Why weren't you vegan before you became vegan?

[veganpollo]

I have had numerous people tell me that they "tired to be vegetarian" or "tried to be vegan" but it was "too hard".
Yes. Those people have a higher chance of trying it again, it seems. A friend of mine went vegetarian for a few months during the summer, gave it up, and now is trying it again on a "more permanent" basis.

I did the same thing, actually. I "tried" vegetarianism for awhile. It seems you have to do it at the right time and for the right motivations for yourself. Many more people are getting there. At least five people I know have gone vegetarian/vegan since September.


As far as the main topic: Well, I was just too lazy. That's the case in many situations. Aside from that, I was spending the summer with relatives ten states away during the first month of my vegetarianism, which presented too much temptation, I suppose.
SO, a year and half later I tried again and I've been vegan for nearly a year now. (:

The second time seems to be the charm in a lot of cases. Not all, but many. Kind of like "trial run... go back & see which waters you'd rather swim in... revelation!"

[veganpollo]

Main reason I hadn't gone vegan before last week?

I bought into the hype about dairy/eggs being good for you and essential. "If I don't drink milk I'll get osteoporosis!" "If I don't eat eggs I won't get enough protein and my muscles will waste away and my hair will fall out and blahblahblah..." But I really, wholeheartedly believed all that for a very long time.

Omnivores actually have been proven to have more vitamin deficiencies than vegans.

However, it's insanely important that you listen to your body & take steps to ensure that you are getting adequate nutrients/protein.

I use Fitday.com to track my meals, weight, and nutritional balance.
It automatically fills in the nutrition of your meals and allows you to customize the food "labels" to be exactly that of the ones that are the products you're eating that day... no discrepancy because you're drinking another brand of soymilk, because you can enter the values accurately.

After a period of time it becomes quite easy (:
Good luck to you in your vegan journey.

[paul46]

hi all,
i became vegetarian when 10, eventually i became vegan when 15 in 1978 after a couple of attempts, from memorys of then nothing had ingredients marked and reasearch was limited long before the internet. i can remember finding out our local baker used milk in bread so eating ryvitas and wheatabix not much fun when a teenager and my attempts failed.
The only margarine i managed to find was tomor and we had to order it from the health food shop by the case, oh times have changed. i didnt even know there was a lable for me at the time and it was 2 years untill i met or knew of another vegan.
my mum became vegetarian after a few years and a few more years my brother and father followed, that made life a lot simpler.
i am married to a very understanding (diabetic) vegetarian and we have 3 kids well 2 of them used to be but are all vegetarian.

[DavidT]

paul46: what an inspiration you must be. Thanks for sharing your story. I remember Tomor as being virtually the only choice around (this was before I became even vegetarian as I was looking for better options than the mainstream Tossco stuff).

Welcome to the forum and I look forward to reading more about you and your life style. As a vegan of 30 years plus, you definitely should share more of your experiences with us!

[paul46]

thanks david,
i hadnt thought about it but at over 30 years i now feel old, ta very much.
paul.

[DavidT]

Don't take offence...I hope you didn't! Not my intention at all.

I'm older than you and there are plenty of older people on the forum. But many haven't been vegan for the length of time you have (myself, veggie from 1992-ish, vegan for about five or six years). It would be interesting for you to share your views on it following such a length of vegan experience.

[paul46]

no i didnt take offence,
just a shock that i am that old, the wife says i fart more than the greyhound- she is vegetarian, was vegan but the food was £40.00ish a bag and we use one bag a month, the veggie food is less than £20.00 a bag, still lasts a month, also this food suits her tummy better, less farting and better quality poo! unless she has stolen a vegan coffee cake!!!! i am talking about the dog, of course.
paul

[Aerorobyn]

I was vegetarian for close to two years, and I just became vegan about a month ago. I'm still new to the vegan life!

At the age of 6, I stopped drinking milk completely. My parents/grandparents would put a glass of milk in front of me and tell me to drink it, but I wouldn't. For one, I didn't like the taste of it; secondly, I told them I didn't want to drink "cows pee" (lol, that's a 6 year old for you...)

In 6th grade (when I was about 11-12), we made some cheese in my science class. After seeing how disgusting it looked, I didn't want to eat cheese anymore. However, my family was skeptical. They said I would die if I didn't get some sort of protein in me, and since I wasn't drinking milk...cheese was the alternative.

When I was 16, I decided I no longer wanted to eat meat. The only meats I ever ate to begin with were chicken, beef, and pork; but at 16, I cut out the beef and pork.

It was very hard for me to get off of chicken for some reason. I liked it a lot, and my family cooked it a lot. Eventually, however, at the age of 18, I finally got the courage to say no more. At this point I was a complete vegetarian.

My family HATED the idea of me being vegetarian, with them being big meat-eaters and all. But I followed through with it.

About a month ago, I decided I wanted to go vegan. And I did. My family and friends still hate this idea, but I plan to stick with it.

So why wasn't I vegan before? Mostly family, and maybe because I was also a bit lazy.

[buttons]

I was vegetarian for a while in my late teens, then pescatarian, then full-on omni. Veganism seemed "extreme" and difficult to maintain healthfully to me, as if vegans took it *too far.*

Veganism was a gradual process. I learned about over-fishing so - being too lazy to check what species of fish were threatened - I gave up fish. Then I started to look into factory farming, so I gave up meat. I didn't see the logic in wearing animals I didn't eat, so I stopped wearing leather. The final nail in the coffin (ha!) was finding out about vegan varieties of chocolate - so many people think of chocolate as a dairy product!

[MoonDance]

I was born into an omni family and so naturally I was one. I was weaned on soy milk (thank God) because I was allergic to dairy and since then I've hated the taste of cow's milk, though when I was older, the allergy passed and I would have some in coffee and eat cheese.:rolleyes:

I remember when I was young I never really liked the taste of meat, it always seemed to taste like blood to me and so I would eat very little of it.

I can't remember if I ever questioned where meat came from, but in the back of my mind I knew that it was wrong to eat it, though I still consumed it.:no_expression:

It was only about a year ago that I became vegetarian because meat no longer agreed with me. I did not even pause to think about the suffering of the animals involved. To think of this now, I feel ashamed and revolted.

Then very slowly, dairy products and eggs started to make me feel very ill and it was around this time that I FINALLY thought of the animals, not just my health.

As if in a dream, I was on the internet one day and followed a link to watch Meet your Meat. I forced myself to see the horror of the industry and afterwards I felt ... broken almost. I've always loved animals and imagining their pain was too much. I cried so hard that night. I felt like I was the one murdering those animals. I felt so disgusting. The very next day I became vegan.

Now, almost three weeks later, I feel great! I feel calmer and healthier, things also seem to taste much better and smell better (well apart from when my family has chicken or fish :().

My immediate family is supportive of me, (they only eat fish and chicken, which I guess is better but not best. :() though the rest of my family are predominately meat eaters and I'm not exactly looking forward to Christmas with them. Eating out is bad enough.

Sorry for the long post!:o But I feel a bit better getting that out there now lol. I just wish that I was born into a vegan family.

[vintagenarcissa]

I was raised as a meat eater. When I was a teenager, I began to want to go vegetarian. But I didn't know much about veganism back then. I attempted a few times but ended up going back to eating meat. I always told myself that I wanted to be vegan when I grew up and always envisioned myself being a vegan as an adult. Over the years I did research on veganism and even raw veganism, and I was interesting in both but I felt raw veganism was a bit too extreme for me. But all the while I was still eating meat. And this time when finally deciding to go vegan. I just came to see that my eating was very unhealthy and that is was imperative that I do something to change that. I made becoming vegan my New Year's resolution and that I would just be vegetarian for the rest of the year after Thanksgiving. But again after Thanksgiving, I continued to eat meat, even though I wasn't supposed to. But then I decided if this was something I really wanted to do I needed to start now, cold tofu, as I've seen said on the forums :p So that by the time New Year's comes around it would be second nature. And I haven't even been vegan for a week yet, but I'm loving it and the only thing I regret is not doing it sooner. I haven't told my family yet though. I don't know when I will but I know I'll have to soon. I have started telling some of my friends. My best friend is probably going to get fairly annoyed with all my vegan talk, but yeah well. It's her job to listen to me babble :D

[Haniska]

Great!

[patientia]

First because I didn't have enough information and empathy, then because I started gradually, I became ovo-lacto-vegetarian and 21 months later vegan.

[Terran]

I went vegetarian when I was 7 (my attempts when I was 6 all failed), because I didn't think I was so very important that animals had to die just so I could eat them. My parents were okay with it as long as I didn't go vegan. When I asked what that was they explained what a bunch of extremist nutcases those people were and told me that when you don't milk a cow or shear a sheep they die. Well, I didn't want them to die obviously, so I kept drinking my milk.
Then I just didn't think about it for years, until I was 15, did some research and decided I needed to be an extremist nutcase.
Before that, I guess I just thougt that if a cow had to give milk and chickens laid eggs anyway, we might as well use it.

[Blueberry]

Because I loved meat and dairy and I was too lazy to consider what life would be without them. I was weaned on meat and two veg, and have been overweight my entire life. I've tried WeightWatchers time and again, but what let me down was meat... portions were never big enough. I love vegetables and always had a couple of meat free days a week, making my favourite Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash recipe, but couldn't think of being vegetarian, despite at the back of my mind always wanting to be one. And vegans, well I thought vegans were all hippies who went to the Summer Solstice and ate grain and kidney beans. Extremists, I think. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that either, I'm just jealous I can't do things like that!

When I met my partner he was amazed at how much meat I cooked in a week for my children. He would eat red meat once a fortnight-ish, and fish most of the time. So I became more aware of the amount of red meat we ate. I know to life-long vegans this will be hard to empathise with, but as long as my meat was "ethically sourced" and lean, and we only had beef and lamb anyway, then it was ok to eat it. But my partner got me really thinking. Then this Christmas just past, I had the usual clearing out of the fridge a few days after, and threw away so much meat we hadn't eaten. I felt awful, and made the decision right there and then that I wasn't going to buy meat again. And I didn't. I joined another online forum for veg*ns and told them not to bother trying to persuade me to be vegan as it wouldn't work. I was happy to be veg*n. But then, as I started checking products were veg*n, I found myself looking at the other ingredients and wondering where the hell they came from. Only a few days after becoming a veg*n I decided veganism was the only way to go to rid myself of the guilt and disgust I feel at being an omni for so long. So I did it! And immediately felt a burden of guilt lifted from me. I am happier now than I have been for a long, long time. And it is so easy!

I've lost in excess of ten pounds in the last three weeks and don't have to worry about sneaking a chocolate bar or two as if it isn't vegan, I don't touch it! - it has made controlling my diet so much easier! And I am never hungry. So all good! I will NEVER go back to eating animals. Its sick and disgusting.

[spooky]

Hi folks, to be honest i'd never heard of veganism until i was 16. I was brought up into an omni family in an agricultural area, so obviously went to see the spring lambs etc didn't really think anything of it until my mid teens and then wanted to become vegetarian but got all the 'not while you live under my roof' spiel. So i did what i could and learned more about it, there was also a lot of hunting and shooting in the area so i started investigating this too. Eventually my mum agreed that if i sorted out my own food, then i could eat what i liked (this was at 16). However upon leaving school i had decided that i wanted to go hunt sabbing and once i started college i found someone to go with. So one saturday in sept 1988 i was sat in the back of a transit van with these interesting people who were 'vegan' and i thought "yes i can do this, it's the closest thing to living a cruelty free lifestyle" and that was it, 22 years later i'm still as passionate about it. But before that day, had never heard of vegans!

[VeganLu]

Uneducated about what really happens to put food on my plate. I just wish I "walked into that brick wall" when I was in my 20's, not when I was already in my 40's. But being vegan has brought me such happiness, so I am grateful that I became vegan before I died. :D

[buttons]

Then this Christmas just past, I had the usual clearing out of the fridge a few days after, and threw away so much meat we hadn't eaten. I felt awful, and made the decision right there and then that I wasn't going to buy meat again.
That's my least favourite omni habit. My BF sometimes forgets about meat he has taken out of the freezer until it is too late. Drives me spare!

[Seth]

Foolish pride and ignorance.

[LiveVegan]

I was vegetarian 17 years before going vegan. Mainly the reason was because I couldn't afford vegan alternative to cheese. Then I decided finally, "hell with it". I was already not eating eggs and honey and all that. The only thing I ate was occasional taco cheese and nachos. But I couldn't call myself a vegan even if I only ate that stuff once a month or so. I still can't find vegan cheese that tastes like nacho or taco cheese, so I just don't eat that food anymore. RIP nachos and tacos, how I loved thee.

[MyInnerHippie]

i've been vegan for eight years (i'm 24.) i do not have any other friends who are vegan. quite a few veggies but no vegan.

sometimes i ask myself the question you've asked above - Why aren't these people vegan? They're intelligent, educated, opinionated. What is happening?

But then i have one other friend who reminds me, People are never going to be all the same.

So over the time i found that if i can educate others of where their food comes from and what is in it - then that is enough for me. If they *still* decide to eat it, then that is their own perogative. I can not force feed the world.

What irritates me most as a vegan, is not that other people aren't vegan, it is those people who scream at me 'Don't tell me what's in this!!' as they are eating. I find that incomprehensible.

People who actively decide to be uneducated. They make an effort to be uneducated. That is what gets to me. By all means, learn the facts then make your own decision, but to refuse them in the first place... crikey.

anyways, that's my two cents :)

Seriously, I couldn't have said it better myself! I just had this convo with two of my omni friends today, and after a long day of pleading my case via email with them, I gave up. It left me drained and depressed. It is really hard to be Vegan sometimes, and I am totally proud of myself for sticking to my guns with it. But, I dont know one other person who is Vegan or even Veggie. I felt totally alone in the world before I decided to hop on here. I have been Vegan for just about a year now and plan on staying that way until the day I die!! My friends think I am a zany tree loving hippie and they just don't understand me. Frankly, I don't understand them! And, Im tired of trying to always be PC about the way I feel. If they can eat meat in front of me, then I can tell them where it came from.

[Seth]

I was vegetarian 17 years before going vegan. Mainly the reason was because I couldn't afford vegan alternative to cheese. Then I decided finally, "hell with it". I was already not eating eggs and honey and all that. The only thing I ate was occasional taco cheese and nachos. But I couldn't call myself a vegan even if I only ate that stuff once a month or so. I still can't find vegan cheese that tastes like nacho or taco cheese, so I just don't eat that food anymore. RIP nachos and tacos, how I loved thee.


Hahah, I often hear people saying that they couldn't go vegan because they'd be giving up cheese. Too bad the good-tasting stuff has to be evil.

[Joi]

I was ignorant of the suffering animals endured and had the misconception that veganism was extreme until I learned more about the abuses intrinsic in non-food areas such as the wool industry. Not being vegan seems so clearly wrong to me now that I am very ashamed I was ever an omni, but understanding what kept me from making the decision sooner is a key element in promoting veganism and changing the minds of others. One major thing I now admit to myself is my ignorance was a choice. I'm not an idiot--obviously I knew there was suffering. I just chose not to think about it. One day I realized I was personally responsible for the suffering. I couldn't close my eyes to it any more. why I didn't have that epiphany years earlier, I don't know.

[MoonDance]

One major thing I now admit to myself is my ignorance was a choice. I'm not an idiot--obviously I knew there was suffering. I just chose not to think about it. One day I realized I was personally responsible for the suffering. I couldn't close my eyes to it any more. why I didn't have that epiphany years earlier, I don't know.

I completely agree with you there :o

[Seth]

We as people seem to have a tendency to act ignorantly.

Always keep an open mind and avoid pride. Our ignorance has already contributed to animal suffering before we went vegan, so always be careful that your actions aren't causing trouble.