Personal Story: I’m a Vegetarian. My Sister Tried Going Vegan. Here’s What Happened…
The last few years have seen a remarkable turnover in the diet culture: whilst short-term dieting used to be popular before, now, having a long-term dietary requirement, such as strictly sticking to plant-based food, became the new trend.
I take pleasure in calling myself vegetarian, not as much due to the fact that I was able to refuse myself meat, but rather, the acknowledgment that I didn’t do it because everyone else did – I had my personal beliefs the support for which I demonstrated in action, rather than verbally.
In other words, becoming vegetarian wasn’t my way of ‘hopping on the trend’, which even now I consider a personal accomplishment.
However, my sister, who only just recently became vegan (this summer), had a completely different vision of the logic behind her own diet alteration – the one I definitely don’t have, as her decision was admittedly aimed at ‘trend-hopping’.
One morning, my sister and I were spending time with one another (in all honesty, it was more of us spending time using our laptops in each other’s company), when out of the blue, she told me that she’s contemplating going vegan.
Though this news came as a surprise to me, I recommended for her to go for it straight away. At that point, I knew that my mom already got used to having a vegetarian in the house, so I was sure that adding a vegan into our household’s dietary diversity wouldn’t change a thing.
Having been persuaded by my encouragement, this seemed to help her make up her mind about her soon-to-happen vegan-undertaking, I was unpleasantly surprised when a few days later, she told me that she’s still only thinking about it.
That’s when I concluded that the reason for such uncertainty was her ignorance of veganism, as well as her absolute lack of motive, which was proven once I asked her to explain why exactly she wanted to try veganism, and got an ‘I don’t know, I guess I just want to try it out’ reply.
Having set my mind on helping her go vegan, I recommended various films that she could watch to learn more about veganism and analyse whether she relates to it, and prepared a potential reading list, which in fact, she didn’t require because she’s already picked out her reading.
The next weekend, we were still debating whether or not veganism was her way to go when, once again, I asked about her motive, she had something better to answer than ‘I don’t really know’. Back then, she was on a weight loss journey, and so she believed veganism would help.
Finally, that same day, she spoke to my mom about it and the next day she ‘set off’ on her vegan journey. Immediately, I was impressed with her determination and willingness to turn this new habit into a lifestyle.
Within the first week, everything went well, and she even started an Instagram food blog focused on veganism, where she posted vegan recipes, first impressions, and so on. However, she started encountering some daily struggles that I’ve had no experience with as a vegetarian.
Almost a year ago, I remember weighing vegetarianism against veganism to decide which dietary makeover I’d like to attempt. The reason I stopped on vegetarianism was that veganism seemed like a very severe and sudden exclusion of almost all products I was used to.
Though I knew that there are food substitutes to almost everything, I couldn’t imagine having enough patience to adapt to buying specialised nutrition, and most importantly, stopping consuming Kinder chocolate – just thinking about that was heart-breaking...
When my sister became vegan, we made sure that we were well-prepared, mainly because we had already found our ‘go-to’ local vegan/vegetarian shop, from which most of my meals were purchased and with a food range she was also well-acquainted with.
However, it turned out that it wasn’t really enough – we had it all supposedly figured out, but only for main meals. When it came to snacks, my sister remained susceptible to eating non-vegan childhood snacks and cravings that she couldn’t step back from as easily.
Therefore, for quite some time, she was (as she called it) ‘99% vegan’, which basically meant that her breakfast, lunch, and dinner were 100% vegan, but her snacks made up the outstanding 1% exception.
However, she did intend to become a ‘100% vegan’, as she had her hopes up for coming back to the UK since British food seemed more vegan-suitable to her. Upon her return to England, her diet has finally stabilised, so, now, she can finally account for being vegan.
She states that what made the most difference for her stressless transformation to veganism wasn’t the availability of vegan meals, but rather a fully vegan-adapted environment where she isn’t reminded of her old routine, and so, can establish her new cravings without looking back.
What I’ve learned from my sister’s journey is that though a ‘fully vegan-adapted environment’ is easy to arrange for me, I’m not yet ready to give veganism a go: maybe it’s due to my passion for vegetarianism, or maybe, it’s because I simply like Kinder too much.
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Written by Lisa Levytska
