20-Year Vegan

"But I could never give up..." [fill in the blank]

Today is a major anniversary for me, and I'm stepping out of my normal schedule of blog topics to share about it. Don't worry, I rarely mention my lifestyle and I'm not planning to make a habit out of it. It turns out that other people generally think it's a bigger deal than I do. After 20 years as a vegan and 24 years as a vegetarian, it's just a part of my life, like a stack of t-shirts or a music playlist.

I eat the same way as everyone else. I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. I've traveled to nine countries on four continents, and I ate meals there, too. I go to grocery stores and buy groceries. I put them in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. For some extremely weird reason, I have this pet omnivore who's willing to live with me and eat my cooking every day. (Not my dog, not my parrot, but my big ol' hairy ol' hockey-playing ex-logger of a husband). From my perspective, I'm a very ordinary suburban housewife who likes cooking. I made an extreme choice when I was 17, and now that I'm in my forties, it feels pretty conventional.

I look at it as a basic consumer choice. It's my right under capitalism to buy what I want, consume what I want, and not buy or consume what I don't want. Just like everyone else. Other people don't like kale or tofu, and they don't buy or eat those things. Good for you. Do what you want. I believe that the more groups there are with distinct preferences, the more markets are created for entrepreneurs to create their own brands, restaurants, clothing lines, shoes, hair dyes, tattoo ink, and all the rest. I don't smoke or vape, so that range of products is irrelevant to me, and I imagine vegan specialty products can be that way for non-vegans. Just ignore us and get back to your day.

Since I made the change at age 17, it's gotten easier. The range of clearly labeled plant-based products has expanded far beyond what I could have dreamed two decades ago. There are hundreds of vegan cookbooks, and they get better every year. I can now order food at most restaurants, many menus are marked with symbols, and most waiters are familiar with the ingredients of the dishes they are serving. If not, they're willing to check. The concept of alternative diets (including food sensitivities, Paleo, or whatever) has disrupted the food industry, to the irritation of some and the delight of others. That genie isn't going back in the bottle. Consumers deserve to know what it is that we're buying, and we want what we want. We're going to go where our desires are honored. Nobody is required to adapt to this; I'm perfectly willing to take my business elsewhere - and the party of 16 who are going out with me.

I don't expect people to accommodate me. I expect my friends and acquaintances to skirt the issue. I always bring emergency rations for myself when I go to a gathering. If I'm going to something like a book club where everyone else is eating together, I'll bring a microwave dinner and try to heat and eat it discreetly. Despite this, I am frequently met by a hostess at the door, announcing, "Sorry, I didn't make anything vegan for you." Um, thanks, I didn't expect you to? Whatsoever? Sorry to have completely ruined your evening by forcing you to make a spectacle of me at your doorstep.

On the other hand, I have several friends who have cooked incredible meals for me, bent over backwards to make sure I had something to eat, or even invented new recipes for baked goods and brought them to me. I will do anything for these people, because that, to me, is the most astounding and touching gift. You know who you are.

My husband still eats meat, as he has for his entire life. Now it's maybe once or twice a month instead of once or twice a meal. He doesn't eat dairy, because it makes him violently ill. It's funny that he and I have the same dietary arrangement - do not eat things with dairy in them - but his reason is accepted, while mine is considered annoying, even though accommodating one of us is just as much an imposition as accommodating the other. People have this firmly entrenched idea that having a nutrition-based or ideology-based diet is selfish, unfair to others, unrealistic, unhealthy, holier-than-thou, vapid, trendy, or whatever. You can demand your dressing on the side, no onions, extra ketchup, only this brand of cola but not that one, or any picky-pickle fussy requirements you may have, and you're fine. It's only allowed if you do it because It's The Texture or you just vehemently dislike the taste of something. Do it for health or ideology, and everyone hates you.

Do I lecture people? Yeah, I did when I was a teenager. I know people think I do now because I get that type of feedback from time to time. My husband is puzzled by this. We've known each other for a dozen years and are more or less inseparable in person and on social media. He's my reality check. What often happens is that someone will lecture me, while I stand there listening in bemusement, and then remember it as me hounding everyone else. A vegan is a symbol of something. What, exactly, I don't fully understand. The truth is that I don't give a flying fudge factory what other people eat. I don't want people jumping in and trying to go vegan for three weeks, with no idea whatsoever about nutrition or cooking or meal planning, and then blame the concept for their unsatisfying experience, rather than their poor execution of it. Don't do it; you'll just mess it up.

There are health aspects to this. An older roommate told me, when I was 18: "You'll find out what you're doing to your body." Mmhmm. I just had a full panel of lab work done a couple of weeks ago. I'll be 42 in July. What the heck, I'll list it off at the end of this post, because perhaps it will seem relevant to any readers in their forties or better.

It cracks me up a bit when a severely obese diabetic takes it upon themselves to lecture me about my health, or query Where Do I Get My Protein. Hey, do you want to compare blood work? Do you want to race for a mile? How about 15 miles? Do you want to make a list of random health complaints and see whose is longer? How many prescriptions are you on? Look at me. I've been taking this massive risk of eating a plant-based diet for 20-24 years (depending on whether you count four years as a lacto-ovo vegetarian or not). Anything it was going to "do to my body" it presumably will have done by now.

I look forward to my old age. I come from a long-lived family, where everyone seems to reach at least age 75. It will start getting fun as I enter my sixties. At that point, I predict that my health and fitness level will speak for themselves. Right now, I'm only beginning to reach a level of implicit credibility, where my age and experience on this path have diverged from the Standard American Lifestyle and the accompanying Standard American Results. In another twenty years, it will be pretty obvious "what I've done to my body."



Here are my latest lab test results, as of 5/2/2017. I'm not on any pharmaceuticals other than birth control.

Fasting glucose: 86 mg/dL
HGBA1C%: 5.6%

LIPID PANEL
Cholesterol: 134 mg/dL
Triglyceride: 83 mg/dL
HDL: 50 mg/dL
LDL calculated: 67 mg/dL
Cholesterol/high density lipoprotein: 2.7
Cholesterol, non-HDL: 84 mg/dL

ELECTROLYTES
Sodium: 141 mEq/L
Potassium: 4.3 mEq/L
Chloride: 106 mEq/L
CO2: 27 mEq/L
Anion gap (NA - (CL + CO2)): 8 mEq/L

Creatinine: 0.80 mg/dL

Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT): 10 U/L

Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH): 1.16 mcIU/mL
Free thyroxine (T4): 1.1 ng/dL

Blood pressure: 94/58 mmHg (a bit low, but that's my norm)

Resting pulse: 64

SpO2: 98%

BMI: 21

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