For the past 5 months or so, I’ve been following a mostly vegan diet.
There are a few reasons for this: 1) the growing research about the benefits of a plant-based diet, 2) how much better my stomach feels when I’m not consuming dairy, and 3) I personally don’t believe I need animal products in order to lead a long and healthy life.
I’m not going to tell you that I will be vegan forever, or that tomorrow I won’t order a slice of “real” cheese pizza.
I’m not going to tell you that all of a sudden I always feel energized, because to be honest, I’m not eating that much differently than I used to.
Sometimes it’s hard.
I’m not a “perfect vegan,” and, yes, it’s often frustrating going out to eat once you learn that most Indian food- even vegetarian ones- use butter, and a lot of Thai food has fish sauce in their tofu dishes.
But that’s when I have to ask myself: who am I doing this for? Who will care if I have a little butter, or if some cheese made its way into the vegan tamale I ordered during happy hour?
And then I arrive at a bigger issue. I’ve touched on this a lot lately, because I think it might be the important lesson I’ve been grappling with this year: to learn how to be forgiving and generous towards myself, to trying to do everything perfectly and accepting that there will be times when things don’t turn out the way they were meant to.
To learn how to treat myself as if I were my own best friend: to be kind to myself in times of stress and pain, to not hold myself to impossible standards. To encourage and support. To not sweating the small stuff. To smiling and laughing, to doing what makes you feel good. To living.
