Going Vegan, or, What The Fuck Happened to Me?

Today marks 35 years of life for me.  While the nations of the Earth are busy rejoicing, and my wife is busy baking me tasty food, I thought it would be nice to take a moment to reflect on the state of things in my life.  Specifically, I'd like to shine some light on, and try to make sense of, the reason I'm not celebrating the day of my birth with the traditional Steak 'n' Cake.

Most people who read this will already know, but for clarity's sake I'll say it:  Suzi and I are eating vegan.  Vegan.  Not, "Suzi and I have ascended to a higher order of carnivore and are now eating vegans," but that we are actually eating a diet that falls in line with the definition of the word vegan.

This change is... unanticipated.  For the last (near enough to) 35 years, I've thought of meat as nutritious, delicious, and while not necessary for staying alive, it played a significant role in how I defined masculinity.  Men eat meat.  Meat, and the rapacious consumption of it, has been a symbol of power and virility for me for as long as I can remember.  But my perspective has slipped.

This move to a vegan diet was both an immediate switch-flip decision and a lengthy process of gradual stage progression.  It snuck up on me and immediately changed how I live like some ninja assassin of personal philosophy.  Let me say now though, before I outline how it happened, that we've only been purposely eating this way for a very short time, and it is not my intention here to try to convert or shame any readers.  To speak plainly:  This is about me.  I don't give a fuck what you eat.

And now for the boring-ass details of how I arrived at veganism.

Five or seven years ago, I weighed in around 230 pounds and spent 8-12 hours per week in the gym plying freeweights in various bodybuilding style endeavors.  I ate whatever the hell I wanted, occasionally taking queues from Muscle and Fitness magazine (essentially throwing little trendy fluctuations into my diet).  "Whatever the hell I wanted" included a lot of sugar, a  lot of fat, a lot of meat, and almost no vegetables outside of rice and potatoes.  I had a lot of muscle, but I also had a lot of fat, including a gut that was starting to bother me - I couldn't keep it sucked in all day anymore and it was looking decidedly middle-aged even though I was in my late 20's.  About this time I also noticed how slow and stiff my movement had become; I didn't have any joint pain or problems, I just had 70 more pounds than I had in high school, the last time I could remember being quick and agile.

I never had any delusions about reclaiming the energy of my teenage years.  What I did have was an idea that if I dropped some weight, I might not feel so stiff and sluggish all the time.  I had recently been VERY impressed by the material in a workout book written by Pavel Tsatsouline.  The fitness information in his books is amazing.  In the back of one of his books he mentions a book called The Warrior Diet.  He just mentions it in passing, only a sentence or two, no hard sell.  I thought that if Pavel endorsed it it must be legit.  So I bought it, read it, and applied it.  Without all the boring details, it got me eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, got me to dump a lot of the sugar and refined foods, and got me interested in organic natural foods.  I dropped around 50 pounds, and I'm not sure it even took 6 months.  I still ate a lot of meat; as much as a pound of red meat in a single dinner.

Time went on, and Suzi and I got more and more educated on all kinds of environmental things like the toxicity of plastic, deforestation of rainforests to make room to grow cheap consumer goods, CO2 emissions, etc.  By the time we moved to Hawaii when I was 32, we were thoroughly disgusted with plastic. So, when 2010 rolled around, we resolved to stop eating any food that came in a package.  We both felt better (physically and conscience-ly), and we leaned up;  Suzi dropped 30 pounds in January alone.  Our already veggie-loving diet became downright plant-rich, with a new focus on tropical fruit.  However, we lived in an expensive area and worked low-paying jobs.  We did a good job of staying away from packaged foods, but the plant portion of our diet shifted away from prohibitively expensive leafy and green vegetables toward more affordable tropical fruits and bulk grains like rice, oats, and flour.  I still ate meat when I could get it, but by this time I could hardly bring myself to buy meat unless it was pasture raised and organic, which was usually too costly.  I let myself eat whatever when we went out though.  More often, I bought eggs.  I don't really like eggs, but they are cheaper than meat, and I was still under the impression that quality animal protein was essential to successful strength training.

Now we're back on the mainland.  We immediately kicked up the leafy greens eating - we'd been looking forward to cheap lettuce ever since we decided to move back from Hawaii.  We still have the same low paying jobs, so we kept to the tradition of eggs and occasional cheese instead of expensive organic meat.  But then we started to investigate food.  The thought of having kids sooner rather than later has crossed our minds, and Suzi wanted to get informed on food so she can get healthy before she's chock full of fetus.  She started watching documentaries like Forks Over Knives and Food Matters (we'd already seen Food Inc. and a few others while we were living in Hawaii).  Some of these shows claimed that vegan diets prevented and often CURED cancer.  They claim that animal protein, meat, dairy, fish, whatever, created an environment in the body that facilitates cancer, or at least feeds it if it's already there.  Bold claims, I know, but hardly new ones.  Spend some time with your dear friend Google and you'll see that a variety of sources agree with these claims.  Interesting stuff.

While Suzi was starting to fill our Netflix cue with this stuff I found a book in our building's laundry room library called Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I didn't pick it up.  In fact, I forgot about it for weeks until Suzi brought it back from one of her trips to the laundry room.  This book takes a long hard look at the meat industry in America.  It is horrifying.  Disturbing.  Generally speaking, I have a strong stomach and no topic is taboo at the dinner table.  This book turned my stomach so hard I had trouble finishing an apple.  It looks at industrial factory farming and small private farming, organic and conventional, as well as seafood.  It shows the fuck-ugly facts and highlights people's best efforts to do right.  It talks about things I knew were issues, but it brought to light a lot of things I never would have thought of on my own.  Suddenly, animal welfare was a big damn deal to me.

Understand:  For my entire life until this point I didn't give half a crap about food animals.  In my eyes, they were there to provide food for me, and how they lived and died didn't matter because being a delicious addition to my dinner was what they were for.  Their purpose was to become me.  Period.  This book didn't just open my eyes, it blew my mind.  I realized that how we treat other animals matters, and that I cannot be a part of the hideous machine that is factory farming (or the equally abhorrent fishing industry).  Even if this whole vegan thing doesn't stick with me for the rest of my life, I'm done with factory farmed animal products.  Done.

And suddenly the light goes on:  I can't eat this stuff any more.  Turns out that it hasn't been hard at all.  I've simply stopped wanting any of it.  I don't want the meat, the eggs, even my beloved cheese holds no allure.  Pastries no longer tempt me, even the ones I could eat for free at work.  I haven't had even a twinge of chocolate or sweets cravings since I made the switch (and for those that don't know, this is nigh unbelievable).  I eat dinner now and I'm not hunting for a sweet dessert to complete it.  In a way, this lifestyle that I always thought would be so restrictive has been quite freeing.  I feel like I'm shedding an addiction; like it's actually just sloughing off of me.

Let me say again though, that we haven't been at it very long.  As good as I feel about what we're doing, there is a part of me that's afraid it won't last.  I'm waiting to get hit by a crippling chocolate craving; the kind I used to have where I would quite literally pace the house in a state of distress until I finally broke and hauled ass to the nearest store where I could get a pound or so of chocolatey sweetness which I would then devour in maybe an hour.  I'm worried that there will come a time when I just can't resist the butcher counter at the grocery store.  So far there  hasn't been a single instant of temptation - not a moment!  But I'm afraid that it's coming.

On the other hand, why would it?  I feel amazing!  I feel... healthy.  Yeah, I think that's the word.  I feel light. I feel much more alert.  I feel like I'm sleeping a little better.  I don't feel like anything is missing.  I feel like I'm already leaner (seriously, if it keeps up I'll be in danger of seeing an ab).

I do have a slight concern about getting adequate nutrients.  Mostly it's from years of prejudging vegans as scrawny, sickly people.  Articles, documentaries, and books have me convinced that it can be done pretty easily.

And that's about all I can say about this today because Suzi has prepared an amazing array of flatbreads that I can no longer ignore.