Maybe just say if you are vegan, for how long, and why you made the choice?
I've been vegan for 5 years... made the choice for only ethical reasons (but now it's ethics and health). I went cold turkey (no pun intended) from eating meat to being vegan....
I decided to be a vegetarian in Jan. at the same time as I quit smoking. I wanted to teach myself to eat veggies and fruits and to try new things all the time. I wanted my body to be healthy.
At first I thought it would be temporary..
Then I started to reall like fruits and veggies! dun dun dun!! and I started to be really grossed out by meat, then by eggs.. then dairy... suddenly I was just vegan. It just happened. I said, I already don't eat milk or eggs or meat, why not just avoid them and everything made with them altogether? So i did!
Now I'm so much healthier for it. I sleep better, i have better energy levels, my metablosim seems to have increased, as i lost a lot of weight since becoming vegetarian, but i still eat like 1600-2000 calories a day and alot of carbs. My stress level has dropped, my skin cleared up, heck even my periods are lighter.
Maybe I can't attribute all my success to veganism.. but It's a big coincidence!
I'm enjoying the challenge and I love vegan food. Who knew being a vegan could be so delicious?! If it weren't for the need to socialize with other people, I would say that being a vegan is easy! ;) My problem is that I still eat out way too frequently. Also, I'm not the greatest at planning my week's menus ahead of time, so I regularly run out of healthy food at home. That's what I'm hoping this site will help me with.
It's great to see so many vegans on here! Woot!
i made the transition because i felt bad.. the eggs and milk i ate were only found in pastries and delectable foods, and i felt guilty for indulging in animal-derived products. the only reason id tolerate it temperately would be if i ate them for nutrional gain. =/
Been vegan for a few years now....don't know exactly how long... it started 4 Thanksgivings ago i believe...on all of the days to start right...lol...
worked out well tho even got my sisters to stop eating meat also
i was a vegetarian for like a year but my parents made me eat meat again because they thought i wasnt getting enough protein..
im never having milk/cheese/eggs/anything like that ever again D:
my parents say animals were put on earth to be eaten...
i dont believe that D:
I became vegan after I married my husband. he is a great cook and he rarly uses any animal products. About once or twice a month he will grill some meat, but other than that, we buy lots of different types of beans, potatoes. onions, and especially cactus. We do have our staples of red and green salsas that he make on a molcajete-thats an old school lava stone blender. we use it alot when making our mexican dishes. and lots of corn totillas.
just by looking at all of the other vegan photographs i think that I am the heaviest one out there. I need to lose 150 lbs to reach my goal weight of 139.
My name is Tiffany Hillman I am a Personal Trainer and I am 39, I live in Phoenix AZ, with my husband George. I am a 90% Raw Vegan. I would like to share my story with you. I hope you don’t mind, it is a little long, it has been a bit of a journey for me.
Prior to becoming established as a Personal Trainer and Raw Food educator, I worked as Executive Assistant. I was extremely stressed, overweight, and living on a slightly healthier vision of the Standard American Diet. I was sick all the time and suffering from adult acne and acid reflex, in addition to depression, anxiety and constant worrying. Like most people working in that type of environment, I was subject to emotional eating and constantly riding the sugar rollercoaster - peaking and then crashing. Additionally, because of the long hours that I worked, most evenings, George and I would go out to dinner.
After eating out, my body would shut down like clockwork. As soon as I got in the car after eating a meal, I would fall right to sleep - even a vegan meal(cooked of course). My body needed to shut down so I could digest the meal. My personal favorite foods didn’t support my health and took a great deal of effort for my body to digest. Pizza was a big problem for me. Pizza from a very young age is connected to fun and parties. I would continuously eat pizza on Friday evenings as a reward for getting though another difficult work week. However, I would pay the price for many days following that meal, in the for form of digestion problems due to lactose intolerance.
Over five years ago I got sick in tired of being sick and tired and left corporate America to return to school. I decided to study Exercise Science and pursue my dream of being a Personal Trainer.
George and I had both experimented with vegetarianism years before we met, so the decision to give up meat for a month wasn’t much of a stretch. That month rather quickly turned into a year. We both loved to cook, so we’d take turns making delicious vegetarian meals for each other and wowing friends at dinner parties. At that time we were still eating a significant amount of processed foods. This includes the soy products that I now think of as transition foods, such as fake meats and also frozen vegetarian meals. Unfortunately, switching to these products didn’t produce any improvement in my health. As a matter of fact, the tendency to be lactose intolerant seemed to become worse. So dairy fell by the wayside and we adopted a vegan lifestyle. Giving up all thing dairy was extremely hard for me. I loved cheese, ice cream, yogurt and butter. However, when I eliminated dairy from my life, I really started to see improvements in my health. My adult acne and eczema started to clear up.
We rose to the challenge of creating tasty vegan dishes and we wanted to make the changes we were making a permanent part of our lives. Therefore, to support our sacrifice of dairy (or more specifically, ice cream), we purchased an ice cream maker to create our own using nut milks. We invested in the best ice cream maker on the market and found a book on line called Vice Cream by Jeff Rogers this book has over 70 dairy free ice cream recipes. After about six months of being vegan, I realized that I was addicted to sugar. It was a sad day for when I realized what that actually meant. It meant no more making homemade sour dough bread and no processed sugar of any kind. It also meant no starches, so no more rice or potatoes. After all, starches degrade to sugars, and then to fat which deposits in our bodies. If I didn’t process the food myself, I didn’t eat it. This part of the journey was a lot like coming off of an addictive drug. Luckily, it didn’t take very long for the desire to go away. After a few months, I discovered stevia, agave nectar, and grade B maple syrup. After introducing these sweeteners to my diet, I no longer needed sugar.
The first vegan year was coming to a close and we both felt great. A friend of ours had just completed the Master Cleanse and spoke of how amazing they felt being able to shut down the bodies digestive system and allow the body to detoxify and heal itself. George and I decided to give the cleanse a try, and begin with a 30 day fast. The fist four days were the hardest. We started on a Friday evening so we had the rest of the weekend to adjust to fasting. We both worked right through the rest of the fast. Half way though our fast we decided that we were going to go raw. All of the free time that we created by not preparing or eating food, we spent online searching everything they could find on the Raw Vegan Life Style. We also bought countless books on the subject.
We bought a Vita-Mix high speed blender, an Excalibur Dehydrator , an Omega Juicer and a huge cutting board to put on top of the stove we’d no longer be using. During the fast George lost more than 60 lbs and I lost 20 lbs. Although some of that weight returned once normal eating habits resumed, the bulk of that weight never returned. We became much healthier by loosing all of the fat and toxins released during the fast. In fact, we are constantly told that we look younger then we really are. We have more energy and we don’t need to drink coffee. I don’t suffer from any of the ailments that I did when I was on the Standard American Diet.
Since I went vegan I have lost about 30 pounds and my upset stomach. I used to get an upset stomach just about everyday of my high school life. Not just normal stomach aches but horrible aches that would leave me curled up into a ball and not able to move. But when I switched my diet over it just went away. I've had it maybe 3-5 times in three years since then. And not nearly as bad.
Currently I'm still vegetarian but am trying to make the move to vegan very soon. :D
dawn
Oh, and I'm a raw vegan. Sometimes I will switch over and practice fruitarianism for a week or so before going back to eating vegetables.
I initially went vegetarian because I just couldn't stand to eat one more defenseless animal. I went vegan because I began researching the milk and egg industries. I'm struggling with eating disorders, which kind of influenced my decision to go from being a standard vegan to a raw vegan. Fruitarianism just sounded new and cool to try, but I can't switch permanently because I've got to have my carrots. :)
Hyl
Hey, I've been a vegetarian on and off all of my life (really, according to my parents since age 2) and became a vegan 9 months ago after watching the documentary The Corporation. They showed how sick the cows are from all the hormones and anti-biotics and a former dairy industry person said that pus actually gets into the milk. That grossed me out so bad that whenever I see any dairy, even my formerly beloved cheese, all I can think about is infected udders and pus. Yuck!
The first couple of weeks being a vegan was the toughest because I was thinking constantly about what was in my food and planning my meals. Now, I'm totally used to it and it's no big deal. Eating out isn't terribly difficult because I live in Brooklyn, but I'm from the south and I'm worried about going home for Christmas. I was an alien creature just as a regular lacto-ovo vegetarian. I'm sending my mom and aunt some recipes and suggestions and I'm going to get my mom to take me to a health food store to pick up some stuff. Hopefully I'll get through it unscathed.
Good to know there are so many vegans out there!
i've been a veg for 5 years and a wheat-free corn-free vegan for the last three months and not having any problems. Though there is some irony in my choises as my oncle is a wheat farmer and my father raises cattle and has sold quite a few for meat though they're kinda pets(and they aren't even dairy!), though they are given a good life (30head and 80acres of undeveloped land to run freely on, no hormones or for that matter any wierd food just grass and hay.)
What is the diet for kidney stones?
For kidney stones, you should drink at least three to four quarts of fluid (preferably water) everyday. There are several kinds of kidney stones... Read more