Things I Learned After I Became Vegan
2024 marks five years since I became vegan. I have to confess that sometimes it feels like it’s been longer, but as I type these words, it just hit me from a different perspective.
I’ve been a vegan for half a decade.
I’m not going to lie and say it’s all been perfect, and I had no challenges (to this day, I miss my good old brigadeiro, and more times than I like to admit, I do miss having eggs!). But I can confidently say I have no regrets.
Throughout these years, I had ups and downs, times when I was just feeling exhausted and wondering if going through the trouble of making something “different” was truly worth it. If just having my fries while everyone else at the table was having very good-looking dishes was truly worth it. If paying double the price for a carton of oat milk, compared to cow’s milk, was truly worth it.
Or the times when I woke up after a night out, having the world’s worst hangover, craving some eggs on toast, but settling for something else, was truly worth it.
And you want to know what? It was worth it.
It is worth it.
We’re human beings, full of wants and wishes, and we don’t always get what we want. Often because things don’t always work how we want them to. But also, because we are conscious beings, and we make choices.
My choice was to not consume animal-sourced products, and I am happy (and proud) of that.
In celebration of that, here are five things, one for each year, that I learned after I became vegan.
1. My people are much more supportive than I thought they would be
Not that I expected the closest people to me, to be anything but nice and kind about it. But it was, and it has been, very heart whelming to see them doing their best to include me. To be thinking of me. It is obviously not the hardest or most difficult task in the world, but seeing their care fills me with joy. It’s the little things that count!
I’ve seen many stories online about vegans who were tricked by family/friends into eating animal-based products, and my anxiety was always through the roof thinking about that. But in reality, that never seemed like a possibility. Everyone was so supportive that the thought of someone tricking me like that was just ridiculous.
2. Cooking is fun, and I miss it
When I was younger, I used to really like cooking. But it was mostly making pasta with some sausage sauce and random things I had in the fridge. However, after I became vegan, I had the need to actually learn how to make things from scratch.
It was mostly due to not finding things ready-to-buy in the supermarkets (and the ridiculous price of the ones I did find in the shops). Making things and have them stored in the freezer was great. Taking a full day to dedicate to meal prep, and enjoying all of it for weeks, was truly the way to go. As my nutritionist likes to say: “those who freeze, will never be in need” (very shitty translation, coming from a Translator), and that is so real of her.
Living in Brazil, that was easy to do. I had lots of storage to keep the dry ingredients, and lots of space in the freezer, to put all the prepped food. It was easy and much more affordable to buy the ingredients in bulk. It was so much more convenient to buy everything and make things from zero. It was also practical to understand what I was eating, what went in each food.
That is not the case now, living in the Netherlands. Not to say that, here, things aren’t good. They are. But the lack of space I have in my tiny apartment is very demotivating. I have a very small fridge, and the freezer is big enough to keep some ice cubes and the occasional pack of frozen French fries. Barely any cabinets to store my things… And then I go to the store, and I can find eeeeeverything I could possibly want. There. Ready to go (or cook). No need to pre-prepare anything, just put it in a pan and boom: done. So practical. It’s great, even though I have absolutely no clue what I’m eating. It’s vegan salmon, it looks like salmon, it tastes like salmon (I think? It’s been ages since I had real salmon, I’m not sure whether I remember what it tastes like), but I have no idea what it’s made of.
It makes me realise how much I actually miss cooking, and wish that I can do it more often in 2024.
3. I am actually GREAT at minding my own business!
Veganism is a movement. It’s political. It’s more than just what we eat or what we wear. It is a lot of things, but at the end of the day: it's a personal choice.
And while I am not surrounded by vegans all around, I can happily see my influence in how people close to me view veganism, some going as far as incorporating vegan dishes in their own lives, even if they’re not vegan at all.
I am not the vegan who will start conversations about it. I honestly do not have it in me to actively try and change people's minds. I will not be making who comments on other's food, on what they eat and how wrong I think it is. The same way as I hate when people do to me. When they ask about my "proteins" or whatever.
It makes me uncomfortable, so I make sure to not doit to others. If the topic comes up, and we’re talking about it, sure, but never unprompted. And I’m happy like that. As long as people don’t mind my food, I will not mind theirs (out loud, anyway).
4. I am, in fact, healthier!
It’s, honestly, a bit odd to say that with such confidence, especially considering that when I switched my diet, it wasn’t the smoothest, and I ended up with my blood tests all messed up and quite a lot of vitamin deficiencies.
But I overcame that, I started to actually pay attention to what my body needed and how to truly nurture myself (which is something I believe absolutely everyone needs to do, no matter what your food looks like, or where it comes from!).
My hair and nails are very strong. Indeed, they always were, but that did not change after I stopped eating meat and drinking milk. Indeed, my hair falls a LOT, but it grows just as much. And at the moment my nails are looking quite depressing (but that’s more due to my terrible skills at doing gel removal, than my vitamin intake).
Good nutrients don't always come from animals!
5. I am responsible for myself, and myself only
This one kinda links to the 3rd topic, but from a different take, I’d say. While #3 was more general regarding other people, here I want to focus on my family. And by family I mean my husband.
We’ve been together pretty much just as long as I’ve been vegan (he often jokes about how he knew me “eating lots of very cheesy pizzas and one day I simply stopped”, which is kind of what happened), and he is very much not a vegan. He has tried going vegetarian, but it didn’t work out for him. And, at the end of the day, it’s his choice. He is his own person, an adult, who can make his choices.
Yes, in a perfect world, I like to imagine he would have tried being vegetarian, then going vegan with me, and we would like a cruelty-free life together and no animal-product would ever enter our home.
Well, that’s what I had in mind for my future when I became vegan (and we weren’t a THING yet).
But, to reference what I said back in the beginning of this post, we don’t always get what we want, and it’s fine. I'd rather have him the way he is, happy and having a good life, than him making this change and not enjoying it, being miserable. In the end, I think we would end up resenting each other, and that’s the furthest from the future I envision for myself.
I am happy and proud of the fact that pretty much the base of the meals we cook together is vegan, and he has a side of non-vegan whatever.
Does it bother me? Well, yeah. Deep down it does, and I wish it wasn’t like that. But it’s the same as me wishing everyone went vegan (just a bit more intensely). I can’t, and I would not, make decisions for him (or anyone else, for the matter), having his respect on this, and all the care he puts in making sure all the food I eat (he does the majority of the cooking) is vegan, double-checking if things we get from the store are vegan, doing the same when we go out to restaurants… That’s what really matters for me.
And maybe, one day, he’ll try again and this time it will work out for him. Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell.
But regardless of what other people say, or think, or do, at the end of the day, this is about me. About my choice, and the choices I make every day (like paying €0.60 extra for my latte to be made with oat milk, instead of cow milk). And as I look back to all these choices, I feel good.
I feel pretty damn good and proud of myself.
I changed a lot in the past five years. I also learned a lot. And I am sure I will continue to change, and continue to learn in the next five years to come.
Here’s to 5 more (and 5 more, and 5 more…)!
