Return to the veggie life

[Veggie-based Heathen]

hi all! I've been meaning to find a forum like this for weeks, and I'm glad I've come.

I accidentally went vegan a few years back, and it was the best and most effective thing I've ever done for my health and wellbeing. (I even wrote an article on it.) But then, life happened, and I ended up not only falling off the wagon, but crashing and burning onto the road beneath the wheels.

After almost two years, of continuously telling myself I wanted to return to veganism/vegetarianism, I finally shifted back on the 1st day of 2018. So far, so good... I've been journaling my experience, which has been helping me to work through some hurdles and challenges. For the most part, going back to vegetarianism has been extremely easy for me, even easier than it was when I initially went a few years ago. I've been about 80% vegan and am increasingly vegan as time goes on.

I'm big on science and fact-based nutrition. A couple years ago, I enrolled and completed an internationally-accredited program on personal nutrition, but never had the drive to become a personal nutritionist (even though I'm certified to be one).

I'm looking forward to getting to know others here.

 

[Forest Nymph]

Hello! It's common for people to discover veganism or feel compelled towards vegetarianism at least, then "fall off the wagon" due to things like lack of social support or lack of nutrition information. I actually feel sorry sometimes for younger vegans because I go to a university that is somewhat vegan friendly (there's always oatmeal, bagels, peanut butter, and fruit for breakfast, salad and soups for lunch, and at least one vegan entree meal at dinner in the cafeteria) but it's really hard - as an adult longer-term vegan I'm just like ....milk or whey in all the breads except the bagels...all butter no margarine...not really fair that lunch is only salad/soup for vegan 5-6 days per week while 1-2 times per week they might have a tofu hummus sandwich on ciabatta or a falafel wrap or tofu enchiladas for lunch. So it's just not fair. Even at a "vegan friendly school" (my university has actually won awards for giving vegans something to eat besides rice and lettuce) there's an obvious bias towards meat eaters. How do you deal with that at 18 or 20? Seriously? People are quite different at 28 than they are at 20, in terms of life experience and assertiveness with authority.

I instinctively rejected meat as a small child, had "meat abuse" experiences in elementary school, tried to start going vegetarian in middle school, and failed at veganism my first time around collapsing to a dairy cheese pizza my ex shared with me. One of my ex-boyfriends (my longest relationship in fact) claimed River Phoenix died because he was vegan. I was like oh yeah so why is Joaquin his brother still alive and well, and meat-eater Chris Farley (also hard drug user) dead?

You seem like someone who can learn to eat well as a vegan and I think that's important. I think one of the biggest paranoias in modern society is that someone will die or be unhealthy without animal products (I know it gave me pause back in the day honestly) ...rather than any concern that veganism is somehow anti-social or irrational. Pseudo-science has made its mark on the world bigly. Just look at the climate change deniers. Climate change deniers make me strong. My major is environmental science - not only do I know more than these willful ignorants, but I apply the same psychology to veganism: same conformist legion of willful idiots, and I know for sure because I have now spent several years of my life studying veganism and I may even use my degree to do marketing for an animal rights company or something along those lines because what I've studied applies to that just as much as teaching 5th graders the water cycle.

 

[Forest Nymph]

Sorry not meaning to be rude with over-posting, but I just realized my school sees veganism as a health food diet, maybe even in a sexist way: "here you girls have some oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, a soup and salad lunch and a light tofu and rice dinner." It's not necessarily oppressive. Comparing ourselves to others, we should be grateful to have our peanut butter whole grain bagel and spinach, sprouts, and tofu salad with Asian dressing. I know I'm super California-privilege and I have no illusions about going to college in Iowa.

But that's the entire problem to me: viewing vegan as a diet for "girls" or dieters or as "privilege"....why not have a warm vegan meal at lunch every day in a rainy cool climate of Northern California? Why is lunch a cold salad bar and some butternut squash with balsamic? It's funny I guess I'm complaining because my school is super fancy and white and rich and meat-eaters get apple chicken sausage and "crab fest" and bacon 'n eggs every damn day....so the sense of "unfairness" comes from us getting much less than them. And not even as me (I can make my own food and usually do with less money in my apartment, I'm a part-time cafeteria eater). Freshmen sometimes literally ONLY have the caf as their only food source, they are completely dependent on parents who literally give them classes, books, dorms, clothes, food...they exist on college campuses and eat at the caf 3 meals a day all week long except for maybe one day of splurges. My old roomie was such a frosh....she often ate PB and J or cereal with soy milk, until I told her which items were 99 percent vegan (french fries fried in same oil as mozzarella sticks, or veggie burgers grilled as the same surface as hamburgers) and told her there's this loophole at dinner where they let us use a wok to fry tofu and veggies in sesame oil and tamari as a "salad plate."

So I'm not complaining as ME, AN ADULT WHO CAN COOK MY OWN FOOD...but as going to uni, and seeing people trying to work around this brief biased nod to veganism. Like we should be happy we are barely acknowledged at all. That's the argument I get into with most vegans online. They say we should be grateful. I say we should be angry.

 

[poivron]

I accidentally went vegan a few years back, and it was the best and most effective thing I've ever done for my health and wellbeing. (I even wrote an article on it.) But then, life happened, and I ended up not only falling off the wagon, but crashing and burning onto the road beneath the wheels.

After almost two years, of continuously telling myself I wanted to return to veganism/vegetarianism, I finally shifted back on the 1st day of 2018. So far, so good... I've been journaling my experience, which has been helping me to work through some hurdles and challenges. For the most part, going back to vegetarianism has been extremely easy for me, even easier than it was when I initially went a few years ago. I've been about 80% vegan and am increasingly vegan as time goes on.

Journaling is a great idea. It's a great way to figure out how to deal with life's many challenges.

I think the best advice I can give you is to go easy on yourself. It can be really hard to be vegan in a world that doesn't see a problem with exploiting animals, especially if you're not living in comfortable circumstances. The first time I went vegan, I only lasted four months. Then, in something like an internal backlash, I ate more animals during the next eleven years than I probably had in my entire life until that point. It was a weird disconnect where I was wishing I could be vegan while gorging myself on steak and sashimi. Then, about five years ago, I saw "Vegucated", and this time, I was able to go vegan and stick to it. I wish I had been vegetarian or pescetarian during those eleven years. Veganism's purity and perfection attract many of us, but I'm not sure this is good for animals in the grand scheme, because as humans, we're not capable of perfection, and we end up doing more harm by refusing to accept imperfection than we would if we just embraced the good in ourselves. I'm not saying, "Don't be vegan". Just don't expect perfection and then beat yourself up on the occasions when you don't achieve it. For example, if you fall off the wagon on one single instance, the only reason you don't get right back on the wagon is that you see that one mistake as a huge personal failure rather than a normal and necessary part of being human. I don't claim to have achieved in my own life this level of self-acceptance that I'm advocating, but I think I would be a better person if I did.