I'm so excited to introduce this post to you guys! I have wanted to include a post on Veganism for a while now as it's a big part of my life. So when Jessie from My Mod Style offered to do a guest post about being a Vegan I jumped at the chance. She has such a positive attitude and has a lot of great things to say!
Thank you Jessie for this lovely post :)
Hello! My name is Jessie and I blog over at
My Mod Style. My blog is a mixture of things really. I love to post about Interior Design, my life, fashion, nature and way too many other things to list. Hopefully you'll just stop by and check it out! When Chantal asked me to do a guest post for her blog I decided I wanted to do a post about being Vegan. I wanted to give my point of view on it because so many people just have opinions on it without really understanding it. I went Vegan this year and it's been 9 months now. I wanted to put some insight on being Vegan, why I decided to make the change and just simple tips and advise.
My husband and I were burned out on eating the same meals over and over. I dreaded going to the grocery store every week and buying 15 pounds of ground beef and a huge bag of chicken breasts. I hated touching meat and even looking at it. We were both raised to eat meat and never thought anything of it. It's just considered normal so it's what you eat. Since being Vegan isn't considered "normal" by many, sometimes it's hard to deal with the way people treat you or view you.
I am very petite and always wanted to make sure that I stayed at a healthy weight for my tiny size. I would work out and never see results and I find myself very frustrated!! One day my husband and I decided to watch a film called
Forks Over Knives on
Netflix. The film focuses on eating a plant based diet. You cut out all animal products completely. No meat, no eggs, no milk! Anything that is part of an animal at all. It also focuses on cutting out added oils, processed sugars and preservatives. Seems hard right? Well apparently it's not that hard because I've been doing it for 9 months! :)
Photo of me at the Denver VegFest // Read the post HERE
At the time I didn't really consider myself a Vegan. I just knew I was losing weight in all the "right places" or I guess you could say "my problem areas". My husband has gone from 168 pounds to currently at 137 pounds! (No, he's not a skeleton! He lost a lot of belly fat and in his face.) I really didn't want to call myself a Vegan at first because I knew how most people would react. They say such things like:
"Oh, you are one of those people!"
"You have to eat meat to get Protein!"
"Oh that's why you are so small! HAHAHA!"
I am not even going to type the things that guys say to my husband. I am sure you can imagine some of it.
If you don't eat meat, you aren't "manly". Some people are not judge mental and ask questions, but most are rude.
If you are Vegan or decide to try becoming Vegan you will asked almost daily, "How do you get protein?" If you watch the Forks Over Knives movie you will learn a lot about all this so called protein that we are supposed to be getting from animals. Yes, it has protein....but is it healthy? My opinion is no. So my answer to people who ask me this is, "Everything I eat has protein in it." It saves the argument and it's the truth. As a Vegan you can get all kinds of protein shakes if you are worried you aren't getting everything your body needs. All the Vegan foods are loaded with protein. Not to mention both Almond and Soy Milk have twice the amount of calcium that dairy milk has. It also tastes AMAZING. My husband says the Vanilla Soy Milk tastes like ice cream. It pretty much does.
So what do I eat you may ask? Pretty much everything anyone does, just differently. We eat pizza, sloppy joes, tacos, burgers, spaghetti and many dishes that are way better then anything I had ever ate the first 30 years of my life! The key to being Vegan and not "falling off the wagon" when you first get started is good recipes!
As you can see we use Vegetarian cookbooks also. We just adjust the recipes to the guidelines of our Vegan diet. Being Vegan is not as hard as everyone thinks it is. There are great products out there now a days to help you continue to eat ice creams, cookies and whatever else your heart desires. We use honey in our coffee now instead of sugar for example. On my blog I have added some of
my favorite recipes that we eat. I highly recommend the Forks Over Knives cookbook and any of the
Happy Herbivore ones. There are lots of great blogs out there with FREE recipes also! One of my favorites is
Fat Free Vegan.
Most people go Vegan for the rights of animals or simply their love for animals. Well I'm right there with them now. At first it was just for my health. Over time though I educated myself on environmental issues more and just the treatment of animals. I've always loved animals, so going Vegan was very fitting for me.
I don't view cows as a hamburger anymore. When I see a cow now I feel sorry for it. I see a living breathing creature. I wish I would of stopped eating meat years ago. I have such compassion towards all living beings and our planet now. It's been life changing and defiantly eye opening for me. It's changed me forever and honestly I love the new me! I used to be so scared to post anything on my blog about saving Whales or recycling. Scared I may offend people or they wouldn't read my blog because I wanted to save animals and the planet. Now I just hope that I can inspire one person to make the change the way I did.
When I met
Peter Hammarstedt from Whale Wars he told me that we all have a voice and we need to use it. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't speak up about these things! If you just read all this THANK YOU very much and especially thanks to Chantal for having me on her blog! :)
