Monday, July 11, 2011

First Blog! Guaranteed to be a blog-a-thon...

After much internal debate, struggle, and monologue, I have decided to bite the bullet and share my thoughts on living a cruelty-free lifestyle.  It gets lonely in your head when you are the only one of your friends who is sans meat.  Do you hear that?!  Yes, it is the world's tiniest violin, and it is playing for me right now..although there will be no cheese with this whine...know what im sayin'?  Moving on....

Let me begin by sharing my sojourn to veganism.  I grew up on a bit of land in South Sacramento and throughout my childhood years we had farm animals on property.  Some of these animals were raised for meat and eggs, and others I have no idea why we raised them.  Maybe it was because they were cute.  Let's go with that.  Yes, we raised goats because they were cute and eat clothing.

For the first 23 years of life, I ate meat, and a lot of it.  I have been blessed with the metabolism of a three year old, and I can pack away the calories without any detriment to my physique.  That said, during college and my teenage years I ate extremely unhealthy.  Mucho processed foods and fast food.  Gross...

When I was 16-ish I had a girlfriend (she is one of my best friends today) who was born and raised vegetarian, and dabbled in veganism.  At the time, I viewed her dietary choices with cynicism.  I must have been experiencing the omnivore's dilemma.  Blaming the compassionate eater for shedding light on my horrible diet choices.  In retrospect, it was this introduction to veganism that led to my ultimate decision to change my life at 23.

After college, I moved to the beautiful and progressive city of Santa Cruz.  I started dating a vegetarian and cooking veggie meals to make life less complicated.  Omnivores who have dated a veggie person know that it is easier to cook one meal that can be shared than cook two completely different things...obvies.  Anywho, after we broke up, I continued with my vegetarian eating habits, which I will call my "Morningstar Farms" diet.  I was vegetarian, yes, but an unhealthy one at that.  Processed, cheesy globules of fat where my daily ingestion.  After about 6 months of living as a vegetarian, my argument of doing it for the environment, my body, and the animals became hypocritical when I realized that spending money on dairy products was contributing to animal abuse and suffering.  No thanks!  I decided that I would become vegan on Christmas in 2009.  I planned this date deliberately, knowing that my mom would be buying me tons of cool schwag for Christmas.  I did my research and asked my mom to forgo the unicorn sweaters and buy me hemp protein, The Face on Your Plate, and The Vegan Table. I equipped myself with a positive mindset, an account on VegWeb, and a subscription to VegNews magazine.  The rest is vegan history!  I will be celebrating my 2 year vegan anniversary on Christmas, and I am stoked.

This blog might be read by others, but if not, it's all good.  I am excited to share my musings on veganism, which might also be read as, 'i am excited to bitch and complain about meat'.  Here goes nothing....

2 comments:

  1. I had no idea that you had a vegetarian girlfriend #2! My educated guess is that if you were a heterosexual female you would be the first of your kind. Lucky. BTW, vegetarian girlfriend #1 told your first vegan (girl) friend to tell you she appreciates the shout out!

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  2. <3 the message has been received. And...thank you!

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