Intro

In my former position as a door to door salesperson, I would often go off topic and talk to people about their work and lives. On one such occasion, I met a woman who was very proud of herself for being a vegan for several years. I congratulated her, telling her that I used to be a vegan, too. She said, "Well, you CHOOSE not to be a vegan, but you COULD be if you really wanted to."

Of course, I am too polite of a salesperson to openly disagree with a customer, so I simply smiled and extracted myself from her porch. But the statement lingered with me over the evening, as I pondered the question... Could I actually be a vegan, if I wanted to?

The answer lies in history. I was a vegan for 15 years. It made me hypoglycemic and fat, with pretty severe IBS for a young person. At this point, you might be imagining me as the type of vegan with a bag of potato chips in one hand and one of those industrial sized boxes of sandwich cookies in the other, but no, not really. I ate pretty healthily by vegan standards. My staples were mainly starches: Beans, rice, noodles, and quinoa plus some tofu. I also ate plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. And yes, there was a little of this on the side:

On somewhat of a whim, by a friend's suggestion, I tried the paleo diet (specifically Mark Sisson's variation), and found vitality, energy, weight loss, a cure to poor sleeping, and a cure to IBS. The change was not subtle. I went paleo and benefited from it in a very clear, direct way, almost immediately.

 At this point, if you're a vegan, you might be saying to yourself, "God, Leila, I've already read/heard about/sent an angry letter to Lierre Keith of the Vegetarian Myth. I already know what the messaging is, and I'm sick of it. Old story" My intention isn't to piss off vegans. I have a lot of respect for vegans. Heck, I was a vegan for over a decade. I was the one riding around with a prominent "go vegan" sticker on my bike before you probably knew what a vegan was. But I sincerely do not want to piss you off. I want to involve you. Let's talk about this.

And also, if you're eating paleo, you're probably thinking: "Yes, a paleo/primal/WAPF diet victory story, like the Vegetarian Myth!" But it's not. If you're on the paleo diet, this blog is meant to take you to a point where you think 2, or 3, or 4 times about what you are about to put in your mouth. Even if you already do that, I want you to do it x 2.

Stay tuned, there's more! But first, I want to tell you about what it was like to be a vegan kid.