Vegan for 10 years. Why?

Hey fellow Steemians!

I would like to share my story about ditching animal products and eating all the plants instead.

I grew up in Estonia up until I was 12 and then moved to Norway in Y2K. In Estonia life was normal like in most places, I grew up loving animal foods and also plant foods that we at that time often grew in our garden.

Since I can remember, I have always been a very active person, and when I was a teenager I started training weights at the age of 16 and this picture is actually me back in 2004 with a ponytail. Such cool!

A few years later me and my best friend were living together and we trained weights all the time, made amateur short films, and ate loads of food which was mostly meat, watched dragonball, played fallout 1 and 2, watched action flicks etc.

This was all up until the year 2008.
I try and recall if I ever gave any thoughts to how it would be to not eat meat, but I don't think I ever really thought about it that much. It all seemed so natural to me and I never connected the foods I ate to any animals.

But since I am a very curious person by nature who can tend to spend oftentimes too much time researching stuff online, especially conspiracy theories etc. one night I "accidentally" came across a video showing in detail of how cows were slaughtered. This suddenly touched me...
I saw more videos of other animals as well and it all started to connect. I felt utterly sad for these animals and I could see the fear in their eyes when they were on their way through these differing pathways leading to certain death, all while hearing other animals of same breed screaming in pain just a short ways away.
It angered me because of the way it was all done. And I was participating in this by buying the neatly packaged products from stores, never really stopping to think where it comes from and what is behind this mass production.

So, that very night I simply decided that I do not want to participate in this anymore and made up my mind to not buy these products anymore.
I was up all night that night researching more and more, also stumbing over more positive videos as well of animal sanctuaries, health benefits of veganism and I even found that several famous people from varying proffessions had been leading a vegan lifestyle. This all encouraged me the more and suddenly it was early morning and my best friend woke up to go to work.
I was super hyped and brainwashed him then and there that very same morning to join my new found cult of vegans!

Hehe!
No, actually he did think for himself and watched a few videos of how animals were treated and he made the same decision that morning to simply give up meat for good.

It really was that simple for us, the dots were connected and we saw where our food came from and this led us to a clear choice to not eat meat any more.
So 2008 was the year I ditched meat and started eating grass instead.

Since becoming a vegan I have learned a lot more through time about nutrition and health and learned to eat what I needed to live healthily. I never really started taking any supplements either. I love to make food, and I love all things plantbased.

For several years while still being a vegan I stopped weight training and only trained Tae Kwon Do and Tricking, which later led me to start with parkour in 2010.

Through this time I never ever missed meat not dairy, nor eggs. I loved all the foods that I made from plantbased sources and it never let me down.

In 2012 I started lifting weights again and stopped training Martial Arts all together, but still kept at it with Parkour.
I had lost l a lot of muslce and strength in these years because of practically zero weight training and had to start off from a pretty low level again.
My previous max lifts from when I was 19 right before going vegan were 170kg deadlift, 125kg bench, 145kg squats, and when I started lifting again 80kg bench was heavy, could do a few reps of 80kg squat and lifted a maximum of 130kg deadlift. :D

But, pretty quickly I started to regain muscle and even got my own profile page on veganbodybuilding.com in 2013 which was kinda a big deal for me back then.
http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_lull

Anyway, it's 2018 now And I have since then improved a good deal in muscle mass and in strength, and all this with a vegan lifestyle with no protein powders, no creatine, no preworkout etc...

Check out my last lifting video here:

As a closing conclusion to this post I would like to say that, for those who literally cannot continue eating animal products and want to switch over to a plant based whole foods diet, then know that it is very possible and it really isn't hard in my opinion. But of course for many it will take some adjustments especially if you are not used to making your own food or even worse if you never really liked vegetables. For me this was all a really easy transition that literally happened over night, but I have seen a lot that it is a very individual thing, and the process of giving up meat varies from person to person.
I would also like to add that I never recommend people to become vegan simply because of a fad and because it seems like something new and "hipser".

I only recommend it to people who literally don't want to eat animals any more.

And when it comes to health, veganism can be very healthy, but it can also be unhealthy. I all depends on the person and how he or she eats.
Cocacola is vegan, so is sugar in general. And I would say that sugar is one of the worst halth destroyers not meat.
I know that one can easily live healthy with meat as well, only cutting down drastically on dairy, sugar, gluten and such and adding lots of vegetables.

But, as I said already, for me it was about connecting the dots. Why don't I eat my cats? Why only cows, chickens and pigs? Aren't they cute and smart as well like my cats? well they actually are and they do have personality traits as well. That is in my opinion super cool and that all goes to show the great design of God in His creation.