My (very short) life as a vegan

Source: Photopin

Confession: I've always found vegans insufferable -- holier-than-thou types that have a bent for ruining fun and making every dinner outing an impossible feat (except maybe in San Francisco).  In my mind, I've grouped vegans in the same pile as folks that talk incessantly about their mother, divulge details of their latest doctor's appointment (a colonoscopy, please do tell me more) or use strings of business words that, in fact, mean nothing.

Well, after all this vegan-hating, my boyfriend and I tried it out for 3 weeks in December leading up to Christmas (note: yes, it got a bit mental with christmas cookies).  It wasn't completely new since I've been a vegetarian and pescetarian before.  Each stint lasts between 6 months to 2 years and undoubtedly ends due to one food -- bacon.  Let's face it -- meat tastes really good.

So, why did we decide to go vegan?

Bite-sized challenges are interesting

Matt Cutts, a notorious engineer inside of Google, gave a Ted talk about his 30 days challenges -- ranging from biking to work to writing a novel to cutting sugar to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.  These challenges expanded his life to accomplishments outside engineering and also built up his self-confidence.  

In a similar vein, Tim Ferriss, the king of self-experiments, encourages a similar, one-goal-at-a-time approach to change: 

"The problem with New Year's resolutions - and resolutions to 'get in better shape' in general, which are very amorphous - is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn't work. I don't care if you're a world-class CEO - you'll quit."

Eating animal products is very bad

According to the UN, cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gas than transportation.  Despite being car-less, I'm a major culprit for pollution due to my obsession with collecting passport stamps (52 countries to date).  I like the idea of neutralizing my emissions by skipping the hamburger.

I also read David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster" & Rolling Stone's "In the Belly of the Beast," which convinced me that animals do feel pain and its death may very well be the best part of its life.  Here's one especially sad excerpt from the Rolling Stone's article:

"You are a typical egg-laying chicken in America, and this is your life: You’re trapped in a cage with six to eight hens, each given less than a square foot of space to roost and sleep in. The cages rise five high and run thousands long in a warehouse without windows or skylights. You see and smell nothing from the moment of your birth but the shit coming down through the open slats of the battery cages above you. It coats your feathers and becomes a second skin; by the time you’re plucked from your cage for slaughter, your bones and wings breaking in the grasp of harried workers, you look less like a hen than an oil-spill duck, blackened by years of droppings. Your eyes tear constantly from the fumes of your own urine, you wheeze and gasp like a retired miner, and you’re beset every second of the waking day by mice and plaguelike clouds of flies." 

So, what did I learn from the challenge?

It's very hard

I've gone meatless before, but vegan life was a whole new ballgame.  I missed eggs and cheese a lot.  They are just so good in the morning.   

I also had some really pathetic meals in Malaysia (white toast followed by white rice with soy sauce, ugh).  In fact, I actually had to leave a restaurant post-seating because I couldn't eat anything on the menu.

I felt better and discovered a yummy salad

After a week, I felt better.  I had more energy in the afternoon because I skipped my daily 2 PM cookie(s) intake and therefore, also missed the sugar coma.  I lost the weight I put on while gorging myself in the Maldives and also discovered that warm, olive-oil roasted brussels sprouts taste excellent on a spinach salad.

I quickly jumped back to my meat-eating ways

After 3 weeks, I was convinced that vegan-life was a much better way to live -- I even (annoyingly) recited the benefits to my co-workers.   

Regardless, I went right back into my meat, egg and butter eating ways.  We've even been making homemade pate today for a New Years Eve gathering at our apartment.  To be exact, I hand-cleaned chicken livers for an hour without flinching -- what happened to the vegan-version of me?  Per usual, it seems that cognitive dissonance is behind it all, explaining just why my behavior often falls short of my attitudes and beliefs.   

It looks like I'll be a meatatarian for awhile longer -- but, I want my eggs cage-free and my meat not raised in a factory.  I also think it's a good practice to go meat-free a few days per week.