Category Archives: Diet

why and how: vegetarianism/veganism →

I’ve struggled with weight since middle school. I don’t really know why the struggle started. I was a normal weight for a child, and then suddenly I was overweight. Puberty was probably a factor, but the problem started around the time my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. Middle school fucking sucked.

High school was okay. I didn’t really ever think about dieting and weight, which is good, I guess, since now I look back and kind of cringe. I shouldn’t, but I do. I worked at an ice cream store my senior year, and man, I did not care how much ice cream I ate. When I hung out with friends, it almost always revolved around food in some way. Unhealthy food at that.

February 2010. I was in my second year of college, living on campus, eating in the all-you-can-eat dining hall. Lent was about to start, and although I am by no means religious, I liked to practice lent. I liked to test myself. Could I give up something for forty days? I’m one of those people that loves to start new projects and I’m super enthusiastic about said projects. But if there isn’t some kind of immediate payoff, I move on.

I decided to give up meat. Vegetarianism was cool.

It was so much easier than I ever thought it would be. I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, though. I realized I was lacking proper nutrition when the tendons in my feet were making weird noises. So I started really working at eating more beans, greens and fruits. It worked! I started feeling lighter and so much happier. I didn’t have a scale, and I still don’t, so I can’t say that I was losing any weight. But I didn’t care. Once the forty days were over, I knew I couldn’t go back. I felt too good.

I started working at a different ice cream store the summer after my junior year. Ohhhh the ice cream was so good. Too good, really. Towards the end of the summer I started realizing I wasn’t feeling so good anymore. I decided to cut as much dairy as I possibly could out of my life. I still suck at this. However, I have developed a lactose intolerance, which should be making it easier but I like to torture myself (cheese is SO good). But I started getting a lot of comments, especially this past summer, about how much weight I had supposedly lost and how good I looked. Wait, what? I was losing weight?

I still don’t know what was happening. After the school year ended, I indulged in ice cream, alcohol and stopped going to the gym. Some of this mysterious “weight loss” had to be how happy I was socially. I had amazing friends. I was having so much fun. And I was learning to appreciate and love my body, even without clothes on (OH the horror).

The last time I remembered weighing myself I had been at probably 180-ish. (This is literally HORRIFYING for me to put here, but whatever.) At the end of the summer I was at 156. So, I guess something was happening. Something positive.

So I’m ready. I’m ready to commit. I feel better and I have more energy when I eat a vegan diet. Junk food doesn’t even taste good anymore. I just want vegetables and beans and legumes and grains and fruits and nuts and seeds. I want to get healthy. This isn’t about losing weight. This is about feeling better.