My Story
When I think back to my earliest health and food-related influences, I remember my grandma baking meat and potato pies for our large extended family and picking black berries with my grandpa. I also remember Happy Meals and Ronald McD, and hoarding chocolate candy bars from Halloween, hiding them from my brothers. Around age thirteen, waking up at sunrise to follow Priscilla Patrick on TV as she taught me yoga. It was right around that time that I became interested in writing menu plans and reading checkout line recipe booklets. The colorful photos fascinated me. Good friends of my dad happened to have a pro-vegetarianism pamphlet at their home one day, and they let me bring it home. That pamphlet is what opened my mind to the idea that I could exist without eating meat. I had never considered this idea before.
I was excited to find this "new" way of eating. However, I soon realized that I didn't really know what I could eat. Sure, there were cheese subs and garlic fries, mayonnaise salads and white rice, buttered noodles and Fruity Pebbles cereal. I didn't know a thing about nutrition, but I am grateful that our family always had fruits and vegetables in our house. I also knew nothing about disease, but learned that cancer was one scary beast when we watched my paternal grandmother suffer from it, and later, we lost my maternal grandfather, both during my high school years. My vegetarianism lasted through most of this time, but there were slips here and there.
It wasn't until I was pregnant with my first child in 1996, that I started to really think about nutrition. Upon reading What To Expect When You're Expecting, I discovered new foods and realized that my diet could directly affect my baby's health. I was no longer a vegetarian, but I began eating more vegetables, nuts, beans, and avocados. Fruit had always been a part of my diet, and during my pregnancy, I craved it the most.
Despite plenty of "morning" sickness for the first few months, my pregnancy was amazing. Halfway through my pregnancy, I remember showing an ultrasound video to my paternal grandfather, and he said, "Isn't that something?!" I was so excited for my son to meet my grandpa. He was the first great-grandchild in the family. However, my grandfather had been suffering from various health problems for years, and he passed away only two months before my son was born. My son would never meet my grandpa.
I labored for only six hours with my son. In fact, I did not really think I was in labor the first three hours. My OB told me it was one of the easiest births he had ever attended.
For the first few years of my son's life, he ate a standard diet, as I did in childhood, with the addition of the healthier foods I had learned about during pregnancy. He was breastfed for the first 16 months of his life. It wasn't until around age 4 that I started to make another shift in our diets and lifestyle. My younger brother announced that he had become vegan. Vegan? I had never heard of it. He explained what it meant, and I was instantly intrigued. Again, I had never considered the fact that I could exist, and even thrive, without dairy or eggs. I immediately started reading about veganism in detail, and was fascinated by my brother's meatless chik'n nuggets and soy ice cream. I slowly began to incorporate more vegan foods into our diets. I really wanted to be vegan! It just really resonated with me.
I just had to let go of some of my favorite non-vegan foods. Although I wanted to do it all overnight, I soon realized that a gradual approach was much easier- especially since my son was used to our usual way of eating, and I was transitioning his diet as well as my own.
I began reading every book, recipe, website, and magazine I could find that could help me learn more about vegan living. I stopped buying meat and leather. That part was easy. I gently talked to my son about animals being used for human consumption. He was so young, so I left out the gory details. We were still eating some dairy foods, and occasionally eggs. We made the transition slowly.
One day, when my son was near 6 years old, I realized that he had been congested for quite a while- probably a couple months. It started out as a cold, but the runny nose just didn't go away. I started looking into the dairy/congestion link I had run across in my vegan reading. I decided to eliminate all dairy in our home to see if my son's congestion would clear up. Guess what? Within 2 weeks, he was clear! The congestion didn't come back.
I was excited to find this "new" way of eating. However, I soon realized that I didn't really know what I could eat. Sure, there were cheese subs and garlic fries, mayonnaise salads and white rice, buttered noodles and Fruity Pebbles cereal. I didn't know a thing about nutrition, but I am grateful that our family always had fruits and vegetables in our house. I also knew nothing about disease, but learned that cancer was one scary beast when we watched my paternal grandmother suffer from it, and later, we lost my maternal grandfather, both during my high school years. My vegetarianism lasted through most of this time, but there were slips here and there.
It wasn't until I was pregnant with my first child in 1996, that I started to really think about nutrition. Upon reading What To Expect When You're Expecting, I discovered new foods and realized that my diet could directly affect my baby's health. I was no longer a vegetarian, but I began eating more vegetables, nuts, beans, and avocados. Fruit had always been a part of my diet, and during my pregnancy, I craved it the most.
Despite plenty of "morning" sickness for the first few months, my pregnancy was amazing. Halfway through my pregnancy, I remember showing an ultrasound video to my paternal grandfather, and he said, "Isn't that something?!" I was so excited for my son to meet my grandpa. He was the first great-grandchild in the family. However, my grandfather had been suffering from various health problems for years, and he passed away only two months before my son was born. My son would never meet my grandpa.
I labored for only six hours with my son. In fact, I did not really think I was in labor the first three hours. My OB told me it was one of the easiest births he had ever attended.
For the first few years of my son's life, he ate a standard diet, as I did in childhood, with the addition of the healthier foods I had learned about during pregnancy. He was breastfed for the first 16 months of his life. It wasn't until around age 4 that I started to make another shift in our diets and lifestyle. My younger brother announced that he had become vegan. Vegan? I had never heard of it. He explained what it meant, and I was instantly intrigued. Again, I had never considered the fact that I could exist, and even thrive, without dairy or eggs. I immediately started reading about veganism in detail, and was fascinated by my brother's meatless chik'n nuggets and soy ice cream. I slowly began to incorporate more vegan foods into our diets. I really wanted to be vegan! It just really resonated with me.
I just had to let go of some of my favorite non-vegan foods. Although I wanted to do it all overnight, I soon realized that a gradual approach was much easier- especially since my son was used to our usual way of eating, and I was transitioning his diet as well as my own.
I began reading every book, recipe, website, and magazine I could find that could help me learn more about vegan living. I stopped buying meat and leather. That part was easy. I gently talked to my son about animals being used for human consumption. He was so young, so I left out the gory details. We were still eating some dairy foods, and occasionally eggs. We made the transition slowly.
One day, when my son was near 6 years old, I realized that he had been congested for quite a while- probably a couple months. It started out as a cold, but the runny nose just didn't go away. I started looking into the dairy/congestion link I had run across in my vegan reading. I decided to eliminate all dairy in our home to see if my son's congestion would clear up. Guess what? Within 2 weeks, he was clear! The congestion didn't come back.