All About My Diet + My Experience With Veganism

Growing up, I was the pickiest eater imaginable. I hated tomatoes, mushrooms, coconut, seafood, pretty much anything that wasn’t meat, starches, or chocolate. I didn’t like trying new food, and I probably gave my parents a hard time whenever we went to a restaurant I wasn’t sure about. Fast forward to age 15 and I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an entirely different story in itself,  but my relationship with food was forever different.

At that point, I was already starting to enjoy some of the foods that I previously loathed, but suddenly, my diet was severely restricted. From one day to the next I was stripped of all seeds, nuts, fruit skins, raw vegetables, whole grains, and it was essentially a low fiber diet. It is known as a low residue diet and it was just as fun as you can imagine.

I felt like I had been taking food for granted all my life and having it taken away from me was really eye opening. So once I started getting stronger and was able to expand my diet I got excited to try new foods and certainly became a more adventurous eater. So I guess Crohn’s gave me a newfound appreciation for food.

So now a few years later I am finally in remission and eating all the food that I could possibly desire but I wasn’t feeling the best. I wasn’t cramping like Crohn’s would make me feel, but I was sluggish. I gained a bit of weight and I didn’t feel like I was as good as I could have been; I didn’t have as much energy as I wanted, my body just felt like it was constantly complaining. I actually started cutting out meat because my family and I were tired of being bloated every night after dinner. So I cut out red meat and I continued eating seafood, poultry, and pork as well as dairy. And then my family and I started doing research as to what would make us healthier.

Many documentaries and articles later we decided veganism could be an answer. I wasn’t sure how long this would last because I have tried so many diets in the search of a weight loss remedy. I know from experience that crash diets do not work. I would try this new fad, lose five pounds quick and then gain it back even quicker. The diet I had tried a few months before was actually the Atkins diet (which is horrible, don’t even bother with it) and that failed miserably for me and only lasted about two to three weeks. So I was curious to see how I would react to veganism.

I am not here to convince anyone to cut out animal products. I believe that if you want to do that, it should be because you did your own research and you have your own motivators, not because someone is pressuring you to do so. So I am not going to go into the specifics as to why I eat plant- based, because ultimately a person’s decision to change their diet is going to come out of personal experience, not someone’s opinion in the internet. But I will say that I feel a lot better since going vegan in August 2017: I sleep better, am more energetic, lost over ten pounds (and kept it off for over six months so far), and I never bloat anymore. I’m not a perfect vegan, I allow myself three days a month to eat dairy and seafood, but I do not take them every month; those three days are mostly there so that if I’m at a social event where there are absolutely no vegan options for me to eat, then I won’t feel guilty for having to break my veganism. Luckily, I surround myself with people who are considerate of my eating choices and I don not see myself in that situation often.