Aurora's Blog

The way I felt about being vegan really depended on the day you asked me.

Sometimes I’d tell you, “Oh, it’s not so bad.” Sometimes, I’d look at you and start my “I’m going to die” speech.

“The light is starting to call me. I am going to die from this. Literally, I am going to die from this. When I do, please – ” (That’s the part where I start divvying up my possessions, and coming up with my last words.)

Okay, but really, the chances are I’m not going to die from being vegan. Probably.

At the beginning of the week, it was super hard. I went to Target across the street from my work to get some food. With each aisle, I got more and more stressed.

I’d been reading about veganism, and people were saying that sugar often times has bone char in it. You don’t really know when it does, so some vegans cut out sugar completely.

I think it’s an awesome idea to take it easy on sugar. But I live in America! Do you now how many things have not only no dairy, eggs, or butter, but also don’t have any sugar? Very few things!

Wise Wendy and Marty talked with me while we were in Tahoe. My understanding of what they were saying was basically that being vegan isn’t about denying yourself everything, or taking it to super extremes. It’s about doing the best that you can to live a cruelty-free lifestyle. Everyone has a different line with what that means to them. The consensus was that I could have sugar if I wanted it.

That made things easier, but grocery shopping was still frustrating. Toward the end of the week, I’d started yelling at food under my breath as I would pass it. “You’ve just gotta have eggs in you, don’t you?”

There were some days when I was super tired, my stomach hurt, and I had a headache. (I think the tummy/head stuff had more to do with cutting out sugar/caffeine in the first five days.)

At work on Wednesday, ordered a vegan pizza. In Orlando, I’d had delicious pizza with my vegan crew. Vegan pizza must be good, right?

Not all of it! The pizza made me feel ill. The cheese tasted like gum. It was hard to chew and swallow. It was so sticky that it was hard to scrape off in an effort to salvage the bread part of the pizza.

Plus, there was an extra cost for vegan cheese. It was more expensive and tasted awful – a winning combination.

My co-worker who sits across from me was intrigued by the non-pizza pizza. I asked if he wanted to try some, and in he rubbed it in so hard that I was eating vegan food. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to ruin the taste of the burger I just had – the big, juicy, delicious burger covered with real cheese.”

Over the weekend, I had some delicious meals at vegan restaurants in Tahoe with Wendy and Marty. I guess you win some, you lose some.

My skin was a mess this week – a mess! It seemed pimply, drier, and generally ickier. I don’t know what that was about. The hypothesis from my friends was that losing dairy was such a big shock to my body that my skin didn’t know what to do.

Oh, how can I forget to mention how hard it was to be vegan during three half marathons?

I kept passing stations where people had cookies for us – cookies! There was that cake at the end that I wanted to shove in my face. Couldn’t.

There were free hot dogs at the end of the race! How often does that happen? Not often.

The nice hot dog guy commiserated with me. He’d tried being vegan before and knew how hard it was. He said, “We can give you a bun so you can pretend you have a hot dog!” I was stoked about that… but the buns had dairy product!

Sigh.

At the end of vegan week, I stayed up so I could eat dairy after the clock stroke midnight. Mmm, I love dairy. I. love. it.

I will admit that we got some fake ice cream in Tahoe and it was delicious. Once I tasted real dairy again, I remembered the fake stuff definitely wasn’t really the same. (It was still good, though.)

I’m still not completely convinced that dairy actually is even bad for you. There are conflicting ideas about that…

You’d think this is the last we’d talk about this… but it’s not. Why? You’ll find out Thursday.