The Smoothie Vegetarians

If you became vegan, it’s likely that you did for a majority of reasons. Sometimes it’s for the environment, sometimes for health reasons, and most often for the animals. These are all valid reasons to start eating a diet free from animal products and the violence that comes from a meat-eating lifestyle. I have had to ask myself a question lately though, after seeing some posts on a vegan group on social media about a man being killed by a bull in a bullfight. Some individuals on that group were glad that a man was killed (very horribly I will add), saying he (and others that harm animals )will get what they deserve if they come to an end like this. There was no compassion in their responses, and I began to ask myself; is this really the way that those of us with open minds to the harm done to others should really react? When we start the journey to care for other sentient beings, and find that we cannot justify consuming them just to satiate our appetite it seems to ...

I was hesitant to type this up because my reason for adopting this lifestyle began from a vain place. However, I feel it is important to be honest with you, and maybe some of you are currently in a similar situation. Sometime around October 2015, I was struggling with body-confidence and I spent hours every day searching the internet for ways to lose weight. To be fair, this did lead to me adopting some healthier behaviors such as eating less junk food and finding my love for exercise. I was losing some weight and gaining some confidence! The problem was, once I started seeing these results, I wanted more and I wanted them immediately. All of the weight loss blogs I would read were about calories, calories, calories. These websites insisted that I just needed to start counting my calories and keep them below a certain number. So, I followed their advice and restricted my caloric intake. I was obsessed with tracking everything I ate and knowing exactly how many calories wer...