Why Did You Go Vegan?

Carolyn

I had taken the dive and became a full fledge vegan about 1 year ago, a few months before I got married. It lasted a few months. I had done it because I love animals and feel a strong bond to them. However, I have an insulin resistance problem, meaning if I eat too many carbohydrates I gain weight fast. I had gained weight while being a vegan, and was a little chubby by my wedding day. So I reluctantly gave it up and began eating meat again, pouring through all the books on high protein, low carb diets.

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As the whole world now knows, these 'diets' consist of low carbohydrate consumption and ENDLESS amounts of meat and dairy and saturated animal fats. Ilost a little weight but felt like crap the whole time. Every time I ate meat I felt that nagging guilt inside of me, because I felt bad for the animals, but as a former anorexic I was petrified of gaining lots of weight. It was only yesterday that I was sitting here at my computer, looking up veganism and vegetarian living that the websites popped up, mentioning severe cruelty to animals, and of course, the PETA website was screaming out animal abuse headlines. I also read many health sites, which stated that vegetarians on an average lived longer than meat eaters, and vegans even longer than vegetarians who consumed dairy and eggs.

Well, I am pregnant right now and I thought of all the meat I had been eating the past 3 months. Every week I would eat a huge piece of steak, which was not even organic (not that that matters anyway really), and I got scared, thinking it might have contained chemicals and other junk. Plus, I own 2 rabbits and 2 hamsters, and they are my husband and my 'kids'. George Bernard Shaw was known to have said, "Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends". It really got me thinking. So I told my hubby last night that I planned on going vegan again, only this time I would cook more than buy pre-packaged vegan foods, and that I would be more careful what and how much I ate. I did notice the last time I was vegan that my skin looked good, my eyes were bright, and I had NO more sniffles or runny noses, due to giving up dairy. I knew for the health reasons alone PLUS my love of animals, that this really was the best thing for me. My baby will be bottle fed with a soy-milk formula, and we will only give him/her soy milk until he/she is old enough to decide what he/she wants, but we will educate our kids on what animals go through, and also how meat and dairy can do a job on your body. So here I am again!

Thanks for reading ^i^

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