I never chose to be vegan. In fact I will never forget the moment I realized I was. I'm not sure what other experience a person could have in life where their eyes are suddenly open to who they are on a deep personal level, and they are not quite sure how they got there, or even knew that is where they were headed.
It starts with my relationship with red meat. I have never been a big fan. I just can not stand the way red meat sticks in my teeth or the way it sat in my stomach like a big brick of rotting carcass. It made me feel tired and slow. As a child I was raised to eat what was put in front of me, and I did, all of it.
As I got older and more independent, I made a choice not to eat so much red meat, occasionally I would. If I was invited over for dinner or out at a really nice restaurant.
I also realized my distaste for pork. So dry and impersonal. And although bacon tasted so good, I couldn't shake the fact that the smell lingered everywhere for hours and I instantly went greasy. I eventually became dependent on chicken, fish, and dairy for my protein.
Somewhere along the line I had developed an interest for vegetarian cooking. I seemed so fresh and healthy. I even bought a copy of Vegetarian Times, which I still display proudly in my kitchen. I was so under-educated in how important of a role diet plays in our well being that it never really stuck with me. I would pick it up occasionally when I was bored in hopes of finding a new meal to cook, but there was always a mental roadblock of needing to eat animal proteins with every meal.
Ten years and eighty pounds later I find myself one unhappy cookie. Sure I could stand to be more active and yes I ate too much. But why oh why did I feel there was something wrong. Countless diets I had started and failed. I never felt anything changing. There were a few times where I felt like my metabolism was working, but it was short lived. I'd have energy for a day and then all of a sudden I'm back to being tired, withdrawn, depressed. Something had to give. And it did.
Like a lot of people struggling with their weight I often found myself in the cycle of low carb hell. Cranky, tired, unpleasant, surviving on a steady supply of cheese and poultry and fish for as long as I could stand it and then it all exploded into a carb binge that ended in a carb coma. Over and over and over again for years.
I made simple changes over the course of 6 months that accounted for the loss of twelve pounds. These were simple changes I could live with. Eat breakfast each morning, mid-morning snacks, what I believed to be a sensible lunch, and an okay dinner. I started working in foods like cucumbers and bananas and hummus (note...I really do love vegetables, but at this point had now clue how to eat them...seriously). At the end of this time I had lost the twelve pounds but still felt like poo.
I'm not sure at what point it occurred to me to try giving up the swiss cheese, cottage cheese, string cheese, and yogurt. I just decided to do it. Truthfully, it wasn't all that difficult. I had a few moments where I though it sucked, but all in all it wasn't all that bad. Around three weeks into it, my mom suddenly announces she is now a vegan...okay??? We hadn't really discussed they changes I had made, but she informs me that dairy was the worst for her and it was the devil. At this point I was still drinking milk in my coffee, up to 5 times a day (caffeine dependency is another story). I had already broken my dependency on cheese, so what's milk? And that is how it all began.
Three or four days into my freedom from dairy, pardon my language, shit got real. I'm suddenly thinking clearly, my mood is better, my skin is clearing up, I'm sleeping better (before I had a 4-5 advil a night dependence to help me sleep), I have energy, I literally started to deflate and my body was changing. Most amazing was the rapid healing of my ankle that I had injured 4 months prior. I had just finished weeks of physical therapy and was still in pain and now poof it is not?? Truth.
My life became consumed with finding out why dairy had such a huge effect on me. Why on earth did eliminating this one thing change the game? I found my truth, and I was aware. I was aware that what I choose to put into my mouth can alter my being. I started to experiment with other things. First was gluten, knowing my mother has always told me she has a sensitivity to it. Sure as shit, so do I. Gone be gluten from my life (keep in mind that carbs are not my enemy, gluten is...I will save that for another time).
Next came eggs, oh sweet huevos. My staple scrambled breakfast food, my go to hardboiled snack. First to go was the yolk. I had chosen to take advantage of my "icing on the cake" weight loss by monitoring my calories, protein, carbs, and fat, and could not see the value of giving up 80 calories to a little yellow ball that left me hungry. The caloric and protein density of the yolk awakened me and caused me to inadvertently avoid other animal proteins. They just took up too many of my daily calories and I found myself consuming way more protein than my body needed. More than that I began to notice the way that all meat made me feel. It is funny how when you become aware, you notice everything.
Watching the pantry transform into whole, gluten-free grains and the fridge transform into veggies was an amazing process. I'm not one to waste, and my supportive loving fiancee continued to make use of the remaining "offending foods". All these changes around me and I still had not yet realized that I am with out doubt a vegan.
That is correct. I consumed no animal based proteins or products and did not realize I was a vegan. Seems pretty silly. It is pretty simple though, I never thought I could be or would be, so I just did not see myself as one.
No comments:
Post a Comment