I am going to start filtering some of my more private musings. Since blogger does not have a tool for that, you will need to visit my Live Journal and ask to be friended there. I will continue to post Daily Gratitude and other subjects here. There is also a FAQ for my Journal at the same link.
vegan-bound
| Friday, May 12, 2006 @ 08:39 On Wednesday I realized that I can no longer deny all the signs pushing me towards veganism. I woke up feeling ill and realized that it was due to a large consumption of cheese Tues evening. After enjoying an incredibly yummy lunch at a "local, fresh, organic" restaurant, I had followed that with dairy snacks & dinner and my body was letting me know which it preferred. For several months now I have been aware that my body is less and less tolerant of dairy & eggs. However, I have so many psychological and emotional attachments to dairy foods that it makes it difficult to completely let go. Cheese & ice cream are my favorite comfort foods (in a variety of forms). Becoming a lacto-ova-vegetarian was easier because meat was never a comfort food. So, I decided on Wednesday morning that it is time to act on this awareness: I am taking the steps to wean mysElf to a vegan diet. As with vegetarianism, this is not a "cold turkey" process. I will no longer include butter, cheese, eggs, etc., in meals I prepare for mysElf. I will accept them in baked goods and meals provided they are not the primary ingredients. boy will start to learn how to cook and bake with substitutes (as he has already done in learning to use rice & soy milks). Most importantly, I will learn to be more creative in my food choices, rather than falling back on habits and compulsions. When I don't want ice cream on my boymade brownie, I can enjoy strawberry syrup. When I choose not to eat sliced cheese as a snack, I can savor sliced apples & pears. After I made the decision and informed boy of the actions required, I found a letter that gave me a year for when I first became a vegetarian: 1996. Somehow, in my head, I kept thinking I'd been veggie for 6 or 7 years. Now I know it is almost a decade since I last ate meat (I don't have the actual date, but that's another story). Maybe it's because, when I was slowly moving into vegetarianism, I met several lapsed vegetarians. They all seemed to have lasted seven years and then slipped back into eating meat. I guess I told mysElf that I wouldn't make it past that seven year mark, so I had to be on the shy side of that. Only I was wrong. I have lasted longer than that. And with each year, with each month, the cravings for meat get weaker and the revulsion at the thought and even the smell grow stronger. I also thought, when deciding to become vegetarian, that I would never be able to be vegan; that it was just too extreme. But if I can maintain a vegetarian diet for ten years and counting, I know I can take the next step with confidence in my success.
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