Ex vegan , why I’m not vegan anymore .

I’ve been vegan for 3 years.
I went vegan only for the animals, for the planet, not for health.
I’ve always loved meat, and after the first stage of my life trying a different kind of diet like most humans I found how to eat for my body.
And I was feeling great, eating every kind of non-junk food.
Lots of vegetables, fruits, meat and fish, little cheese, and almost non-milk at all.
I was feeling great; until I watched Earthling.
And then the vegan activists’ speeches.
After those speeches and those documentaries, my life was getting worse than ever, but I didn’t know that time.
After those documentaries, I went vegan overnight.
I didn’t know how I could be so blind to all my life about animal cruelty.
So I started documenting myself.
Watching videos, reading books.
I studied nutrition at school, I knew how to nourish the body,  so I wanted to exactly know how to keep nourishment with a vegan diet.
Everything against everyone.
I was surrounded by non-vegan friends, partner, and family.
Only me.

My cause was too strong to care about being alone.
I did great for a couple of years, I was feeling quite good because inside I was in peace. Connected with nature.
After a couple of years, I started to hate my meals.
I started to realize that yes I was feeling at peace, but my everyday yoga became every 10 days yoga, and my runs outside in the park were becoming slow walks outside.
Looking in the mirror I wasn’t shining anymore, I was looking sad and depressed, without life.
Of course, I didn’t think it was related to food at the beginning.
This was the problem with this kind of path. It’s not only a choice, you become your choice.
I was too much identify with my idealism to listen to my body that was screaming for help.
Then one day during a hot summer working outside in an orchard at the end of the day I collapsed.
 Lying in bed without energy, no strength, couldn’t breathe.
But wasn’t enough for me to woke up, so I started thinking, maybe I don’t get enough protein;  because I couldn’t eat so many legumes, my stomach hates them.
So I bought a big box of vegan protein.
My stomach hates them like legumes, I wasn’t feeling good at all and I started to be scared.
The next day a chicken was on my plate.
Ate it with no joy, after I cried and I came back on lentils again.
My heart was following the emotional side.
But my body inside was screaming to follow the instinct.
So after months of the psychological fight, I was really tired.
My body the last weeks didn’t want anything but meat.
The more I was trying to eat fruits, veggies, and legumes more I was feeling weak and with no life.
My digestion was getting worse and drove me crazy the idea of living all my life in sacrifice against my own body scream.
But after so long of teaching myself that eating meat was wrong and terrible I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
 I wanted to see meat as a nutrient food again. I was confused about what food is good and what food is bad for the first time in my life.
I couldn’t go back to eating meat again until my brain was ready.
So I started searching online ex-vegans story and I found Lierre Keith, I’ve read her book;  then I found Daniel Vitals and I started to listen to his podcasts,  and so on…
I was ready. I started to rewild my brain.
I started to eat meat again and I was feeling great.
I will never forget that first conscious bite full of energy,  the energy from the dead animal flowing inside me, giving me life again.
But…
What about animals??
What about their suffering???

I kept thinking about all those documentaries in my heart,  to all those images.
But differently than before, I haven’t hooked anymore.
So I started to notice that all of the documentaries only show us the worst of factory farming, the worst of cruelty.
And this gets hooked because it touches you in the heart.
These videos never show us the thousands of farmers taking really good care of the animals.
They never show us the thousands and thousands of cows free to run and eat their grass.
They show us that hunt and fishing are bad and cruel,  but in fact, is the most natural thing that human-animal can do; and is the less cruel way to kill and eat an animal. There’s no torture involved. You kill you to eat. Humane nature.
This is not a Disney fantasy world.
I love Disney, but can also make us confuse our nature.
Animals don’t talk like us.
They don’t think like us, they think like animals.
They are amazing in their own worlds and is right to protect them, to make them don’t suffer.
But we’re animals too.
As much as we don’t like it. As much as it’s hard.
This is a fact.
We need to grow up and accept that life is made out of balance.
Other animals eat animals too.
Even if they are not carnivores like lions;
chickens eat insects and worms,
birds eat insects and mice;
Think about the dolphins for example,
they are part of the most intelligent animals on this planet,
but they eat fish. Even if dolphins are kind and smart,  they still kill other animals to eat.
They know by instinct that they need fishes nutrients to keep their strength to swim and jump in the ocean.
The thing that differentiates us from animals is our conscience, our way to feel, to think, our compassion.
If lions one they will wake up with conscience,
If one day they will wake up knowing the pain that they cause to other animals while they killing them,
for sure they will do their best to keep their suffering to the minimum possible.
But they will still eat them,
they will not change their diet because of it. They will know that they will still carnivore.
Because they listen to their body need and instinct.
The same instinct we stop listening to when industrialization came.
So if we are animal humans, and we are omnivores, why we should stop eating animals?
Why we should deprive our body of essential nutrients that we can absorb optimally from animal foods?
You can eat animals and still love them. Sound crazy, but is true.
We, humans, learned during the ancient time how to live with animals on this planet.
We learned how to cooperate with them.
Some of them became our companion.
And we fought and we still fight for them. We try to save and protect their habitats.
We still eat them, because as much as dolphins and lions we know that we are animals too,
but we’re smarter, and we can still fight against factory farming, against zoos, and all sorts of nonsense animal cruelty.
We can avoid supporting cruelty by not using plastic bags, recycling things, we can eat animals that come from a happy and humane farm, we can go hunting and fishing, we can eat organic and free-range as much as possible.
Don’t forget that even if you don’t eat animals directly you can’t avoid death.
Everything we eat comes from someone else’s die.
The ground where we cultivate vegetables was once the habitat for wild animals like rabbits, wolves, insects.
You can just trigger your self,
pretending that you don’t kill just because you can’t see the death directly.
Is the famous circle of life.
This is the balance of this planet.
Everything is so beautiful and unique, and complex.
Without a balance, life, there will no exist for nobody.
I’m not telling that humans cannot live on a vegan diet.
Someone adapt well and can survive on a plant-based.
But lots of people body’s aren’t able to get enough nutrients from plants.
Even if they take supplements they can still lack nutrients.
And if a diet has to be supplemented out of foods, for me it means that is not right for human animals.
Humans evolved to have this thinking brain because we ate animals.
We need a variety of plant-based foods with the right amount of animal products to be us.
We are all different, and we all have different needs.
To try to go against our own body can be dangerous and irreparably.
It’s not wrong to share with the world different kind of eating, but for me, it’s really dangerous to suggest that all the world should eat the same foods. Every single one of us is different, with different needs in order to thrive as healthy as possible in this life.
So, if you have no disease, if your health is good, if you don’t have an eating disorder if you can easily find organic and free-range animal products around you, why would you change your natural diet?
This was my personal experience and what I think about veganism.
I hope you’ll find a way to listen to your body, before everyone else’s thought.

Natural mermaid 🐚