Back in 2015, when I was newly enrolled in college, I started learning a lot about food. I was growing more and more skeptical that the food industry was exactly that: an industry. I began to view myself as a customer rather than a consumer, and because my mom bought and cooked the majority of what I ate, I didn’t ever think much about learning what was actually in my food. However, being out in the world by myself made me realize I knew so little about what I was putting in my body.
Side note: My mom prepared healthy meals for my family almost every night while I was growing up. She provided a very healthy baseline for my siblings and me, and for that, I’m thankful. Good work, Momma.
Subsequently, I felt like I deserved to understand what was in the food that I was eating everyday. I spent a lot of my time reading about nutrition, and the more I learned, the more I realized I was very uninformed.
So, through a lot of my own research, I concluded that I had to drop meat from my diet. I wasn’t eating a ton of meat when I got to college to begin with, so letting it go was honestly easy.
For four months, I considered myself a pescatarian, which for anyone who doesn’t know, is someone who doesn’t eat meat but does eat fish. Had anyone told me even a year prior that I would not be eating meat, I would have laughed in their face. Plainly put, I loved meat, and I never envisioned that would change.
After those first four months, I continued researching and learning more about the food industry. I was so freaked out by what I was reading and watching regarding dairy, eggs, and meat, that I couldn’t continue eating them. I decided that I was going to go full-blow vegan.
For eight full months I made practically all my own meals, tried new recipes, and ate foods I had never even heard of prior. It took a lot of meal planning, restaurant searching, and recipe following to maintain what I believed in, but I truly did love it for so long. People would ask if I missed pizza or ice cream or chicken sandwiches, and I would say, “I don’t view being vegan as what I can’t eat but as what new foods I can eat that I never explored before.”
Simply stated, I had never felt better in my life. I was energized, confident in what I was eating, and connected to my food in a whole new way. I reaped the physical benefits, and it was truly empowering.
But, that is not why I continued to be vegan for eight months. The mental clarity I felt from eating a plant-based diet was unlike anything I’ve felt even to this day. I was living on a high that felt like it was never going to end. I would wake up in a state of pure bliss, and nothing that happened throughout my day seemed to shatter that.
I’m not exactly sure how to illustrate how amazing I felt without it sounding entirely unbelievable, but what I can try to equate it to is sinking back into the happiest memory you have, when you felt most alive and present, and embodying that state of being on a consistent, day-to-day basis. I was living in an elevated sharpness, and I was radiating at a frequency I had never reached before.
Who wouldn’t want to stay there? Who wouldn’t want to live every single day in utter happiness?
That’s the main reason I continued to be vegan. I was riding out a high that was too good to give up. People would ask if I were vegan for the animals or the environment, and even though those were byproducts of my choice, my real reason was rooted in the mental benefits I gained while eating a plant-based diet.
Let’s fast forward to today.
I must admit, I am no longer vegan. I’ve cut out meat for five years at this point, but I’m currently back to eating a pescatarian diet.
So, why the change? It seemed like it was all so good.
I migrated back to eating eggs, dairy, and fish for a lot of reasons, some of those being:
The high I felt while being vegan eventually faded. As all good things do, it came to an end, and I felt a lack of connection to the diet because of it.
I took a nutrition class and learned more about food from a live expert.
I slowly but surely stepped out of living in this knowledge that food was “bad” or “good”.
I learned that food is very social, and I didn’t want to continue opting out of the social aspect of eating/sharing food with people or continue ordering boring, over-priced salads at restaurants that didn’t accommodate for vegans.
After the high faded, I realized I was listening to research, documentaries, articles, and podcasts without listening to the best indicator of what’s best for me: my body.
At this point, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Why the heck does Taylor think I care that she was vegan?” You probably don’t care, if I’m guessing correctly.
What I want to highlight with this entire post is that you can adopt lifestyles, eating habits, clothing trends— whatever you want— and shed them later on when you’re no longer aligned to them. Life is literally one big experiment, and it would be a damn shame to not test and try what you’re feeling compelled to. There’s nothing wrong with giving something new a shot, resonating with it for a bit, and then leaving it be when you’re ready to move on. That’s the beauty of being alive. Every second you’re here you have the liberty to choose— to decide what works for you and what doesn’t. Usually the hardest part in all of that is remembering those choices are yours to make.
I was vegan for eight months, and it gave me a mental high that I will appreciate forever. I stopped when I felt that it was time to dissociate from it. I don’t regret being vegan or giving up that way of eating. Instead, I am thankful I was curious enough to try it out.
All in all, stay curious. Don’t shy away from something just because it might not seem permanent. Collect experiences, learn from them, and then go collect some more. Your life can be filled with stories of “that time I...” or “I wish I...”. Realize you have the power to decide which is your life’s headline.
Disclaimer: I want to make something unavoidably clear— I am not preaching for anyone to go vegan or not to go vegan. Food is a personal journey, and I am in no position to tell or convince anyone how to eat.
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