Ex-vegans and what does being vegan mean to you?

Today I am writing this from the WordPress app, forgive me if it’s not perfectly formatted.

Over the last few months there has been news about people becoming ex-vegans. When this happens there is a lot of backlash. People get judgmental and all kinds of theories arise as to why they weren’t successful. Yes it sucks when we lose a member of the team. Ultimately though we shouldn’t care about these people as much as we do. I saw a great comment posted to a Jack Norris article that basically said instead of focusing on the ex why don’t we focus on all of the people that went vegan since then. So true.

So let’s focus on what being vegan means to you and why you went vegan. I will start. I am an ex-vegetarian, yep, I am one of those that left the flock, it was around 2000. I was a vegetarian for five years for health reasons, I would pick the pepperoni off the pizza, I didn’t care if it touched (though I never liked pepperoni so maybe not the best example) my food or it was cooked together. That made it very easy to go back to meat and I did for 10 years. Three years ago I did a cleanse that eliminated all animal products and never ate them again. Essentially it started with health and thanks to the Internet and all of the information out there I was armed with a lot more tools this time around.

My health journey then evolved to one of compassion. I learned about our food supply and vegan or not everyone should be concerned about the food supply. The more I learned the more I knew I had made the right decision. I also think it’s important to stress that there was a big learning curve with going vegan. You really have to dig in and do a bit of research to make sure you are meeting your nutritional needs. It’s not difficult but like anything you need the right tools to succeed.

This all lead me to be more active helping animals, and yes I help people too. In the last year we began fostering dogs and that has really been fulfilling. We have been very lucky that we have had some great dogs. The last one we had was the sweetest little guy that we couldn’t believe we had him for two weeks, the others went in one!

This is what being vegan means to me. What does it mean to you?

Ps: When you find something that is important to you no matter what it is, finding like-minded people will help reinforce, support, educate and hopefully dispel the myths because there can be a lot out there. Don’t be afraid to follow your passions and let others see what is inside of you.