My Story

Hi, I am a 24 old vegan. Since I am little, I have been very active and because of a bone disease at my hips, I started swimming, to go easy on my leg. I still did all the sport I wanted to do, but I stuck to swimming since then and got a coach for the young about 8 years ago. Currently, I also go to the gym and indoor climbing. And you probably already noticed that my first language isn’t English (sorry about all the grammar mistakes) ;). My family has its own garden with a lot of fruits and vegetables and my mother always served us well balances meals which I learned to appreciate when I got older. But when I started working and earning my own money with 16 I ate a lot of fast food and other unhealthy stuff. I didn’t feel very well after eating it, but I just loved it and it didn’t really affect my body in perspective of shape/weight. Okay to be honest, I had acne, but this wasn’t much of a big deal for me 😉 At this time I couldn’t imagine eating a vegetarian diet and for sure not a vegan one, even though I already was lactose intolerant (I had pills to still be able to drink/eat milk). I was one of those guys who didn’t spend a minute on thinking about the animals behind the food chain.

My first contact with veganism

I remember the first time I spoke with a vegan was in the swimming club. It was a friend the same age as mine and I didn’t know that she has been vegan since little. I was interested and asked myself, why would someone want to restrict himself. And you can imagine, I asked all the questions I get asked now from non-vegan people. What do you eat? Only salad? You can’t eat this and that, but it is so good. And so on… 😉 But I didn’t agonize my head about it, but looking back at this time, it helps to be patient with other people with questions and doubts. So enough background information about me 😛 But I think it could help to understand, that I have been eating “normal” before I started informing myself about veganism.

Change in life

Then in 2013, I met my girlfriend. And in 2015 my girlfriend which has always been a huge animal lover started to watch Videos from different Youtubers which talked about veganism. It didn’t take long for her to realise, that it was the right thing to do but as we have been both living at our parents’ house, it needed some time till she got confident enough to tell them that she will eat vegetarian now. During this time I watched some of those videos with her and it awakened my interest and I started to do my own research (because I am a pretty calculating person, which needs to double check before I believe something – and I was pretty critical at first). So she got vegetarian and I started to decrease my meat consumption but wasn’t ready to give it up, because I didn’t want to request the “no meat on my table” from my family and I didn’t know enough about all the vegetarian/vegan food options. And my cooking skills have been limited to pasta and some pancakes. So I continued to eat meat, but knew, that it was somehow wrong and I always had a bad feeling afterwards. I just had to be 100% sure that I am able to do it and commit to it. So 3 month after my girlfriend turned vegetarian I made the decision to go vegetarian and haven’t eaten a single piece of meat for over 3 years now. But I have to admit that at the beginning the ethical aspect hasn’t been the main reason. It was the health. But with time the ethical connection got more important to me.

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.” – Charles Darwin

Next steps

So how did I turn vegan? Actually, I knew from the beginning, that it isn’t done with just quitting meat. So my girlfriend and I started to cook only vegan meals if we were cooking by ourselves. But we knew that it would have been too much to demand vegan meals from our parents. And over the time we learned which products to buy, how to cook and how to explain ourselves. We planned for years to move into our own flat and we realised, that we were now fully able to determine what we wanted to eat and so I made a little presentation about this topic for my family to let them understand why I am doing it (and I really enjoyed doing the presentation). They accepted it and somehow understood it. And the best thing is, that both our families cook vegan meals when we join them for dinner once a week. And they are trying a lot of different recipes and when I look back now, I can’t imagine, that it was such a big deal for me to tell my family, because first, it was a little uncomfortable, but it didn’t take long till it was just “normal” and they aren’t judging me. For sure we have sometimes heated discussions about some ethical topics but in a nice way. And even my friends totally accepted it and when we eat together they consider my food choices and are also interested. And as a positive side-effect, my family also reduced their meat consumption.

Biggest hurdle

So my biggest fear before I got vegan wasn’t that I don’t know what to eat or to starve for meat or dairy. It was to tell everyone and to get judged. And so I can totally understand everyone which has the same problem and that’s also a reason why I started this webpage. I wanted to help people to do the change and to spread understanding. And if you need any help to explain yourself to others or if you are just interested, have a look at my vegan A-Z collection. And if you need any further help, you can contact me and we will find a solution 🙂

Inform yourself, don’t believe everything, be open-minded and don’t judge others based on prejudice

I am looking forward to hearing from you and wish you all the best

Cheers