“Adopt the pace of Nature: her secret is patience.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It takes time. We can’t use the cold turkey approach to change a lifestyle from night to day. We can’t beat a change out of ourselves. We can’t force ourselves into doing better with punishment or pain. Life works in mysterious ways, and so does the body. It actually listens to us, and it’s ready to speak when it needs to call for our attention.
We are too hard on ourselves. We always try to eradicate something in its entirety or expect an instant answer. Since becoming a vegan meant life to me, I took a different approach to it. I turned my rebellion into a creative force. I was charged. This was no punishment, but an act of love and power. So I made a deal with myself: I’d go completely vegan for two weeks, and if I felt fine after that, then I’d transition into dropping animal food groups one by one over time. It had begun. After those two weeks I was ecstatic. I dropped all chicken and turkey and dairy with the exception of Parmesan cheese or when eating brick oven pizza. I really wasn’t eating red meat so that was simple to leave out. I still ate organic wild-caught fish and pastured free-range eggs, mainly because I had finally found a place to enjoy eating fish and crustaceans and also because it was a way to celebrate when eating out with my partner – but now I demanded quality.
I shifted myself into a vegan diet by falling in love with the act of eating. This is a fundamental principle at the table and in our lives. What pleasure brings to our bodies is far more chemically intricate than just a simple moment of euphoria. The pleasure of eating triggers a chemical compound called colecystokinin. Colecystokinin is responsible for stimulating the appetite in response to protein and fat consumption, turning on the metabolism, burning fat, and signalling your body to stop eating when you’ve had enough. It’s the same compound that tells your cerebral cortex “it’s pleasure time” so you can relax*.
When eating out, the options on the menu narrowed down to the “sides” section, which made it easier to decide what to order. Trust me, the fewer options you have to choose from, the happier camper you’ll be. If that wasn’t the case I loved to heckle the waiter, making him or her squeeze a vegan dish out of the chef. I made every task that required an extra step mischievously pleasant. It was not always easy, but with the right attitude, everything is possible.
I went back to school, this time to pursue advertising, and lucky me, it was in the perfect location across from a friendly modern vegan empanada joint that sold veggie burgers with sweet potato fries and homemade ketchup as well as vegan soups and right next to it across the street was my new found paradise, Whole Foods.
My favorite thing to get there were those rice milk ice cream bars coated in a candy shell made of carob, a bean commonly used to replace chocolate. My meals were the highlight of my days. It was as if I had never had taste buds and now I had a whole fresh new set.
At home, we would usually eat out, so it was not a problem to choose my vegan foods and let him order his meat. I was not into forcing him to abandon his steak, as he was respectful of my new vegan ways.
Veganism taught me a beautiful lesson; in the midst of the radical political and ethical thinking, it showed me a new door to Nourishment and Pleasure. I never said to myself, “you have to be a full on vegan now,” because it was no destination but my new path. I just felt like roaming over calm waters where I could sit back and experiment with foods. However, my priority became to really enjoy this new journey.
* Emily Rosen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-A5OSsAX8