Background... (since when do I have time for a blog?)

     I have been introducing my self as "failed vegan" a few times when my diet comes in question when I but soy ice cream, fake lunch meat, or ask if anyone wants to go to Chicago Diner so that I can have their amazing vegan Gyros sandwich.
    I have been "omnivoring" for past 3 years or so after dropping the vegetarian diet I had for close to 12 years, one of those years has been a vegan year. I became a vegetarian in 7th grade after reading about animal suffering in a book randomly checked out from the library. A loner, unpopular immigrant child I loved animals more than people anyways. To the horrors of my very meat eating Eastern European family their little oddball decided not to eat the staple of the family diet - meat. Meat was fried, boiled, salted, smoked and baked. Meat was in everything and everywhere. A newly inherited tradition of Thanksgiving revolved around large quantity of meat already present in Eastern European family gatherings with an addition of a large turkey now as well. Sandwiches were rarely made without smoked ham or salami.
I guess I never really cared about what people thought of me. I had no problems telling horrified and confused relatives that I decided that meat is out of my diet due to my concern for farm animals. I was  tempted sometimes of course, but determined to not give in.
    In 7th grade science fair I presented a poster about how animal experiments are cruel and sometimes not very useful. This was before internet access for me so I had a list of citations from books found in the library. My poster had copies of pictures of tortured animals. I was a little kid who no one could really figure out. Because I looked weird, smelled weird, spoke a weird language and wore clothes that were 10 years out of fashion in United States, not eating what everyone else was didn't make me any more friends. Still though I carried on through grades 6-8 with highschool being slightly better. I had more choices over my food there, even if most lunches it consisted of cheese pizza and fries. I was friends with the weird kids so having a different diet wasn't that much of a biggie.
    A year of vegan diet though presented some issues - caloric intake. I was on the swim team as well as orchestra and I would run on weekends. At some points I also did Judo - a very physically demanding martial art. All of these activities as well as a growing body required food and nutrition and calories. It wasn't the weight or how I looked it was more how I felt. I felt tired and cold all the time. I wanted to eat all the time which meant I had to eat whatever was around the house which was usually not that healthy. The fact that potato chips are vegan doesn't make them that great as a snack.
Another factor was that even with fake meat, I realized that dairy was in everything. Everything! Some breads, some vegetarian fake meats, and so on. And sometimes it wasn't even called dairy - you had to look it up on a chart to see what that derivative from dairy was. Casein was just one of many things that was not vegan. After not being able to do it for more than a year, I went back to vegetarian. I realized that I made myself intolerant to milk however. After drinking frozen coffee beverage with milk in it, my insides wanted to kill me.
Not being a fan of milk anyways, I gladly embraced soy milk and later almond milk. To me, it still tastes way better even though I could take some lactaid to allow me to drink it without consequences.
    College was not an issue as cafeteria and later my autonomy in the grocery store allowed me to pursue my diet of choice.

There will always be questions.....

I wanted to open with a cartoon. Sad, possibly even offensive to some people but true. I used to get that question a lot from people who were a lot less fit than me. Also where I used to get my vitamins... Social and environmental factors can be very effective in keeping you conforming to whatever is socially acceptable.
One to remember however, is that not all vegetarians or vegans look like that. It is very possible to be vegan and have a terrible diet. Remember, french fries and potato chips are all vegan. So is a lot of candy and even oreo cookies.
This time I was determined to be a healthy vegan.