Narrative: My Vegan Story

Trigger Warning: Eating disorders 

Five years ago, I decided to go vegan. Going vegan was a huge life change for me; especially coming from a family where meat was in every meal we ate. I never thought I would make such a big lifestyle change. I vividly remember being in high school, talking to a girl who was a vegetarian. I said to her, "It's great what you're doing, but I could never do that. I love meat way too much."

Here I am, five years later, and I am a passionate vegan advocate. This is my story.

The summer going into my junior year of high school, I wanted to eat as healthy as possible. I struggled with an eating disorder all throughout high school and was on to my next way of staying thin, which was eating clean. 

I started watching all these vegan fitness YouTubers, and they were all so thin, and I wanted that. I saw them eating so much food, but still staying so skinny, and I was so surprised. 

I researched the vegan diet and found that because there were so much fewer calories in plant foods compared to meat, it was very easy to naturally stay thin. So that's where my journey started. 

I started eating so much fruit, beans, rice, and potatoes. I found that when I started eating these foods that I was so scared to eat before, I enjoyed them so much and didn't feel gross anymore. Once I stopped eating meat and animal products, everything changed for me. I had so much energy, I would go on runs every day (and I used to hate running!). The foods I was eating now truly fulfilled me and made me feel satisfied. 

The next time I went to the doctor, I had actually gained back all the weight I had lost when I was restricting, but I didn't feel bad because my body felt so good.

All the beautiful, colorful, foods I was eating were nourishing my body and giving me the energy to go and run, hike, bike, and more. 

I gained the weight back, but I also gained back so much happiness that my eating disorder robbed me of for so many years. Going vegan opened me up to so much more food than I wouldn't let myself eat before because society deemed carbs as the "enemy".

Initially, I did go vegan for the wrong reasons. But once I became vegan, I started educating myself more on the effects of animal products on our environment, and all the terrible things the animals go through. I watched the documentary Earthlings and my heart broke into pieces. 

I saw the way these beautiful animals were treated, and I knew I could never consume them again. I became an ethical vegan, and animals became the most important thing to me.

Becoming an ethical vegan gave me my life purpose. It might sound strange, but before animals, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized all the horrible things that happened to them, I dedicated my life to saving them and advocating for them. 

Now, I want to be an investigative journalist and go undercover to expose the conditions they face. I also want to go to law school to become an animal rights lawyer.

As you can see, going vegan has done so much amazing things for me, and I can honestly say it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.