Monday, January 31, 2011

Happy Vegan-niversary to Me!


Today marks the end of my second year as a vegan!  I drove John down to an audition in Providence tonight, and we decided to get a couple of vegan pizzas from Nice Slice.  It's a pizza & sandwich place right near Brown University.  It's not 100% vegan, but they can make practically everything on their menu vegan.

We went with the Phoni Roni and the Philly Cheez Steak.

After the ride back from Rhode Island, the pizza was a little chilly, but it was still very good.  I love to cook pizza at home, but it's also great to be able to get takeout on a busy night when we feel like celebrating.  Being able to get vegan brick oven pizza also reminds me that I'm not missing a single thing without dairy and meat!

Our favorite omni food was pizza, and when we initially went vegetarian, we were eating cheese pizza more than anything else.  It was kind of ironic, since I had initially intended to go veg for health reasons, and there are only a few things less healthy than cheese, especially for lactose-intolerant me.  We decided to give up dairy for a month to see how we responded.  As it turned out, it was the best decision I ever made.  I lost about 35 pounds within the month!  It took longer to completely detoxify, and it was really difficult.  I had an outbreak on my face, not just of pimples but also cold sores and even a boil.  I also got a terrible ear infection that wouldn't respond to treatment.  After three months, I was finally rid of all the terrible effects of a dairy-filled diet, and I have never looked back.  Much like my initial transition to vegetarianism, my transition to veganism started out selfish; I just wanted to improve my health and give myself a little edge over the cardiovascular disease that runs in my family.  But what kept me from backsliding wasn't thinking about myself; it was thinking about animals.  I finally made myself confront what it really means to eat meat or to ingest dairy products and eggs, and once I did that, it became impossible to go back.  There are so many common sense reasons to go vegan, and now that I have 2 years under my belt, I couldn't imagine living my life any other way.


7 comments:

  1. Happy Vegan-niversary, Georgia! And congratulations! Doesn't it feel wonderful? :-)

    A brick oven vegan pizza sounds like a great way to celebrate, and a town called "Providence" sounds like the perfect place to spend such a special day. :-) It's so often providence that leads us to this amazing transformation.

    Your dairy detox story is really something! Wow!

    I enjoyed reading about your vegan journey. It's somewhat similar to my own. Being diagnosed with MS in 1994 woke me up, starting with diet and the responsibility for and control over my own health and well-being I learned I actually had. And it was in learning about diet and health that I started learning about the horrors we inflict on animals so we can take their milk, eggs, and lives. And about the environmental impact of eating animals vs. eating plants. And about the connection with world hunger. The information just all kept piling up and as you said, once you face the truth of it, there's no going back. While it was easy to occasionally "cheat" when I started eating better for my own health, when it came to being vegan for the animals I found it impossible to be inconsistent with my vegan ethics, which makes any backsliding incomprehensible to me.

    Thanks for sharing your wonderful blog, I really enjoy your humor, recipes, insights and eloquent writing! Enjoy the rest of your Vegan-niversary and happy February tomorrow! :-)

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  2. Happy Vegan-versary! Mine is coming up this month, too!

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  3. Happy anniversary to you too, dolmadez!

    Laloofah, I couldn't have said it better. I am a total information hound, and once I started reading, I couldn't stop adding more and more logical reasons why vegan is the only choice for me. I do have to say that I guess it's kind of sad that if it was only for my own health, I wouldn't be as committed, and even though I'm vegan, I know I still don't make the best health choices I could, but I'm working on not being such a perfectionist. ;)

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  4. Happy Vegan-niversary! That pizza - !!!! We don't really have anywhere around here to order vegan pizza.

    I was opposite of you. I started "becoming" a vegetarian/vegan as soon as I knew where meat came from (ages 4, 5) because of my recogntion of what the animals had to go through. Eventually, as I got older (and stopped eating so much dairy!), I learned more about the health side of it, too.

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  5. Happy Two Year Anniversary To You Vegan Georgia!what an accomplishment! does it feel like its been two whole years?


    i really liked this

    "But what kept me from backsliding wasn't thinking about myself; it was thinking about animals. I finally made myself confront what it really means to eat meat or to ingest dairy products and eggs, and once I did that, it became impossible to go back. "

    i completely agree with you.i also really liked what loloofah said, about it being incomprehensible to eat meat ever again. this was a refreshing post to read, made my night.

    your cheese detox sounds really bad, im so glad that you were able to stick it out! losing 35 pounds sounds good though:)... good for you!

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  6. Thanks everyone! I loved hearing all of your stories and reactions :)

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