My Vegan Journey

Journal, Health

Early Beginnings

When I was a child, my dad was vegetarian, so as a default, our whole family was vegetarian. Back in the ye olde days of the 1980s and 1990s, being vegetarian was considered weird. Getting take out food was a challenge, but luckily my mother was a fantastic cook. At home, she would make vegetable soups, broccoli sautéed in butter, and delicious salads.

A Meaty Detour

When my parents got divorced, I stopped being vegetarian. My first taste of meat was when I was twelve years old. It was a star-shaped chicken nugget from a drive-through fast food restaurant. It tasted like a deep-fried kitchen sponge, but it was fascinating to find out what all fuss was about meat. From then on, I did eat meat, but I never lost my preference for vegetable dishes. 

In my opinion, what makes meat taste good is actually the sauces and marinades, which are made out of vegetables—usually some variation of tomato and garlic. Once you’ve chewed out the sauce, what’s left pretty flavorless. 

However, I liked the social capital of not being the “weird vegetarian” that other people had to accommodate. It made things easier when I went over to friends’ houses.

The Wake-Up Call

Everything changed in 2019 when I was diagnosed with vasculitis and prediabetes. My doctor at Kaiser suggested two nutrition classes: a meat-based ‘Pre-diabetes and Me’ class and a plant-based nutrition class. The former felt like a slide into despair, while the latter, led by an inspiring teacher, presented a hopeful path toward reversing chronic diseases. You can read more about my health journey here. The stark contrast between the nihilism of the prediabetes class and the optimism of the plant-based diet class made going vegan the obvious choice. 

Making the Switch

On May 5, 2019, I cleared out my kitchen of all animal products. The following books and resources were incredibly help to me in making the transition:

The biggest help of all was the Forks Over Knives Meal Planner because it basically takes out all the mental labor for what to cook and what to buy. The weekly recipes helped me switch from someone who dreaded cooking, to someone who actually enjoys it.

Whole-food, plant-based diets are way cheaper than meat-heavy and processed food diets. An annual subscription to the meal planner more than pays for itself with how much we are saving on groceries and not spending on medical bills. (Note: I’m not sponsored by Forks Over Knives in any way. I keep recommending them, because I love their food.)

Transitioning Tips

I went vegan overnight, but most people usually need to ease into it more slowly. I recommend signing up for the Forks Over Knives meal planner, and start by switching one meal a week over the course of a month. (Week 1: Vegan breakfasts; Week 2: Vegan breakfasts and lunches; Week 3: All meals vegan!)

Remember, just because something is labeled “vegan” doesn’t mean it is healthy. Oreos are vegan. Potato chips are vegan. A healthy vegan meal is built around the four food groups — whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits — in as close to their original form as you can get. This is why people sometimes refer to this as a “plant-based, whole-food diet” rather than a “vegan diet.” This means the majority of your shopping happens in the produce section.

A whole food, plant based diet has a lot more fiber than most people on the standard American diet are used to. This means that your microbiome will need to change to help you digest all this fiber. A slow transition over the course of several weeks or months will help you avoid surprising gut issues.

The great news is that high-fiber diets have been proven to have all kinds of positive effects on our bodies, such as keeping you regular, lowering insulin resistance, helping to stay lean, and with lowering inflammation.

How do you get your protein?

A varied diet of whole grains, legumes, nuts, and vegetables has all the protein you need. But I generally build at least one meal a day around legumes, for the protein and iron. Eating legumes legumes has been shown to increase lifespan. Bean burrito lunches are my favorite, but I also like vegetable soups with lentils, quinoa, chickpeas, and peas. I also make my own hummus and blended sauces using chickpeas as a base.

In order to avoid all the salt in canned beans, I usually batch-cook my week’s legumes in an instant pot during the weekend.

What about B12? (And vitamin D, and iron, etc.)

Surprisingly, people who eat meat and dairy are also low on B12. This is because this essential nutrient is made from bacteria in healthy water and soil — which we no longer have in many places. Animals in the livestock industry get their B12 from nutrition supplements in their feed. Vegans need to get their B12 from multivitamins and fortified foods.

During the covid pandemic, many of us discovered how important Vitamin D is for healthy immune systems. Your body can make Vitamin D when exposed to sunshine, or you can take a supplement.

Iron is also important for immune system function, and menstruating women are sometimes at risk for being anemic. I make sure there is plenty of iron in my diet by pairing legumes with a vitamin C source — or example: beans and tomatoes, lentils and peppers, chickpeas and lemon — because the vitamin C helps the body absorb more of the iron than the body would otherwise.

When making any dietary switch, it’s important to check in with your doctor and get all of your blood levels checked to see if you have any specific needs you need to address. You should also get a doctor’s check-up every year to ensure your blood levels are healthy.

Beyond Diet: Ethics and Environment

My primary motivation for going vegan was selfish self-preservation.

However, the ethical and environmental aspects are important to me as well.

Books  like Eating Animal by Jonathan Safran Foer and Mind if I Order the Cheeseburger by Sherry F. Colb, and the documentary Dominion really broadened my understanding of the ethical treatment of animals. (Content Warning: Dominion shows animal slaughter and animal cruelty in graphic detail. Do not watch with kids!)

The documentaries Cowspiracy and Before the Flood make a strong case that what we choose to eat every day has a tremendous impact on our environment.

I think that eating meat made sense, back in the old days when the global population was half a billion people, and when peak life expectancy was 35. Back then, animal flesh was basically a walking savings account for calories to keep us humans from starving to death when the only food available was snow-covered grass.

But we live in a different world now. There are more than 8 billion people and industrial food production has come a long way. As a species, we face different challenges than our ancestors did, and the best thing for our survival is to change our habits and evolve—rather than continue to cling to some romanticized, macho version of the past.

We’re witnessing a paradigm shift in awareness about the health, social, and environmental consequences of eating animals.

For me, veganism a positive and pro-active way to not just be healthier by avoiding chronic disease, it’s also a way for me to live my values by being kind to animals and in doing my part to solve world hunger and lower my environmental impact. Everything about it feels good to me. It is one simple choice that has tremendous benefit to myself and others.

My only regret is that I didn’t go vegan sooner.

Navigating Social Settings

Dealing with social settings as a vegan can be challenging sometimes, but over the years I’ve developed some strategies.

  1. I let people know I’m vegan, but I don’t go into detail about it unless they want to know more. I wrote this blog post to answer some of the frequently asked questions I get about being vegan.
  2. I eat beforehand. When hanging out with friends, it’s not a given that there will be vegan options available. If my family or friends give me the option of choosing the restaurant, I like to check HappyCow.net for restaurants with vegan options.
  3. I bring my own food … plus plenty extra to share. If I’m going over to a friend or family member’s house, I usually bring my own food and enough food to feed everybody else.

If all else fails, I chose the best available option—which sometimes means ordering a baked potato and doing my best to scrape out the butter and pick out the bacon bits. 😝