One Year of Veganism: What I’ve Learned & How My Life Has Changed

August 21, 2018 by Meredith 127 Comments

I owe my conversion to veganism to two things: prayer and laziness. And I’m grateful that the Lord responds to both!

I curled up one day on my couch, scanning through Netflix for my next binge. The documentary “What the Health” popped up as a suggestion, and I clicked “play.” Everything changed after that. For the first time, my eyes were opened to the danger I was putting my body in by entrusting the government and big corporations with my health.

Since being diagnosed with PCOS and struggling through infertility, I was relentlessly asking the Lord for guidance. My prayers were not specifically about getting pregnant, but rather, I prayed for my health. Thoughts of additional fertility treatments kept popping into my mind — all I could pray was: “God, I don’t want to.”

Something clicked that day I watched the documentary. I realized, “If I have a hormone issue, why on earth am I eating food with hormones in them?”

So, I gave up meat, eggs, and dairy. I had no prior thoughts or plans to do so, but I did. In fact, the day before I became vegan, I was at a restaurant and wolfed down a cuban pulled pork sandwich. I was with some friends who were eating salads, and I jeered, “Life is too short to eat salads, ladies!” Oh, the irony!

The first weeks

My first plant-based weeks consisted of detox and subsequent withdrawal. My body was confused as to where all the animal products had gone. I endured headaches and crabbiness; sometimes the headaches wouldn’t go away with medicine. I began second guessing and believing the lie that I was harming my body, and that what I was doing could potentially be a mistake.

But once those couple weeks passed, everything became a much smoother ride. I began experiencing increased energy and less fatigue — and chronic fatigue was something I have struggled with as a PCOS sufferer for years.

Matt’s experience

Matt joined me in focusing on plant-based eating, and his body’s response was quite impressive. Within weeks, he went from seeing red and yellow (“danger zones”) on his health chart to almost green (“in the clear“)! His Fitbit displayed obvious evidence of greater quality sleep — and that happened almost immediately for him.

And, as the male body is wonderfully capable of doing, he lost a significant amount of weight — around 20 pounds.

Additionally, he experienced decreased heartburn and acid reflux. I can’t tell you how helpless I used to feel watching him struggle to fall asleep because of the pain. Those occurrences are few and far between now thanks to his plant-based eating.

Matt hardly ate vegetables when we first started dating 10 years ago. Fast forward to today, and the man loves almost all vegetables. He’ll text me from work asking to pick up something “leafy” for a snack (it’s usually kale)!

What’s changed in my health

As I mentioned above, I have seen a greater increase in my energy levels and no more chronic fatigue since eating plant-based food. Though I still find I have bouts of tiredness, it is by no means as severe as it was when I was eating animal products.

I have noticed much less brain fog and confusion in processing my thoughts. As a writer by trade, having a clear thought process has been a tremendous gift.

I no longer have bloating. In the rare moments where we will be vegetarian (out to dinner or if we eat food that friends/family prepare with cheese/dairy/eggs), I will notice an instant bloating of my stomach. Sometimes it looks as though I’m actually pregnant when I ingest any dairy. It’s pure evidence to me that my body is saying, “No Meredith! Don’t do it!”

I’ve noticed a decrease in stomach issues such as diarrhea. I credit this to less bacteria and disease that are found on plants compared to animal products. Similarly, there’s no rotting flesh in my stomach to react unfavorably to.

The weight loss isn’t too shabby, either!

My hair is sleek, soft, and shiny; this can sometimes be irritating for me because it’s harder to get volume and body into it! It’s so slippery!

My skin has cleared up. I rarely have breakouts, unless it’s hormone related!

I have decreased my levels of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medicines. I have struggled with a debilitating anxiety/panic disorder since childhood, and while I know this may be something I always struggle with, the intensity and frequency of my anxiety and panic have lessened dramatically.

My favorite result: I now have a “regular” menstrual cycle! As a woman suffering with PCOS, I once had cycles that went from 30 days to 95 days to 75 days to 45. Now, I am at a 30ish day cycle — this hasn’t been an occurrence for me in nearly 15 years!

Challenges

Challenge 1: Eating in restaurants.

I chose to be vegan a couple weeks before we took a trip to Yellowstone National Park last summer. This region is populated by cattle ranches, bison ranches, elk ranches, etc. The house we rented literally had a cattle ranch in the backyard! Because the majority of the restaurants out there were American BBQ, there was little for us to eat. We mainly had the option of a bland iceberg salad with a few carrot slivers and wrinkly grape tomatoes, with a side of French fries. Yes, those were our only options! (We were blessed, however, to come across a gem of a restaurant that served up our favorite veggie burger to this day: Brakeman Grill in Victor, ID. Thank you, Brakeman! You are our veggie burger standard!)

I know that American-style restaurants are evolving to include more plant-based options, but they have a long way to go. We find that it’s easier to go to ethnic restaurants such as Thai, Asian, Indian, and Mexican for more vegan options. Even then it can be challenging. We found out our one favorite Asian restaurant makes its soy sauce with chicken broth — so we always have to be on guard and ask questions.

Challenge 2: Being judged and criticized.

Being judged, criticized, mocked, and questioned by those different than me isn’t new. I’m a Christian — so yeah, nothing new! “Religion” and food are deeply personal, and the way people respond aren’t all that different.

I find that the minute I mention my vegan lifestyle, there’s someone out there who will criticize and poke fun. Someone may open the door by asking questions, but the minute I answer, walls and defense mechanisms go up. It’s the same thing for when I share about Christ! I’m not judging you, but I am here to share the good news of what I’ve experienced in my life! I can’t help it!

Myths and misunderstandings

“You hate meat eaters.” No. Just, no.

“But what about protein?” This may good or bad news to you, but you don’t need to eat meat to get protein. Unlike animal protein, plant-based protein sources contain healthy fiber and complex carbohydrates. Animal products are often high in artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, and the consumption of animal protein has been linked to some types of cancer.

Eating too much animal protein has been linked to the development of endometrial, pancreatic, and prostate cancers. By replacing animal protein with plant protein, you can improve your health while enjoying a wide variety of delicious foods.

“Salads and tofu? No thanks.” We eat so much more than salads or tofu. In an entire year, I’ve eaten tofu twice — so I hope that gives you an idea. The beauty of eating plant-based is that you can eat an abundance of food without guilt. This food has flavor! Now that our mouths and stomachs are not coated in animal residue, we can finally taste the goodness of what the Lord has grown through the earth.

“Vegan food is flavorless and bland.” No! Quite the opposite! If you really think about it, it’s about the seasonings, spices, herbs. If an unseasoned, boiled piece of chicken breast is appealing to you — then you’ve got a problem, right? It’s always about the seasonings we put on food that makes it great!

“I could never be vegan.” If this is your mindset, it was once mine too. It never appealed to me. I mean, what about bacon? What about pizza? I actually don’t miss it. Now that I’ve recognized the effects it once had on my body, meat and dairy no longer appeal to me. And hey, you don’t have to dive in and give everything up immediately. Start by Meatless Mondays in your house and see how you like that. Then increase your amount of plant-based meals. Eventually, you’ll see that you don’t need animal products to enjoy food!

Before you read on …

The majority of the statistics I’m about to share are based on big farming corporations. While it pains me to think of animals being slaughtered — (and some vegans may hate me for saying this) — my advice to my carnivore friends is: find a responsible, sustainable, local, ethically committed farmer for your meat and dairy. We have a few wonderful organic, sustainable, ethical farmers close to us in our lives whom we love and support very much! (Check out our friends at Field and Farm Co.!)

“They’re just animals.”

Cows enjoy mental challenges and get excited when they use their intellect to overcome an obstacle. Dr. Donald Broom, a professor at Cambridge University, says that when cows figure out a solution to a problem, “The brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air.”
Cows form lifelong friendships and play games with each other.
Scientists now know that pigs have the cognitive skills of 3-year-old human children.
Biologists wrote in Fish and Fisheries that fish are “steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation, exhibiting stable cultural traditions, and cooperating to inspect predators and catch food.
Chickens form friendships and social hierarchies, recognize one another, develop a pecking order, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed between generations.

“There’s no harm in drinking milk and eating eggs, right?”

Don’t get it twisted. While a vegetarian diet can do wonders for your health and environment, it’s still not enough. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that assumes because egg-laying chickens and milk-producing cows aren’t being slaughtered, that they aren’t being harmed.

When you support the dairy and egg business, you are subsidizing the meat industry:

Dairy industry

Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do: to nourish their young. But no animal can produce milk unless it is pregnant. Cows are artificially impregnated (and go ahead and laugh: without their consent) every year in order to produce the milk you drink, and their calves are taken from them soon after birth. Both mother and calf cry out as they are separated from each other.
If you drink milk, eat cheese and ice cream, you’re subsidizing the veal industry. Male calves are considered useless to the dairy industry and are slaughtered for veal.

Egg industry

About 360 million hens are raised for eggs in the U.S., and most spend their lives in battery cages, stacked tier upon tier in huge warehouses.
Millions of day-old male chicks are killed (usually in a high-speed grinder called a “macerator”) every year because they are worthless to the egg industry.
The wire mesh of the cages rubs off their feathers, chafes their skin, and causes their feet to become crippled.
Broken bones are also common among these birds, who “suffer significant osteoporosis,” according to the International Veterinary Information Service. A study published in Poultry Science explained that “high production hens’ structural bone is mobilized throughout the laying period in order to contribute to the formation of eggshell.”
Although chickens can live for more than a decade, hens raised for their eggs are exhausted, and their egg production begins to wane when they are about 2 years old. When this happens, they are slaughtered. More than 100 million “spent” hens are killed in slaughterhouses every year.

“What about free range?”

From a strictly health perspective, sadly, the USDA “makes no claim that organically produced food is safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced food.” “Organic,” “natural,” “humane,” and “free-range” eggs, milk, and meat are filled with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol, just like conventional meat, milk, and eggs.

Study after study links the consumption of animal-derived foods to heart disease, cancer, and other serious health problems. And because organic and “free-range” animals are usually raised in crowded conditions and killed in the same filthy, excrement-ridden slaughterhouses as animals from factory farms, their flesh may also be contaminated with bacteria and other pathogens.

There is a common misconception that free range eggs involve hens roaming outside, happy and free. Yet the reality is that free range hens are actually kept in vast sheds with potentially thousands of other birds, few of which ever see daylight. Sure, they’re “cage free,” but few birds actually make it outside.
Standard free range practice is to cut off a large portion of each hen’s beak with a hot blade without the use of painkillers so that hens in close confinement don’t peck each other. A hen’s beak is very sensitive, akin to a human’s fingertips.
Cows on organic farms often aren’t given antibiotics—even when they’re sick or when their udders become infected, something that happens often—because medicated animals lose their “organic” status.

Your role in changing the world

Veganism can end world hunger

With the global population of humans over 7 billion—more than 1 billion of whom currently go hungry—the only way to produce enough food is, according to Worldwatch Institute, “to cut back sharply on meat consumption, because conversion of grazing land to food crops will increase the amount of food produced.” We use vast amounts of land, water, and other resources to grow grains and other plants to feed animals who are then used for food, instead of more efficiently feeding humans directly with plants.
For every pound of food that farmed animals are fed, only a fraction of the calories are returned in the form of edible flesh. The rest of those calories are burned away raising the animal to slaughter weight or contributing to feathers, bone, skin, blood, and other parts of the animal that aren’t eaten by humans. This is why animals raised for food have to eat up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat.

Big-farming industries exploit the poor and immigrants

They work for low wages, and union organizing is notoriously difficult. Slaughterhouse work, in particular, is filthy and extremely dangerous—worker injuries are rampant, and dying on the job is a very real possibility.
A Human Rights Watch researcher found that “[m]eatpacking is the most dangerous factory job in America,” and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration notes that the “Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports injury and illness rates for the Meat Packing Industry as 2½ times higher than the national average.”
The biggest slaughterhouses refuse to create safer working conditions by slowing down the lines or providing better training and safety gear because these changes could cut into their profit margins. Human Rights Watch found that employees who are injured at work may be fired if they take time off or try to file health insurance or workers’ compensation claims, and many employees choose instead to “work with the pain,” meaning that injuries are vastly underreported.

Combating climate change

A staggering 51% or more of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture, according to a report published by the Worldwatch Institute.
According to the United Nations, a global shift toward a vegan diet is necessary to combat the worst effects of climate change.

Saving our water

It takes an enormous amount of water to grow crops for animals to eat, clean filthy factory farms, and give animals water to drink. A single cow used for milk can drink up to 50 gallons of water per day—or twice that amount in hot weather—and it takes 683 gallons of water to produce just 1 gallon of milk.
It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef, while producing 1 pound of tofu only requires 244 gallons of water.
By going vegan, one person can save approximately 219,000 gallons of water a year.

Decreasing pollution

Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce many times more excrement than does the entire human population of the country. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), animals on U.S. factory farms produce about 500 million tons of manure each year. With no animal sewage processing plants, it is most often stored in waste “lagoons” (which can be seen in aerial views of factory farms) or it gets sprayed over fields.
Runoff from factory farms and livestock grazing is one of the leading causes of pollution in our rivers and lakes. The EPA notes that bacteria and viruses can be carried by the runoff and that groundwater can be contaminated. Factory farms frequently dodge water pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are carried away by the wind. People who live nearby are forced to inhale the toxins and pathogens from the sprayed manure.
A report by the California State Senate noted, “Studies have shown that [animal waste] lagoons emit toxic airborne chemicals that can cause inflammatory, immune, irritation and neurochemical problems in humans.”

Restoring our land

Using land to grow crops for animals is vastly inefficient. It takes almost 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant-based (vegan) diet than it does to feed a meat-eater since the crops are consumed directly instead of being used to feed animals.
According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, it takes up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and in the United States alone, 56 million acres of land are used to grow feed for animals, while only 4 million acres are producing plants for humans to eat.
More than 90% of all Amazon rainforest land cleared since 1970 is used for grazing livestock. In addition, one of the main crops grown in the rainforest is soybeans used for animal feed. (The soybeans used in most veggie burger, tofu, and soy milk products sold in the United States are grown right here in the U.S.)

Protecting our oceans

While factory farms are ruining our land, commercial fishing methods such as bottom trawling and long-lining often clear the ocean floor of all life and destroy coral reefs. They also kill thousands of dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and other “bycatch” animals.
Coastal fish farms release feces, antibiotics, parasites, and non-native fish into sensitive marine ecosystems.
In addition, since most farmed fish are carnivorous, they are fed massive quantities of wild-caught fish. For example, it takes up to 3 pounds of fish meal to produce every pound of farmed salmon.

If you made it this far in reading, congratulations! It’s a lot of overwhelming information, I know. Moving to a plant-based lifestyle can seem overwhelming at first, but give yourself grace in the process.

“Where do I start?”

First, I recommend starting with these documentaries:

After that, start small and start with familiar foods. Don’t just jump to tofu and bland salads. The first vegan recipe I made was a delicious Hawaiian Sloppy Joes recipe (listed below). There are an abundance of delicious recipes on Pinterest and in blogging land. Start exploring!

My top 10 favorite plant-based recipes (in no particular order)

Be on the lookout for more vegan living tips and favorites from me! And be excited to explore a whole new way of life! I’m excited for you!

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” (Genesis 1:29)

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Information gathered from PETA, The Vegan Society.
This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
Images used with permission via Unsplash.com.