When I was younger I used to eat meat regularly and as a result I would get stomach pains almost everyday and these were very irritating and at times extrutaiationg. My mom would try to help me by giving me what she thought was healthy namely; meat, cheese, milk, eggs, and many other animals products, as she believed that if I didn't eat these products I would get worse or even possibly die. This was because she was brought up in a family and culture where animal products were considered vital for health.
All these beliefs stemmed from roomer's with no scientific evidence, such as 'animals products contain certain proteins and minerals which you cannot get from plants' or 'You cant survive on just eating plants'. All these ascertains encouraged my mom to keep feeding me animal products, however she noticed that my pains were getting worse and I was continuing to gain weight. This realisation made my mom start doubting the benefits that society claim you can get from animal products.
This resulted in her searching everywhere for a solution, but at the time there was not a lot of information countering the consumption of animal products. This meant that she had to test out her theory on herself, by first cutting out meat from her diet gradually as she still had the fear of eating plants programmed into her mind since birth. Only after a few weeks of slight reduction she felt a big change in her energy levels and she felt a lot more peaceful. (Which made total sense because she was no longer consuming the death and suffering of animals to the extent which she used to).
After roughly 6 months of slowly cutting out meat and other animals products from her diet she was convinced that they were the issue causing my stomach pains and health issues in general. So she began to implement this new change onto me and my sister, however she was extremely cautious and she was much more gradual when changing our diet, as she still had the fear in the back of her mind.
Firstly she started making us smoothies consisting of vegetables such as beetroot, carrots, celery etc. At first we hated the taste and my mom had to go through a lot to make us even take a sip, because we were never introduced to these flavours previously before in our lives. My mom understood this, and she would be extremely patient when me and my sister would refuse to drink the smoothies she would make. However only after a few months my taste buds started to adapt and I didn't mind the taste as much anymore.
During this time my mom almost completely stopped cooking meat at home, but never forced me or my sister to stop eating meat at school or anywhere else. I didn't mind this change as my mom wouldn't cook a lot of meat anyway so it wasnt a major change, plus I could still eat meat during school or at restaurants. I continued to eat meat for a few more months until my mom started to suggest that I try cutting down on meat by adopting a pescatarian diet at first where I only eat fish.
Me and my sister would mock my mom for making this radical proposal, as at this stage we were both very conditioned by society to disregard this type of ideology. But for me this change was not hard as I liked fish and I could easily substitute a tuna & sweetcorn sandwich over a chicken one. I cant lie though, I got tempted a few times to buy a chicken sandwich but for the most part I would only eat fish.
After a few more months of eating mostly fish and meat very occasionally my mom got to a point where she couldn't keep sugar-coating the problem for us. She sat us down and told us the reality which me and my sister already knew about to a certain extent but we were very disconnected from. My mom got very emotional when talking about the animals that have to suffer and die for our taste pleasure which I found very weird as I have seen meat for so many years as nothing more than a commodity and not something that we should care about.
This experienced really opened my eyes a lot more to the harsh reality of eating meat and the consequences as a result, but I still felt very disconnected and didn't care much. However I could see that my mom did so I trusted her, and that night we all decided to stop eating meat, and become vegetarian. So for the following few months I stopped eating meat all together and I didn't find it hard at all because I already started changing my diet along time before, which really prepared me for this more drastic change.
During the time that we were vegetarian, we didn't cook or eat hardly any animal products only the ones that were present in processed foods like certain sweets or pizzas as there were no vegan alternatives. I would tell my friends who were interested that I'm vegan at home, but not outside of that because there were too many foods that I have been accustomed to that contain animal products. This also opened my eyes to how many animal products we used in foods that I would never expect them to have.
Also at the time I was the only vegan person in my year, and in my entire school from what I knew of. So I would constantly have to argue for veganism whenever the subject came up, and I had hardly any knowledge to defend my view so my arguments were very weak and easily refuted. This lead me to research and expose my self to veganism a lot more and throughout this process I started to feel more passionate about the philosophy.
Approaching the summer holidays I encountered a dilemma, every year me and my sister would go to our home country to visit our family. However almost every dish in their culture contained animal products, and because we would stay at the houses of our cousins we couldn't eat whatever we wanted. Luckily our families were very understanding and made sure to only cook food that did not contain meat. However I was stuck eating cheese constantly everyday for 2 months, and for how long I stopped eating animal products at home for, plus all the research I put into veganism, I felt a bit guilty but there was not much I could do so I just moved on and accepted it.
After a month and a half my body couldn't handle the drastic negative change, and I experienced the worst migraine and temperature of my life. This pain and extreme discomfort persisted for 3-4 days and I could barely leave my bed or have showers. During this horrible experience I said to my self, that I would never eat dairy products ever again in my life, as I was very certain that this was the cause of my sickness. After I recovered I could never look at pizza with cheese the same again the smell and appearance would make me feel sick, as this would remind me of the fact that there is a lot of pus and blood in milk, which I learnt about through my previous research.
When I got back from holiday I was over the moon as I have never missed plants and fruit this much in my life, I couldn't wait to eat my first vegan meal. Furthermore I almost completely stopped consuming dairy, only maybe by accident or indirectly from processed foods. But I would try my best to avoid this by eating food at home as I knew all the ingredients.
After a few months back in London my mother, sister and I decided to go on trip to Thailand, because London was very cold at the time, and we thought that Thailand would have many fresh exotic vegan food options. Unfortunately this was not the case at all, almost every restaurant we went to had menus consisting almost entirely of meat options. We were very disappointed, however maybe it was because we went to an island instead of the main city, but shouldn't an island have more vegan options as the island had many trees, crops and vegetation? However when traveling back to London we stopped at Bangkok, and there food options weren't any better.
Never the less, the trip was great in terms of weather and nature, seeing beautiful palm trees and mountains everywhere was very refreshing after years of living in a city my whole life. Unfortunately the ugly buildings and smells ruined it but I'll cover that in future post specifically about my experience there. Getting back on track, during this trip I became very passionate about veganism and I felt an urge to start talking to people about it on the streets at group events.
I was not sure exactly what triggered this fire within me, but it could have been due to the change of environment which allowed me to see things from a different perceptive. Or just seeing the amount of meat consumed by people who I thought were Buddhist and didnt consume much meat. However one experience in particular which definitely played a big part was seeing a pig in person for the first time in my life. This innocent pig was on the other side of my taxi window trapped in the back of a large truck on a dark gloomy night. My heart sank because I knew where they were headed and because this was in person and not viewed from a screen the reality hit me much harder, and helped me see the true evil behind the meat and dairy industries.
The story ends here, I have been a vegetarian for over a year and vegan for a few months now, and I feel a lot better that I am no longer paying and providing a demand for these industries to keep exploiting and slaughtered innocent animals who all have their own unique personalities just like us humans. If you are watching this video and you are considering a vegetarian or vegan diet I strongly recommend you start from somewhere even if at first you only cut out a few meats.
As you will see how easy it is and you can continue from there with your new perspective. A lot of the time changing diets is much more mental barrier then a physical one, our taste buds can adapt to new taste very quickly without you even realising. Furthermore there are so many delicious vegan meat alternative at most supermarkets, and many more vegan dishes like lentils curry, hummus & falafel wraps and the list goes on all you have to do is put a bit of time and effort and you will be surprised at how easy it is.
Lastly I would recommend 'challenge 22' if you are wanting to go vegan, this is a 22 day vegan challenge where you are assigned a mentor on Facebook who you can ask anything related to veganism, like the best vegan dishes to eat, or anything regarding nutrients.
If you enjoyed this video please upvote and re-steem so other steemit users can benefit too. If you have any questions or opinions about this topic please let me know in the comments, and I will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Thank you very much for reading and I will see you in my next post.
