veganism pros/cons my experiences

Many of you out there reading this are probably thinking "oh geez another fanatical vegan!!" Or maybe your considering going vegan yourself. You've probably heard other vegans say they never felt better. Is this just hype, or a placebo effect? Is veganism a cult? I will share my views on this and my diet. It goes without saying that yes I would love to convince you all to be vegan, but I am not trying to do that. Just stating my own thoughts. I ate meat most of my life and was on a paleo diet for a couple years before I went on a plant-based diet. When one of my friends suggested a plant-based diet I thought "yeah right!!" I love cheese and bacon!!

Well in 10 days I will have been a vegan for 6 months and I will never be pretending to be a carnivore again.

I don't think I can recollect all the pros to being on a plant-based diet.  So I am just going to write my experiences.

The famous philosopher Hippocrates said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." I was watching a video the other day talking about vitamin's and other supplements and how they are regulated or should say aren't regulated. Here is an interesting video talking about testing a blackberry supplement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-wHVxKNOFg
I am definitely the consumer who spent way too much money on supplements thinking they would help my health. So how does this have anything to do with being on a plant-based diet. Sure you can say you get enough fruits and vegetables and still eat meat. But if you look at the majority of the population they follow a very poor nutrient-rich diet. Those who are un-conscience of their health eat the most convenient thing in sight. With my experience following a PB diet, I put more fruits and veggies in my body.

When I ate meat we would go grocery shopping and I would buy produce thinking I would eat it. But most of it would get old and moldy and need to be tossed out. What a waste!! Now we rarely spend over 300$ for every three weeks(last grocery shopping bill was around 220$). Maybe that is a lot for just a couple but we rarely go out to eat which the bill usually ends up to be around ￡30-50 each time(since we live in England). Maybe your the type to eat your nutrient-rich foods every day, I commend you for that, but a majority don't. From my own experience, I say it is because we are so worn out with life and lack of nutrients already, that we can't make healthy choices.

"Not all vegans are healthy!!" This is such a true statement. For a time I went kind of crazy on vegan processed food. Because I wanted to show my husband that it's easy to be on a PB diet. But I quickly saw my energy levels sink. Since I originally felt so great leaving the crap food behind,  when I felt not so great eating processed vegan food, it was easy for me to get back on track. If you haven't felt good for years, you don't really know what you are missing out on. Now I have a 20/80 diet. 10-20 percent vegan junk food(because come on we only live once), and 80 percent nutrient-rich foods. And this has kept me on track with a ton of energy.

Questions that vegans get asked a lot are:
Where is your protein?
Do you get all your daily nutrients?
Don't you need meat?
....
Because I love to research everything, the answers are clear. There is a plethora of information at your fingertips. So I am not going to get into those discussions because they have been done and studied to where its dead news. Maybe you see conflicting answers? If you are unsure follow the money. If the research is done by a company selling the product, obviously they are going to make sure the research is biased to sell to the consumers. Media in itself is biased because of who sponsors the media. Luckily we have unbiased, free info, via blogs and resources such as youtube.

So what made me decide to go plant-based and essentially vegan? It was a compilation of a few things. From astrology research to health issues, and then something deep down in my soul kept pointing me to be vegan. So I watched "What the Health" a Netflix documentary. This started my path to veganism because I saw how selfish these factory farms are and unnecessary it is to eat meat. It was easy to be ignorant before but now after seeing that film, I could no longer be ignorant towards the process of meat. Besides being a humanitarian how could I purposely put a known carcinogen in my body? What does that have to do with being a humanitarian you might ask? Think about it how many people do you see suffering from cancer and wish you could help them? Guess what, your gonna make someone else go through that pain if you end up having cancer. Instead of "trying" to find a cure why not just prevent it? So yeah I took the pill to know the truth.

Were my reasons validated now that I have been vegan for almost 6 months? I think so!! I started writing and coming up with amazing ideas which I mentally hadn't done since I was in high school. My body fat went from 28% to now 23%, yes exercise was part of it but also diet.

Don't you miss certain foods? I sure do!! But then I make a vegan version and it's just as superb if not better!! Pinterest has amazing vegan recipes. Once you start integrating new PB meals it becomes a regularity. So I have 6-7 easy dinners that I make regularly and then when I want to try something new I look up a recipe on Pinterest and have at it :).

Oh, shoot I didn't write the pros of eating meat!! We used to need to eat meat because of lack of food but its 2017 almost 2018.  There aren't any pros to it. If you're in a third world country you probably don't have access to food and there hunting is necessary but I doubt you have the internet to read this article.

I want to state this is a hard subject for most to understand, so I have no judgment. But these are my own experiences and hopefully, you take this as beneficial.