“So…is bacon vegan?” My husband laughs as he catches me mindlessly eating the leftover bacon off of my two year old’s plate before sticking it in the dishwasher. “Hey, it’s a process!” I laugh back. But this pretty much sums up my 60 day mark of being a vegan. After two months I have gone from part-time vegan, to cheating vegan, and come almost full circle back to my bad old eating habits.
As a fitness instructor, I felt like I really knew what to expect when I decided to go vegan at the beginning of the year. I am all too familiar with the surge in attendance during the first few weeks of January. I have so many new members flocking to the gym and into my classes to prove their commitment to their New Year’s resolutions. However, inevitably by the third week of January all those bright-eyed new students have vanished and classes once again dwindle back to their average numbers. I was determined to not be a New Year’s resolution statistic, but I too have experienced the same struggle.
During the last 60 days the biggest challenge has been thinking about the future. Am I really NEVER going to have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup again? Am I really done with dairy? Can I really say goodbye to cheeseburgers FOREVER? What kind of cupcakes am I going to make for the kids’ birthdays? The questions are endless. And with the questions comes the self-doubt (“hey, is this really the healthiest way of eating?”) and with the doubt comes the cheating. I stop fighting the temptation and add a little cheese on my veggie wrap, a pat of butter on my toast, and splash some milk in my coffee.
What I realized is that I needed to change the way I was thinking. I had lost the “health” aspect of choosing to go vegan and focused instead on the deprivation. I skipped meals and snuck little bites of peanut butter in after dinner. I drank too much coffee and ate too much sugar. Even after thoughtfully cooking and preparing an awesome vegan recipe, I just didn’t feel like eating it. I craved burgers, tacos, pizza, and even though I wasn’t indulging every craving…they were still there.
Although outwardly I have lost weight and cut out a lot of unhealthy food from my diet, inwardly I wonder… am I actually becoming healthier? Or am I still just doing the same unhealthy things in a new way? Can I actually become one of those people who crave green smoothies and raw vegetables? Or am I going to constantly think about how much I would rather have a bacon cheeseburger rather than they lentil/mushroom/olive creation that is on my plate?
If one of my new students came up to me after yoga class and said they were really struggling and having a hard time in class… I would never tell them to quit or to give up. I would say, “Listen to your body. You are your own best teacher. Yoga is a practice. Just keep practicing.” Maybe being a vegan is the same thing.
the first time a smoker quits is usually not the last time they try quitting. sometimes after 5 or 6 tries they really stick with it, and THEN they never smoke again.
for me, and probably for other new year’s eve enthusiasts, “good health” as a motivation to go the distance rarely seems to work. the kickstart to become vegan for me was i had been a lacto/ovo vegetarian for over 20 years and felt like a hypocrite still wearing leather and drinking the breastmilk of another species…yeah. sit with that image for a little while.
i can BARELY tolerate the thought of cruelty to anyone or anything. it turns my stomach. just typing that sentence flashed the pictures through my head that i cannot stand. and the study of the cruelty kicked my tail into high gear. i cannot maintain a lifechange in diet if i’m doing it for the ME in the equation. but ask me to sacrifice to eliminate my own hand in the suffering of others? yeah. that one i can own easily. watch the videos that make you weep. see the images of where meat and dairy come from.
in the end, you know what i got? i was finally walking the talk of over 20 years AND got the sweet cholesterol numbers and better health i earned by living more lightly on this planet. i’m no angel, but there are no cravings that pull me back off track. the options for candy and cookies abound if that’s where i end up some days instead of others, but vegan isn’t a diet i fall off of ever. 5 years in now, and no turning back.
sometimes i don’t eat healthfully. but it’s always vegan junk i choose. my heart says “thanks, old lady! that’s some sweet cholesterol numbers you’ve floated my way”.