The Herbivore Family
The Reality of Non-Linear Vegan Journeys
It is a cozy rainy day. I thought today would be a good day to make this article. I’ve never talked about my sort of vegan backstory on my channel before, and so I thought it would be a way for you guys to get to know me a little bit better and my sort of history with veganism. I think everyone has such a different story when it comes to being vegan, becoming vegan, their journey there. I’ll hear a lot of people especially on social media, in podcasts, YouTube etc being like, “and then I learned about what happened in the meat and dairy industry and I went vegan overnight and I never looked back.” And that’s great and that sounds really impressive, but I think most people—I would say a majority of us who are vegan—our stories were much more convoluted and not a straight path. I think that’s important to let people know about. I hear people say to me a lot, “Well, I tried it once and it didn’t work for me.” I feel like sharing my story maybe would help anyone who’s in that position to realize that just because it didn’t work for you once doesn’t mean it could never work. So yeah, those are all the reasons that I wanted to make this article and share this and let’s get into it.
Cultural Roots and a Love for Cheese
I don’t really remember how I kind of came into knowing about vegetarianism. Culturally my family is French and Irish, so two cultures that consume a lot of meat, dairy, and eggs. Like most people that eat cheese, I was completely obsessed with cheese. I would say I was like addicted to it. I even wrote a cheese song that I used to perform. I still sing it sometimes, Paul and I still sing it, it’s very funny and pretty creative for a seven-year-old if I do say so myself. I never really was completely obsessed with eggs like whatever, like I would eat them but not crazy about them. And then meat, there were certain meats that I really loved. So as you know, I’ve mentioned this in a few articles, I used to love cured meats, pepperoni, salami, etc. I also loved Slim Jims. It is what it is, I love Slim Jims. I liked jerky and I really liked like Chinese food meat but for the most part I was never like “oh my god I love steak” or “like I love burgers, I love chicken.” Like I wasn’t super obsessed with most meat.
The Dissection Epiphany
My first sort of moment in my journey was when I was in I believe seventh grade. I had a science class that was called Life Science, it was basically like introductory biology, and the teacher one day had us dissect chicken. Not chickens, but chicken store-bought chicken from the grocery store in little styrofoam trays with plastic wrap. So she had us dissecting breasts, thighs, and wings. I think since this was store-bought chicken it was like, “okay this is clearly what I’m eating when I’m eating chicken.” And dissecting it raw, the reason she had us do it was so that we could see all of the veins and the tendons and the skin. And this was supposed to teach us about like different layers of flesh and whatnot, but I was just so disgusted that I didn’t realize when I ate chicken that I was eating all of that. I didn’t realize I was eating tendons, I didn’t realize I was eating veins. I remember that really grossed me out.
Family Opposition and a Short-Lived Attempt
So I go home that night for dinner and my mom has made chicken parmesan for dinner. And I just, I didn’t like chicken parmesan anyway, and I was just like, “I dissected this in science class today, it’s really disgusting and I really don’t want to eat the veins and all this stuff.” And my parents were like, “oh my god.” This is where I don’t remember how I knew that people didn’t eat meat, I somehow knew that vegetarian was a thing and I was like, “that’s what I’m gonna be, I’m not gonna eat meat.” So my parents were really unsupportive, they didn’t want me to do this. They like many parents unfortunately, like many people, thought that I would just like die without meat. And my mom who did most of the cooking, she wouldn’t cater to me. She would just make whatever she was going to make and she’s like, “well if you want to eat this you can eat it, if not you can do your own thing.” I just remember during that time being hungry all the time. I was you know going through puberty and instead of gaining weight I was losing weight. I remember we went on a family vacation with a couple other families and everybody was asking me so many questions about why I wasn’t eating meat and I didn’t have the strength of my convictions at that time to just confidently be like “yeah here’s why and I’m doing it and it’s great.” I was kind of just like “yeah why am I doing it, I don’t know.” After three months I decided to start eating meat again. I just always had this really sad feeling about that, like that I did want to do that, it was something I wanted to do but I failed.
College Encounters and Stereotypes
So then I got to high school and I went to an all-girls school. A lot of the girls that I met were vegetarian, my best friend was vegetarian, vegetarianism was kind of all around me and it became a lot more normalized. But at the same time throughout high school I definitely developed more meat foods that I really liked that made it harder and harder for me to wrap my mind around giving it up. My first few days of college I lived in a suite with three girls and we became friendly with the guys that lived in the suite below us. And I remember one of the guys was vegetarian and he talked about it so confidently. And when he told me he was vegetarian I was like, “what, you’re like a tall big guy like how are you vegetarian? Like you get enough protein, you get enough food?” And he was like, “yeah it’s easy.” And my brother plays college lacrosse and he’s a vegetarian too. And so I was like my mind was blown even though I knew vegetarians in high school. I don’t know maybe because they were girls and this was a guy I don’t know. One thing I remember him saying which is just so funny and it’s so weird but I feel like I have to include this. I remember he was like, “vegetarians are better lovers.” And I was like, “what?” And he was like, “yeah like it’s been studied that vegetarians give off pheromones that are like more attractive or something like that.” Like vegetarians give off more attractive pheromones than meat eaters. Now I have absolutely no idea what the validity of this is, I’m guessing it’s like zero. And if that’s true for vegetarians then do vegans make like amazing lovers? I think that vegans can definitely give off like a just I don’t know a certain vibe that I think is attractive. And I remember he made a facebook group called vegetarians are better lovers, I was in it, these other girls from my dorm were in it. It was just so stupid. Anyway vegetarians are better lovers. I mean I could use his real name but I’ll just give him a name let’s call him Tommy.
Social Support and Food Swaps
So I meet this other guy in my dorm and he’s like “yeah I’m gonna try being a vegetarian and Tommy’s gonna help kind of help me through it like you should try it with me” because I was definitely showing interest. And so that I think was is a really important thing to mark is that I had this kind of social community support. Tommy was like “don’t worry if you have any questions if you need help I’ll be here to help you out like I’ll be your kind of like coach.” And honestly I don’t think I ever like went to him for advice but just knowing that someone was there that could help me was huge. But what’s funny is back to the chicken parmesan. The summer before I started college I kind of came back around on chicken parmesan and realized I really liked it. So I made this decision to try going vegetarian and then we had this big freshman dinner they were serving chicken parmesan. And I was like “oh great, great, right when I make this decision there’s chicken parmesan.” And I was like sitting there eating a salad and I was talking to this guy Tommy and being like “this sucks” and he was like “well yeah but like there’s eggplant parmesan and eggplant parmesan is even better than chicken parmesan.” And I was like “what like I don’t like eggplant like I’ve had it like my mom’s ordered like chinese food eggplant and I no no I don’t like it.” And he was like “try it’s really good.” So I remember I eventually started really liking eggplant parmesan. This became a recurring theme of thinking I could never do this because of this food and then realizing like oh well there’s an alternative to that food that’s just as good if not even better. The food in my college was amazing, every single day they had multiple hot vegan options for pretty much every meal so being vegetarian at my college was really easy.
The “Skinny Bitch” Influence and Vanity
The summer between my freshman year and sophomore year I read the book Skinny [ __ ]. Which I have a whole article about so I won’t go into Skinny [ __ ] too much because I talk about this period of my life in that article. I was convinced to go vegan and a lot of women my age that I talked to are like “oh yeah I read Skinny [ __ ] like that’s what convinced me to go vegan too.” I was on board with the ethical stuff, I was on board with the environmental stuff, but I think my primary reason for wanting to go vegan was from a more vanity angle. I had gained a little bit of weight toward the end of my freshman year, I was feeling just uncomfortable in my body wanting to lose some weight. The book very much paints a picture—it’s I mean it’s called Skinny [ __ ]—it very much paints a picture that vegan equals skinny. If you are vegan you will be skinny no matter what, you can eat whatever you want as long as it’s vegan and you will be skinny was essentially the underlying message of the book. So at that point I did pretty much go vegan overnight. I tried to be healthy, I tried to eat kind of a variety of foods, I did do a lot of cooking but I would say for the most part I was a little bit more of a junk food vegan. I very much believed and wanted to believe their claim of like you can be vegan and eat whatever you want. During that time I continued to gain weight, not a ton of weight but needless to say you know the vanity aspect of why I went vegan like it didn’t match my expectations.
Nutritional Struggles and Returning to Vegetarianism
On top of that during that time I did definitely have some emotional eating issues. I was going through a lot emotionally in college, I wasn’t really addressing these issues or maybe even aware of them but it was definitely coming out in my relationship with food. And I wasn’t aware of any of this at the time this was just now looking back I can see it. I also don’t think I was really keeping up with my b12 or d3, I don’t know that I knew that I needed to take those supplements. I think I mentioned this in the Skinny [ __ ] article I would have cravings for certain things like sometimes I’d have cravings for meat, sometimes I’d have cravings for cheese, I remember I had cravings for cream cheese which is so random. I was probably deficient in certain things that I associated with animal products. I always had this feeling like I’m not going to be vegan forever I just always was like this isn’t going to last very long. By the time I graduated I had decided to go back to eating cheese and dairy and I just started reincorporating them that summer. And by the end of the summer I was pretty much back to being vegetarian. That’s when I moved to Los Angeles so packed up drove with my dad across the country then I was vegetarian for the next five years. Technically we could say that I’ve failed at being vegan and I think a lot of people would say at this point “well then you weren’t vegan you were plant-based.” Which I would agree with, I mean I think veganism has this dogma about it of like if you’re vegan you’re vegan for life because it’s a commitment that you make and if you go and then you stop then you were never vegan in the first place because you didn’t really care about the ethical and it’s like okay great. So I think I was let’s say I was plant-based but during that time I was looking into like vegan purses and shoes and I was really trying to embrace like the full lifestyle it wasn’t just my diet. But I did go back to being vegetarian and so if we want to call it that I was plant-based the first time around I’m fine with that but for the simplicity’s sake I will probably just say vegan.
A New Chapter in Los Angeles
Moved to Los Angeles for the next five years I was vegetarian and so much changed during those five years. Honestly makes me a little emotional because which I’m never ever expecting to get emotional when I film these types of articles and then I always do. I think it’s so important to mark that that so much changed because I definitely thought of it and I think maybe a lot of people would think of it as like I failed at being vegan but I think I had to go back to being vegetarian, change a lot of things in my life to be where I’m at today. One thing that changed was I started going to therapy which was huge obviously for me to work on my emotional issues and just getting into such a better place emotionally where I was processing my issues and aware of them. Another huge thing that changed was just my lifestyle specifically in regards to exercise. I had been in college in Maine for four years where it was winter for pretty much most of the year and in order to work out I had to trudge through you know snow rain freezing cold temperatures just to get to a gym and like run on a treadmill and like do an elliptical for a little while it was like a chore it wasn’t fun. Then I moved to Los Angeles where it’s sunny all year round and the one of the biggest ways that you can connect and socialize with people is through exercising together. So I was going hiking all the time, I was going to try new fitness classes with friends. It really does make such a huge difference when you can exercise and socialize and be out in nature at the same time. That was huge for my mental health. And then also being in an amazing city with amazing uh vegan and vegetarian options I was eating vegan a lot, I was you know I would go to vegan restaurants all the time and I wasn’t really thinking of it as like oh now I’m eating vegan and now I’m eating vegetarian it was just like I think most vegetarians end up eating a lot of vegan food just because all was well for the most part. But I definitely did have moments where I was like maybe feeling some sort of regret that I didn’t stick with veganism that I had given it up. I definitely remember moments where I would meet someone who was vegan and I would be like “oh I was vegan once and but I stopped but maybe I’ll get back to it one day I mean I would like to.” The over explaining thing that now as a vegan it’s like kind of funny when people do it to you but I was so that person I was obviously at an unresolved place with it I sort of felt like I should still be vegan.
Confronting the Dairy Industry
I worked at a french restaurant so very non-vegan-friendly restaurant and I had a co-worker who became vegan during the time that we worked together and she was very passionate about it, very outspoken. Obviously it annoyed a lot of people but I was just like “girl I get it like you go girl.” I had a friend who had gone to a screening of a vegan documentary and I saw him afterward and he was like white and like like shake it like so shaken up. He’s like “the documentary was just so [ __ ] up and disturbing” and I was like “oh my god I know like the meat industry is just horrible.” And he was like “honestly like it was the stuff about dairy that like really did me in.” And I was like “oh [ __ ] yeah like darius sucks like oh yeah he’s right.” So I was chatting with this girl one day my vegan co-worker and I mentioned that I was like “oh yeah my friend watched this documentary and he was saying the dairy industry is like see almost in some ways like worse than the meat industry.” And she said “yeah that’s because they blank but blank blank blank.” I’m not going to say what she said because I think it’s kind of some of the words are triggering and now that I’m like fully aware of everything in the dairy industry what she said was sort of hardly the worst thing about the dairy industry in my opinion but I was like “oh [ __ ] god damn it this vegan just like blurting out and being annoying vegan and now I’m thinking about this and like ugh.” Like I was so annoyed at her. I went home and honestly as I depicted in my stages of going vegan article that really kind of was what it was like. I tried to enjoy cheese and I couldn’t and I was like “what is she really talking about let me look up and kind of fact check what she says because I don’t know that that’s really what goes on I mean how many people in our lives have we heard say that.” So I looked it up and I was like “oh yeah the dairy industry really is [ __ ] up.”
The Science of Cheese Addiction
And this is yeah this is all coming back to me now honestly it’s kind of crazy how we can learn about information but then somehow our minds can conveniently just block it out in order for us to and be able to enjoy the foods that we still want to enjoy. And during this time that I was vegetarian I definitely thought and said many times like well I could never give up cheese again like I just could never do it again. So another thing that happened around that time that was another kind of light bulb moment was I saw a headline that said cheat new study claims that cheese is as addicting as crack. And I believe looking back I’ll try to find the exact article but it was Dr. Neil Barnard had done this study these studies about cheese being as addicting as drugs um because of the casomorphine and all of that. It put things into perspective for me because in my mind I was like I could never give up cheese again but then reading this article I was like oh no there’s actually chemical reactions occurring in my brain when I eat cheese that are telling me that I could never give this thing up but that’s just because that’s just my body reacting and being addicted to it and I just think I could never give it up because my brain is addicted to it but I actually could give it up. So it was the kind of the combination of those two things that made me be like okay I think I can do this. I remember being like “[ __ ] god damn it I don’t want to go vegan again” like I was petulant about it, I didn’t want to do it but this time it didn’t feel like a choice it felt like I have to do this. I can’t know this information about the dairy industry that I know and still enjoy cheese I just can’t and so [ __ ] it sucks but it is what it is and I’m vegan again.
Why Ethics Created Lasting Change
And so that’s how it went the second time and this is why I say that like the first time around was not a failure it was not a waste because I knew I could do it again because I had done it before. And I was like I am so much older now I have access to so many more resources I have friends who are vegan. To me having the reason be the ethical it was so much easier for it to stick because that’s just a constant that animals suffer as a result of the dairy meat and egg industries whereas there’s no guarantee that if I go vegan I am going to lose weight or look a certain way and that’s such a fickle thing that that I have no control over really if that doesn’t work then I’m just going to essentially blame this diet and like okay well now what reason do I have to stick with it because the main reason I did it it didn’t work. Making anyone a promise about their physical appearance changing because of going vegan I think is dishonest and it’s it’s doing a disservice and it might be a quick fix but it’s not necessarily a sustainable one. It was 2015 that I made that transition back to being vegan and so the last six years I guess as opposed to the first three have been so much easier because obviously the world has changed a lot the vegan movement and industry has has exploded especially in the last few years honestly most of my friends are vegan or vegetarian obviously my boyfriend’s vegan.
Developing Confidence and Conviction
I think something that has really changed in these last six years compared to the first three years is my outlook on the world. When I was first vegan uh I definitely felt you know the world didn’t cater to me and like I had to change myself to fit in with the world and now I feel like the world has to change itself to fit with me and maybe that’s just a totally pompous attitude but it’s so much more empowering it gives me so much more confidence. The first time around I wasn’t I didn’t have a lot of conviction in why I was doing this people would ask me why I went vegan and I would be so embarrassed because I I want like I didn’t want to be like I read a book called Skinny [ __ ] and I want to be a skinny [ __ ] so I’m going to go vegan. I didn’t know enough to to confidently explain my position I just didn’t have the knowledge base to talk about it confidently and I have this theory that people can kind of sense someone who’s a little shaky on their footing in terms of being vegan like uh maybe a new vegan who’s like still not that sure themselves of of why they’re doing this or if they really want to be doing this and those are the people that other people will just needle and make fun of and ask a ton of questions to and kind of try to break down. Whereas now I’m like I wish someone would I wish someone would challenge me I wish someone would say something to me I wish someone would ask me a million questions but like nobody does and I think it’s because I present it so confidently now and like I’m so sure of myself that people are just like oh yeah I’m not going near that.
Overcoming Cravings with Vegan Alternatives
I will also say the second time around when I thought about being going vegan again and I think we’ve all been here where we’re kind of bargaining with ourselves like well okay I could give up this I could give up that okay like I think I could do this but there’s this one thing. So for me the first time around like I said chicken parmesan was a big one and then I discovered eggplant parmesan and I was like well eggplant parmesan is amazing. Then when I went from vegetarian to vegan the first time I was like but I love eggplant parmesan now and now I can’t have that but then of course as a vegan found delicious eggplant parmesan substitutes I’ve made eggplant parmesan so many times. The second time around my big thing was cheese fondue I grew up in a very cheese fondue loving family and look what happened guys I made the most delicious vegan cheese fondue that is just as good tasting if not better than the fondues that I used to eat and honestly it doesn’t make me feel completely sick afterward the way that regular cheese fondue would. Check that article out if you haven’t I’ve made that a few times I’m actually I feel like I’m due to make it again because it’s so good. But I feel like that’s just so important to mention because we’ve all had those thoughts I doubt that there are many vegans now who are still sitting there missing you know steak or whatever their thing was because there are so many satisfying vegan alternatives especially in this day and age to almost everything almost any kind of weird food you can think of there’s vegan sushi the sky’s the limit basically in terms of what we can make with plants.
Conclusion and Community Sharing
So that’s my whole story start to finish the winding journey of of how I got to where I am today. If it was helpful if it inspired you if you could relate to it leave a comment let me know just your reactions or your story if your story was similar to mine if you read Skinny [ __ ] I will very much enjoy reading those. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you got to know me a little bit better and I’ll see you next time bye.
