s as well. I distinctly remember my young little self announcing my love of cheese by stating that I wanted to marry it when I grew up.<\/p>\n I was generally a sad child, likely even depressed (though never clinically diagnosed). I don’t have a lot of happy memories from my youth. I distinctly remember crying a lot, feeling sad and depressed and lonely. Perhaps these\u00a0poor quality foods that fed\u00a0my body also fueled these feelings, but when I was sad I’d want their comfort, too.<\/p>\n I was a fat kid. I think I got\u00a0fat while I was in kindergarten, around age six. At that age I had a period of illness where I was infected with chickenpox, measles and mumps pretty much all in a row. (I still have\u00a0chickenpox scars.) Being essentially bedridden for a long stretch of time, it was a very lethargic time in my youth, and the only way I could manage to swallow my prescribed antibiotics was to chase it down with a big glass of chocolate milk… so you could imagine how drinking a lot of chocolate milk every day plus being bed ridden could easily fatten up my little body in a short period of time. It wouldn’t surprise me if the antibiotics messed with the healthy digestive bacteria, too, contributing to a sluggish digestion.<\/p>\n I was put on multiple diets as a kid, usually while dieting with my mom or aunt or grandma, or even all three. We were all fat. …I wasn’t an obese child, just rather chubby and pudgy. Even so, I don’t think it’s healthy for pre-teen children to be placed\u00a0on calorie restrictive diets; it’s a perfect setup for creating unhealthy relationships with food (and self), and could possibly even restrict growth. It wouldn’t surprise me if I might have been\u00a0malnourished from a lack of quality nutrients, perhaps even\u00a0contributing to my very short stature. (Note: Yes, you can be fat and malnourished. It’s a matter of lack of quality nutrients vs intaking a lot of low-quality or empty calories.)<\/p>\n When I was around twelve and later thirteen, I lost a notable amount of weight from dieting (i.e. restricting calories). Sometimes I would only eat a single-serving bag of taco chips for lunch with an apple. Diet Coke was my savior. Even at my thinnest I was never very\u00a0thin, especially compared to the thin and pretty girls, and my butt and upper thighs were\u00a0still laden with cellulite (it had been there from even a younger age); but at least I no longer looked fat while clothed. I got compliments from teachers at school for having lost weight. It helped improved my self-confidence.<\/p>\n Later that year, though, I gained it all back, and more. My mom moved into a new house in a new neighborhood, and I didn’t know anybody at all in the area.\u00a0I felt really really lonely, and again would turn to food for comfort during that lonely summer break. I’d eat entire boxes of Kraft Dinner and add even more cheese (I loved adding parmesan to KD). I’d eat a bunch of these “Mint Melt-Away” chocolates that were lying around my dad’s plac from a past school fundraiser. I ballooned up and got stretch marks from gaining weight so fast. There were even bright red stretch marks on my upper arms… 23-24 years later, I still have pretty bad\u00a0stretch mark scars on my arms. (I don’t think they ever go away.) I felt horrible in my body. I just wanted to hide and not be seen.<\/p>\n I remember a\u00a0different summer where I committed to losing weight again. I implemented a combination of drinking a lot of water, not eating much, and exercise. I know I lost weight, but I can’t remember how much. I think I was probably within a healthy BMI, but again, my entire life I had always been rather flabby, even when in a healthy BMI range. \u00a0(Yo-yo dieting would become a regular part of my life. I suppose to some extent, it still is, but no where near as bad as it\u00a0used to be.)<\/p>\n Sometime around the age of sixteen, I remember being at a family dinner at my Grandma’s on my mom’s side. It might have been a Thanksgiving Dinner, or a birthday dinner, or maybe even Easter; I can’t recall. But whatever the occasion, there was at least one dead animal, if not two… a chicken or turkey, and a ham. For some reason, I began to think of the meat at the dinner table as animals that had once been alive, and that had died simply so we could eat them. It seemed unfair to me, and sad.<\/p>\n I voiced this thought of mine. I don’t remember my exact words, but I shared\u00a0how I thought it was sad that we had to kill animals to eat them.<\/p>\n I’ll never forget what my Grandmother said in response: “But God put the animals on Earth for us to eat.”<\/p>\n I remember feeling so angry at such an\u00a0idea. As a teenager who self-identified with Atheist principles, the whole idea of\u00a0“but that’s what God wants” was frustrating and angering beyond belief. I wasn’t going to buy that as a logical reason to eat animals, but yet I couldn’t find a logical reason to stop eating them, either.<\/p>\n Around this same time,\u00a0I had been\u00a0dating my first boyfriend. (Our relationship would last for nearly 7 years.) My boyfriend didn’t eat pork due to religious reasons. Wanting to be supportive, and perhaps also wanting a seemingly valid reason to not eat animals, I had decided I wouldn’t eat pork, either. I never have since.<\/p>\n Time passed, and I shoved that feeling of discomfort about eating animals aside. But it never fully went away. At some point later down the road,\u00a0I shared with my boyfriend\u00a0my inner\u00a0struggle regarding\u00a0the idea of killing animals to eat them. My boyfriend seemed adamant\u00a0that we needed\u00a0<\/em>to eat meat in oder to be healthy… but that if I was uncomfortable with the idea of animal slaughter, then perhaps I might feel better about only eating meat from animals that were\u00a0killed in a more “humane” way.<\/p>\n My boyfriend was a couple years older than me, so I figured he must be right. And plus, the Internet wasn’t yet known as a popular tool for research back then. I mean, Google<\/em> didn’t even exist yet! (And I’m someone who started using Google within months of its release! Hell,\u00a0computers<\/em> weren’t even an every day household item yet.) …So I took my boyfriend’s\u00a0word for it and didn’t question his belief that we simply needed to eat meat for the sake of health and well-being. But it was then when I decided I’d only eat meat from sources that were considered to be more humane than regular meat.<\/p>\n (In hindsight, it’s astonishing how the concept of vegetarianism had never crossed my path. I don’t think I knew a single vegetarian growing up. Everyone<\/em> ate meat. It was just normal and something you were supposed to do.)<\/p>\n I don’t remember how old I was when I made that decision to eat so-called “humane” meat. I think I might have been 18 or possibly even 19. At any rate, for years to come, I followed a mostly vegetarian diet, usually eating meat only a couple times a week when we had dinner with my boyfriend’s family\u00a0(who also made it a practice to purchase and cook with the type of “humanely slaughtered” meat).<\/p>\n Since I was no longer eating as much meat, I ended up eating even more cheese than before. Too much cheese. And too much processed food in general, although that was simply due to lack of proper nutrition education. I gained a lot of weight. I think I was 21 when I realized I had been steadily gaining weight and was then nearly 160 pounds, which is considered to be\u00a0borderline obese for my height. The thought\u00a0of being so overweight that I was almost considered\u00a0to be clinically obese hit me hard.\u00a0I knew I had to lose weight.<\/p>\n I started a diet program online with e-diets and I started going to the Y.<\/p>\n With persistence, some of the weight started to come off. (…But unbeknownst to me at the time, it wouldn’t be until I went vegan more than a year later before finally getting back into a healthy weight and BMI range.)<\/p>\n Probably around the same time, I recall I became disillusioned with my solution of only eating “humanely slaughtered” meat (such an oxymoron!) to make peace with my discomfort of eating animals that were being killed for the sake of being my food. I’d ask myself, “What’s the point? What difference does it make? The animal is still getting killed in the end.”<\/em> I used this thinking as some kind of reasoning or reassurance to give myself permission to start eating chicken from restaurants once again… but I’d still make sure I would only consume “humanely” killed beef. “Maybe eating chicken in restaurants is better than always opting for the cheese option and getting fat off cheese<\/em>.”<\/p>\n In fall of 2001, I was enrolled in a theatre acting class where one of my classmates identified himself as vegan. I had never heard about vegans before. I would soon learn that vegans not only don’t eat meat of any kind, but they also don’t eat cheese or other forms of dairy, nor eggs… nor anything that was derived from an animal.\u00a0…Huh.<\/p>\n Despite having long held discomfort surrounding the slaughter of animals for food, the idea of adopting a vegan diet never really occurred to me… not right away, that is.<\/p>\n The vegan classmate wasn’t really an in-your-face type of vegan. One time he and I ended up being scene partners, and as a result we ended up spending some time outside of class to meet up, go over lines and rehearse. Sometimes we’d end up grabbing a meal before or after class. It was probably during these times where the idea of actually considering veganism as an option for myself really set in.<\/p>\n