Why I Stopped Eating Animals and What I Learned

When I changed my diet and stopped eating animals, it happened overnight. That story is here if you want to read it.

Everyone has their own reasons for choosing what they eat. Mine are clear: I changed because of the animals, for my health, and for the environment. It’s now been 3 years and 4 months without consuming animal products — and that’s also how long it’s been since I last got sick.

In those first days after the change, I was angry. I carried a deep, heavy anger inside me for months. At the same time, I felt sad and overwhelmed by the documentaries I’d watched — by the helplessness of seeing animals suffer and not being able to stop it.

I was angry at myself and at the industries that sell animals as food. At myself for not wanting to see the truth earlier, and at those industries for how unethical they are, and how they operate.

When judgment gets clouded by emotion, it’s hard to be reasonable. We get swept up in what we feel and forget to think objectively — especially when we see someone causing harm to other living beings.

Watching those documentaries opened my eyes, even though I already knew they existed. I had chosen not to watch them because I didn’t want to change. I was afraid of what I might see, afraid of watching animals suffer, cry, scream, and make desperate sounds. I didn’t want to see them because I didn’t want to feel bad about what I was eating.

In the beginning, I wanted to share everything I saw. I wanted to show people what was happening in the meat and dairy industries, and in the animal farms where chickens and pigs are raised. I wanted people to know, or at least not forget.

I wanted to change the world and show the truth behind every plate of chicken or meat. I felt, mistakenly, that I had a responsibility to expose what was wrong. I wanted people to become aware, but I wasn’t doing it the right way.

I forgot that I used to eat chicken, pork, turkey, fish, and everything else. I forgot how I used to react when I had a vegetarian or vegan sitting in front of me.

I had a girlfriend in university who was vegetarian, and I used to tease her for eating salads, vegetables, pasta, and for not eating meat tacos. That was in 2006. Even though almost 20 years have passed, that behaviour wasn’t okay. I was (and sometimes still am) totally ignorant, and I had (and still have) a lot to learn.

Seeing that most people eat animals, I normalized it too. I stopped seeing the food on my plate as an animal. What I saw was just food, something my mum, my grandmother, and my family had been eating for years.

But just because something has been done for many years doesn’t mean it’s right. The same goes for traditions. Not all traditions are good just because they’ve been around for a long time.

It used to be normal for the Aztecs to do human sacrifices and remove people’s hearts. I don’t think that tradition would be welcome today.

Another thing I did wrong when I stopped eating animals was eating everything I saw that was vegan. Pasta, sauces, chips, ultra-processed food. I wasn’t thinking about the long-term effects.

Besides not knowing how to eat properly, I kept exercising like usual, running and staying active. That’s why I started losing weight. I didn’t feel bad or low on energy at the time, but I know that if I had continued like that, it could have harmed me in the long run.

A lot of brands take advantage of words like vegan, organic, or gluten-free to sell their products. But just because something has those labels doesn’t mean it’s good for us. Eating Oreo cookies for breakfast with a Coke is a 100 percent vegan combination. Still, there’s nothing healthy about it.

We don’t know how to read food labels, and honestly, we’re too lazy to learn. On top of that, we’re influenced by advertising and by what our families and “dactors” have taught us (actors dressed like doctors).

I really do believe that if schools taught us how to read product labels, disease rates would drop significantly.

I kept losing weight until I started noticing it more in my face. That’s when I decided to focus on learning about nutrition. I wanted to understand how to read labels, know which ingredients to avoid, and figure out how much and what kind of food I needed to eat.

It’s something I still do often — learning and improving. I keep updating my kitchen recipes and experimenting with natural, energy-giving ingredients that help me feel good and support my physical activity.

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked is, “How are you going to get your protein?” We’ve grown up surrounded by ads pushing protein. More meat, more protein. More chicken, more protein. More eggs, more protein.

We’ve been taught to worry more about eating enough protein than about what our cholesterol or triglyceride levels look like.

In the beginning, I was worried too. I didn’t know where I was going to get my protein from. I also didn’t know that we only need about 10 to 35 percent of our daily calories to come from protein. I was surprised to learn that I needed to focus more on fibre and carbohydrates. That percentage varies depending on the person, but most of us don’t know that.

Learning about what we eat takes effort, time, and willpower. But for me, it’s become easier and now I do it almost automatically. For example, when I go to the supermarket, I don’t even walk through the aisles with the products I don’t eat. I don’t look at them anymore.

There are plenty of apps where you can log what you eat in a day, and they tell you how many calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients each ingredient has. That’s how I’ve been learning what I actually need, and how nutrition works for me.

And I enjoy it. It’s become a bit of a game. I already know which vegetables, fruits, or combinations work best for me.

My body type is ectomorph. My metabolism is really fast, so for most of my life I’ve been considered thin or skinny. A lot of people assume that thin people are sick or weak, and that people with bigger bodies or more weight are the healthy ones.

I’ve learned that every body is different, and so is every person’s metabolism. The way society has boxed us in is way too general, so we shouldn’t assume someone’s health just by looking at their body type. I also think that’s why most diets don’t work unless they’re personalised.

I also learned that not all natural food is good for everyone. For example, if two people eat the exact same apple, each person’s body will process it differently.

Trying to change the world through veganism isn’t the right approach. It’s also not right to tell people what to eat. And it’s not just about food, I don’t think it’s right to tell anyone what to do. That’s been one of my biggest lessons.

I have a complicated relationship with the word “vegan,” but that’s the word people understand when I say I don’t consume animals. My conflict is that I don’t really think I’m vegan, and I don’t think anyone can be vegan 100 percent.

Just by living, we’re not fully vegan. Being vegan means rejecting any kind of animal product, not just in food but also in clothing and the products we use. It also means being against the death of any living being.

But just by walking, we might step on ants or spiders. When we drive down a highway, the front of our car ends up covered in the bodies of butterflies and other insects. I don’t think that’s very vegan.

And even if we don’t drive ourselves, just by ordering something on Amazon, more than one insect probably died on the way from the warehouse to our door. And there are many more examples like this, which are sometimes used to criticise or attack veganism.

That’s why I struggle with the word. But in the end, it’s not about being 100 percent vegan or trying to make the whole world vegan. What matters is starting with food, and slowly reducing the suffering of other living beings. Focusing on what we can actually control, and starting with what we choose to eat.

This journey hasn’t been easy, but it’s become lighter with time. Thankfully, eating without animal products is more common now, and in many places — even restaurants — there’s at least one option. Asking for it to be healthy too might still be a stretch, but we’re getting there.

I’ve learned a lot of tricks along the way, and I’ll share them in another post. But the biggest lesson so far has been this — be, and let others be. Just like with exercise, learning not to judge is a muscle we have to keep working on.

When you have willpower and a clear purpose, everything gets easier. My purpose is to eat in a way that nourishes my body and mind, without needing another living being to die for it.

There are always excuses. Even now, I cook almost every day and I think I’m getting better at it, but there was a time when I was afraid to even touch the stove.

Time is another excuse. I work full-time Monday to Friday, and on weekends I work on my own projects. I also have responsibilities at home and with my wife. There is time — what’s often missing is organisation.

The biggest excuse I used to have was about my friendships, and about my family. But that… I’ll save for the next post.

If this story resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you. Whether you're exploring a similar shift or just feeling curious about the journey, I’m always open to real conversations. You can write me, reply to the post, or simply share it with someone who might need it.