One Woman's Journey to Becoming Vegan

I met Holly Wilson on The kind Life forums and she has agreed to share with us her story of becoming vegan. This is her story.

I made the decision to go Vegan over a year ago after reading a book called the moneyless man by Mark Boyle (highly recommended). It’s essentially about a man who decides to do away with all worldly possessions that aren’t absolutely necessary, close his bank account, and live off the land entirely self sufficient. He too is vegan and is so mostly for environmental reasons. I had been struggling for some time with the issue of my carbon footprint and after giving up my car as I didn’t need it on a day to day basis I decided to go vegan as well.

I did a LOT of research online as I am quite a pragmatic person anyway and was happy to find a ton of evidence that a plant based diet could do wonders for your health. I suffered from IBS for a few years prior and was on about 5 pills a day to control the spasms and pain. Although my doctor didn’t offer an allergy test for my symptoms he was happy to hand over pills month after month without question. I would like to think that if something isn’t right I would like to get to the cause of it rather than just masking the problem with medication – if i have a headache I will drink some water, go for a walk and maybe eat a banana for potassium before I resort to drugs.

I also had quite a mood swing issue (probably due to the sugar, caffeine and alcohol content of my previous diet) and I would even go so far as to say I was suffering from depression. However after only a month of going vegan (and i’m happy to say cutting out caffeine and alcohol), my mood had stabilised, my periods were easier to deal with and I wasn’t suffering from PMT anywhere near as much. I also noticed that a lot of the symptoms I had which my doctor attributed to IBS (incidentally there is no such condition as IBS, it’s a catch all phrase for bowel/digestion problems that they can’t diagnose) had eased. I decided to trial a week without my medication which was a huge success and I haven’t needed to take anything now for a year. I am pretty sure that my “IBS” was in fact down to a lactose intolerance, which is surprisingly common, a lot of people have this and aren’t aware of it. I had a little blip when on holiday in Spain, as they don’t cater for Vegans (not surprising for a country whose national sport is bullfighting) I had to forego my diet and have some creamy cheesy pasta, and boy did I feel it! Only an hour later after not having had dairy for a couple of months I was doubled over in pain.

When people ask me why i’m vegan now I can’t choose just one reason, I am an animal lover and lived near an abbatoir when I was little, I can still remember the looks on the calfs faces as they were herded in. They know what was happening to them and were very definitely scared. I don’t feel comfortable being part of that. So I am vegan for every reason.

I love being vegan and can say I will never go back to eating animal products again, I don’t even mind when people are hostile towards me (which happens more often than not when they find out about my principles – for some reason it makes people very defensive) I love the way I feel now, I love that I go to sleep at night knowing that no animal had to die so that I could eat, I love that my carbon footprint is much much lower now and I love telling people about it and seeing the light bulb go on above their head, it makes me really happy when others embrace a plant based diet even if it’s only for some of the week because of something I may have said or made for them to eat.

To Your Health & Happiness,
Elle