I recently came across the #MyVeganStory campaign on Tumblr and decided to my part too!
My story begins when I was a kid and hated eating beef. By the time I was a teenager I was becoming more aware and wanted to incorporate vegetarian meals. I complained loudly and advocated in my group of friends to not go to circuses with animals.
I got to college and one of my great friends, my freshman year, was a vegetarian. Inspired by her I made the leap. Then I watched Forks Over Knifes with my sister who was trying to go raw. That winter break I made the decision to go vegan for my health. I was overweight and trying grab back control. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a strong enough will to fight my small school cafeteria who didn’t understand that you couldn’t make my grilled "cheese” with butter on the griddle; or that vegetarian wasn’t the same as vegan. By the end of the school year I was living off of chicken nuggets and french fries. I felt like a failure.
Flash forward to this past summer. I was at a healthy weight and a healthy place in my life. I had been reading a lot of things on tumblr about factory farming and watching many documentaries. When I went to Germany and felt uncomfortable eating all the meat I was. On the flight back I watched Noah. This has to be the craziest trigger of change ever. The film has 2 scenes that struck me; 1)when the father discusses why they only eat plants and the cycle of life and 2) when “men” were craving meat that they were selling their daughters and children and eating humans because they NEEDED meat.
I’m not Christian and was actually raised atheist but this film made the correlations to our society and to my own thoughts very clear. It’s difficult to explain the how or why this was my turning point.
Being vegan is what I call a “guilt free” lifestyle. Compared to many other lifestyles, I am not harming animals and my contribution to the destruction of our mother earth is very small. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect and there are still so many issues with labor and human rights with farming in general to addressed. All that said, I have never felt so at ease with my lifestyle than I do now.
@myveganstory2015
My story begins when I was a kid and hated eating beef. By the time I was a teenager I was becoming more aware and wanted to incorporate vegetarian meals. I complained loudly and advocated in my group of friends to not go to circuses with animals.
I got to college and one of my great friends, my freshman year, was a vegetarian. Inspired by her I made the leap. Then I watched Forks Over Knifes with my sister who was trying to go raw. That winter break I made the decision to go vegan for my health. I was overweight and trying grab back control. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a strong enough will to fight my small school cafeteria who didn’t understand that you couldn’t make my grilled "cheese” with butter on the griddle; or that vegetarian wasn’t the same as vegan. By the end of the school year I was living off of chicken nuggets and french fries. I felt like a failure.
Flash forward to this past summer. I was at a healthy weight and a healthy place in my life. I had been reading a lot of things on tumblr about factory farming and watching many documentaries. When I went to Germany and felt uncomfortable eating all the meat I was. On the flight back I watched Noah. This has to be the craziest trigger of change ever. The film has 2 scenes that struck me; 1)when the father discusses why they only eat plants and the cycle of life and 2) when “men” were craving meat that they were selling their daughters and children and eating humans because they NEEDED meat.
I’m not Christian and was actually raised atheist but this film made the correlations to our society and to my own thoughts very clear. It’s difficult to explain the how or why this was my turning point.
Being vegan is what I call a “guilt free” lifestyle. Compared to many other lifestyles, I am not harming animals and my contribution to the destruction of our mother earth is very small. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect and there are still so many issues with labor and human rights with farming in general to addressed. All that said, I have never felt so at ease with my lifestyle than I do now.
@myveganstory2015