Vegan kickstarter

I want to start a series called "vegan kickstarter". Under this headline, I am going to help all those people who are struggling on the beginning of there vegan journey. For the first post, I am going to tell you my story. See what phases made me struggling myself and what helped me threw it. I am also going to tell you, what made me a vegan in the first place. 

An unexpected journey

When I thought about what to post at first, it soon came to me that I might start at the beginning of my vegan journey. It must have been around the years 2010/2011... I struggled with my weight (as always) and was reading different kinds of weight-loss advising books. One of them was "Skinny Bitch"  and when I bought it, I couldn´t have expected the influence it would have on my life. When I bought it, I didn´t even know it was about veganism but since I read a lot of things and try diffent stuff every once in a while I gave it a try. And it shocked me. I am not going to bore you with the details but I can say, that I had never thougt about the way our food harms not only animals but the environment before. From one day to the other I turned vegan.

Detoxication

For the following days I got very sick. I struggled so hard with headackes and nausea, from sweating and freezing, that I almost gave up after a few days. But when I had reached the climax of this detoxing and my mood started to lighten up, I began to feel the change. I felt not only lighter, but much better. From that day I had never suffered from headaches again, my skin got clearer and I lost a few pounds without eating less. This whole process helped me to continue.

Nothing to eat...

When my sickness had finally passed, it left a very clueless and hungry girl. I knew a lot of things that I wouldn´t eat anymore and nearly nothing I could. Sure there were vegetables and fruits which I loved more every day, but there were so many things that I dearly missed. There was icecream and creamy pasta sauces. I wanted to eat something that I could dip in ketchup! I had no chocolate, no milk, no everything. I would cut out the stuff I didn´t want to eat from the things my mother bought and cooked and eat the things that were left. After a few weeks of this kind of abstinence, it came to me that I probably wasn´t the only vegan in this world and there was other food I could try.

Show me the world

I stumbled across vegan recipe blogs and it left me speechless. The food they were showing wasn´t boring and it was definitely more than my diet of potatos and carrots. On my next food-shopping trip, I saw everything from a different point of view. I found vegan milk, vegan cream, vegan chocolate. I discovered tofu and all the different kinds of meat substitutes. And I finally recognized that many things that I thought weren´t vegan, were vegan all the time. There was fruity icecrem, pasta, bread and the list goes on. 

Watching everything grow

On this day, I am happier to be vegan than ever. The offering of vegan products is bigger than ever and I barely know one market that wouldn´t at least sell soy milk. And in bigger stores the variety is just overwhelming so one can buy nut milks and vegan cheese. We have meat substitutes in every imaginable form and it´s growing every day.

Veganism is not about abandonment, it´s about abundance!

If you have any questions or suggestions for this series, feel free to write them in the comments below.

Lots of love!