Let’s Go V-E-G-A-N by Victoria Moran

One of the acronyms I sometimes use when I speak on this topic is V-E-G-A-N:

• Validate your choices
• Embody a health lifestyle
• Get to know other vegans
• Add more to your life and your diet than you subtract
• Never forget the animals.

When you take these points to heart, you’ll have the internal ballast to stick to your convictions.

Validate your choice to be vegan (or journey veganward) by learning enough to satisfy yourself. That, in turn, should be enough to answer any questions others might ask. When you think about it, their questions are (or were) your questions.

Start with the ubiquitous protein query. Even longtime vegans remember when this was our primary concern: we’d been taught that protein came only in animal foods, or if plants had it at all, it’s “second class.” In fact, protein is found in all whole, plant foods. Eating a variety of vegetables, grains, and beans with no further thought to the matter is fully sufficient for most people. If someone needs a higher amount – a bodybuilder, a pregnant or nursing mom, or someone simply so entrenched in the high-protein philosophy that they believe they need extra – they can up their intake of beans and soy products, and include a scoop of protein powder derived from rice, peas, Brazil nuts, or some other plant source in their morning smoothie.

Embody a health lifestyle. It’s not fair that half the people think we’re going to keel over dead from malnutrition and the other half think we’re supposed superhuman specimens of strength, endurance, and beauty, with immune systems that could fight off anything. Uh, excuse me: vegans are people too. Many are interested in sports and athletics and look very fit. Others want to eat a very pure, very high-nutrient diet and they do tend to exhibit high-level health. Most of us just want to eat what we like and get to the gym when we get there and simply live our lives. Like I said, we’re people.

But because others are watching us, every vegan becomes an ambassador for this way of eating and living, whether we ask for it for not. Be yourself. Eat what you want to eat. Just keep in mind that the healthier, the more vibrant, and the more naturally energetic you are, the better it is for the spread of veganism. Do you have to look like the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue? Gosh, I hope not. But you don’t want to subsist on cupcakes and cronuts either.

Get to know other vegans. It’s tough to do anything when you’re feeling all alone in the world. There was a time it was hard for any vegan to feel well connected because there were so few of us. When I researched my first book, Compassion the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism, back in the 1980s, I went to the UK to meet and interview vegans, because there were so few in the U.S. at that time (and, of course, we were more spread out). These days, you may be the only vegan in your small town, but chances are there’s another one in the town up the highway, and dozens, if not hundreds, in the closest city.

Check out Meetup groups; vegetarian, vegan, and animal rights organizations; yoga centers that recommend vegan or vegetarian diets to their students (i.e., Jivamukti, Sivananda, Integral Yoga); and by all means get connected on Facebook and Twitter to wonderful vegan pages and people. The Facebook page, “Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness,” inspires me to work out when everything in me is saying, “But you have such a nice couch….”

Add more to your life and your diet than you subtract. I wrote an entire post about his a while back: Add! Incorporate! Explore! Enjoy! This should not be some monastic discipline of living without foods you once enjoyed. Find vegan foods that mimic those and discover new dishes that are more delicious than anything you ate in the boring days of meat and dairy. While you’re at it, add to your leisure life new friends, fashions, sports, and vacation spots — a vegan health spa or b&b, a vegfest in another city or another country, the Main Street Vegan & Health Cruise to the Bahamas in 2015.

Never forget the animals. A person who lives 85 years will have 93,075 meals in his or her life. Just the thought of all that eating can make a person tired. They’re just meals. If one of them isn’t great, the next one might be. If, however, there’s an animal on that plate, that otherwise inconsequential meal is absolutely everything to that animal. The chicken who lived a short, miserable life and was then slaughtered without stunning (it’s not required for poultry)…The cow who birthed a dozen babes and was forced to give up each one shortly thereafter…The pig – smarter than my dog and my dog is really smart – who was confined without mobility during multiple pregnancies and nursing periods, then impregnated again, and again, and killed….

Sometimes omnivores say “I don’t want to know this stuff!” and sometimes vegetarians and vegans say, “Stop! I already know.” Okay, we know. Now let’s remember. And let’s live each day to create a world where no one will want to hide from the truth, because we’ll have brought about a different truth, one worth celebrating.