What I’ve learnt being a vegan (and what you could too!)

I’ve been vegan for about eight months now, and I still realise more and more everyday what an amazing decision this was, and over these months I’ve learnt a few things, some new some I’ve dived deeper into…
Awareness
The reason I first became vegan was because of self-awareness. The only food I was eating that wasn’t vegan at the time was paneer, the most popular food amongst any vegetarian. Literally if I’d go to any restaurant or out to eat, I’d be having some sort of paneer in my plate.
Then things changed when I came home for xmas holidays. At uni I was only able to have paneer scarcely, but when I came home from uni and my mum had to go through the stress of cooking, all I was asking for was paneer! mattar paneer, this one type of paneer that looked like yellow mincemeat and my favourite palak paneer!

I was living the dream, every day it was planet paneer, my mum didn’t even have to call me 100 times to have roti anymore, I was already at the table when it was made. But then slowly I started to feel sick of it, so much so I had to make a tough decision which resulted in me and paneer going on a break.
But, a week or two after I went back to it, something was different, I still felt sick of it. I thought, is this one of those things where something tastes good (like takeaways) but it’s bad for my body? So, I cut it out and went vegan, never to touch paneer again!
Since then I’ve gained a lot of self-awareness and I still eat those tasty unhealthy foods, I can feel my body give me instant messages telling me if a certain food is right or not just by looking at it.
But this didn’t only happen with food, it seeped into everyday life. I started understanding the intuition my body was giving me with everything.
It was like any time I was going to make a wrong decision, or was partaking in endlessly scrolling through insta or something, I’d feel like this contraction, this tightening up (If you don’t do any form of stretching/yoga you may need to try that so you know what loose feels like), it was like a signal telling me if what I was doing or thinking is in the best interest for me at that moment.
What Love means
This is another experiential one. As I started eating healthier plant based foods, and felt lighter overall, I just started to feel more and more love for ALL living things and I started to understand the concept of love, in its broader and in depth sense, much better.
It’s weird, it’s not something you could really explain, but I could just feel an increased amount of love I had for everyone, even when they were pissing me off (to an extent though, some people really know how to hit the mark). I have no idea of the logical correlation between the two, but it just happens.
I want to become a monkey
Well my mum thinks I am one already, but I just have the urge to be more and more natural. Don’t worry not in some hippy dippy kind of way, it’s more that I feel like living simpler, eating more simple and raw foods, visiting nature more, using natural products rather than the chemical infested ones, and I’ve even started to do calisthenics!

A LOT of people know nothing about health or nutrition
Omg this is a deep rabbit hole that I don’t want to dig into. The amount of protein questions and misinformation I get spat at me, especially by the adult relatives. You know those guys who have graduated with a Masters in Nutrition from Cambridge, the moment I tell them I’m vegan.
It literally baffles me when they accuse my diet of being unhealthy. Like have you seen where your meat comes from, the steroids and antibiotics that get pumped into the animals you eat? You eat meat, that fine! I don’t judge, but to accuse my diet of being unhealthy… I’ll leave it there before my brain melts into kale juice.
But its this bafflement that brings me onto the next point…
We’ve been lied to!
Did you know the number 1 cause of global warming is animal agriculture? Do you know how much food and water goes into farming them? I highly suggest watching Cowspiracy, because I already heard about animal agriculture and stuff, but when they put numbers on the things I’ve heard I was like WOW… Like wow wow.
What really troubled me was the warnings they gave the guy making the documentary, that him making this kind of information public is super dangerous! Some of the big environmental companies he interviewed stopped midway when he brought up the topic of animal agriculture. (Which they didn’t even mention when asked what the top causes for global warming are)
It just really made me think, how much we are being lied to, how much we are getting programmed?

Veganism is growing fast!
I had considered veganism before, but the thing was there was a lot of misinformation and a lack of evidence. Not the scientific kind, but of people trying and testing veganism out. But if you look today, the community is growing fast!
A lot of NFL and other athletes are vegan now and there are loads of YouTube channels like Jon Venus, and Simnett Nutrition who are living proof against the myths around veganism
Conclusion
Do I want the entire world to become vegan? Yes. Will I judge you if you don’t? No! We all live individual lives and only YOU know what’s best for you! Don’t let anyone ever dictate how you should live, it’s your free will, it’s your decision.

Stay Healthy, Stay Loving, Stay Woke,
Manvir
P.S. If the idea of trying out veganism resonates with you (btw it’s not expensive, that’s a myth too) and you want any kind of advice/support/questions answered, holla at your boy ;)
