I was talking to my friend Mathilde, the other day about this topic and how I feel now about my vegan transition. Because I kinda need some fresh motivation to remind me why I’m doing this journey and why I began this in the first place.

Let’s be honest as I said before in my first article about my transition to a plant-based diet, I’m not an overnight person’s decision and I never will be. It’s in my personality, I need time to process things and then set them up. That’s how it all began, first I needed to educate myself with books, documentaries, etc. The first time I learned the truth about all the misconceptions society wants us to believe, it was a shock.

All this new information was fresh in my head so I knew at that time why I started this process, so it was hard and at the same time easy. Because I was cutting a lot of foods I was used to eating but at that time I knew the reason and how they affected my health.

Then months pass and it’s normal that all information I had read was processing in my head before, but now I don’t think about it 24/7 and I can’t remember it all that’s okay. With that time since I started this process, I found myself making exceptions and not feeling bad about it. Now I’m trying to figure out why I’m acting like this and I know that I need to remember which are the reasons I’m doing this.

When I try to find some explanations, here some of them I found :

⋅ Emotional eating 

One day I found a post on Instagram about this topic and when I read it, it totally makes sense for me. Sadly I didn’t save the post and couldn’t find it afterward, so I can’t share it with you here. When I think about my diet, if I had to say a number, I will say that 80% of the time I’m emotionally eating, and the last 20%’s because I’m physically hungry.

I know it’s not right and I’m trying to work on it. If I think more in-depth about my relationship with food, I think that I have a comfort relationship with it in the first place. It’s a mechanism I found when for example my family’s relationship was really bad, I had to find comfort somewhere, and at that time I couldn’t find as much as I needed in my personal circle. So I turned myself to food. That’s my own reflection about my relationship with food and how I can explain this first topic that could explain why I have lows during my vegan journey.

Because of that emotional eating, sometimes I’m making excuses to eat things I was used to eating in the past, that they aren’t vegan. I’m not making excuses to people around me but to myself like « oh just this time ». Because in fact, I’m emotional about times where I was eating it and I remember how tasty it was and at this moment this emotional part of me takes advantage of my rational part. I need to work hard on that too. But I don’t want to put pressure on myself or judge me because nobody is perfect and I don’t want to be that type of person. As simple as it is, I need to ask myself more if I’m really hungry when I’m about to eat something, before jumping on it without thinking.

⋅ My environment 

When I’m trying to find some answers about why I’m making more exceptions these days since the beginning of my process it’s obvious my environment plays a huge role in it. I’m currently living with my family, we are nine and I’m the only one into a plant-based diet you make the maths…

I made the choice to buy my groceries because it’s my choice to change my diet and I don’t want to impose this on my entire family. But even if I make my groceries weekly it didn’t suppress the groceries of the rest of the family. I saw them as temptations all around me, all the time. I think that it’s a real difficulty to my process and it has an impact on my new habits I’m trying to make. As I said before it doesn’t help my constantly emotional eating either. If I think ahead when I will be ready to move to my own place, these habits I’m currently building will become natural then. In conclusion, I think I need to see more in the long-term process and not only day by day. Because it’s my ultimate personal goal to have my first place to live in.

⋅Keep myself educated 

It’s easy to read all those books and watch these documentaries one time and then move on. But in a non-vegan society that constantly reminds you why you should eat meat or drink cow’s milk, it’s hard to live with a different mindset every day. One thing I think will help me is to remember that now I’m conscious that I’m no longer doing this only for my personal health but for the planet and even more for the animal cause.

Recently I took the courage just after my long talk with Mathilde to finally watch the documentary « Dominion » and I can’t find any words to describe what I saw. It was so hard to watch and to be aware of the ultimate truth about how humans proceed to feed themselves to the detriment of animals’ lives. Even more, now that we know we can totally be healthy without any animal products. Then how is it possible to be a part of this cruelty. How is it possible that these manners are still legal today and how is it possible that nobody is aware of this and continues to eat animals without knowing how this species came into this nice package in the supermarket.

My last words will be that EVERYONE NEEDS AND HAVE TO WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY AND BE AWARE IN WHAT THEY PARTICIPATE EVERYDAY AND HOW THEY ENCOURAGE THE INDUSTRY TO CONTINUE TO ACT LIKE THIS WHEN THEY EAT ANIMALS PRODUCT ON A REGULAR BASIS.