The Smoothie Vegetarians

As I write this I will have been consistently vegan again for almost two weeks now. The road to here has been rocky; almost like the path over a mountain with all it’s ups and downs. Even now I don’t believe that I can call myself a perfect vegan because I find it difficult to stay consistent (and I am so new to this) but I am giving it my very best effort because I feel this is of paramount importance. After realizing that I now have no more excuses for not changing my eating habits but that I enjoy the taste of eating animal flesh, I must do something different. So here is my journey from a meat eater, to veganism. My ways of eating have been varied over the years with the most consistent being that I ate pretty much whatever was on hand, or whatever was given to me. In my family, from my earliest memories, we ate what you would call the “standard American diet”: meat, cheese, carbs, and sugar. My Grandfather, a butcher, came from Germany when he was eighteen years old...

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...