Some of your know me through twitter but most of you don’t know me at all. I’ve decided to make my self smile for my birthday. My birthday is January 9th some of my close one asked me what I wanted for my birthday, but honestly I don’t want need any thing.

There is an organization called The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I see them doing great things and most important they are saving lives. As a person who has been dealing with depression most of my life. I want to help give the gift of life to the ones dealing with emotional issues.

I have decided to do a 50/50 raffle. 50 percent will go to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. And the other 50 percent will go to a random person who donates. The name will be selected by random identified with the email that was used to send the donation.

The raffle with begin today and end February 8th 2010. That’s 30 days. Please help me spread the word and help save a life.

http://www.afsp.org/

Vegans are motivated by compassion for suffering and respect for life of all living beings. It does not take a lot of thinking to realize that other animals besides humans feel pain and fear death.

Animals on a modern factory farm lead lives of unimaginable suffering and die cruel and horrible deaths before ending up on the dinner table. Veganism saves animals from the horrors of the slaughterhouse.

Humans do not need to eat meat, wear leather, or drink milk to survive. The only relationship that most people have with animals is that they eat them.

For a wile now I have been following @veganhope on twitter, and reading her fantastic blog at http://veganhope.com . Her blog entries often leave me in tears, she is touching, and her story is inspiring. It is truly remarkable how veganism changed her health and her out look on life.

She was nice enough to answer a few questions for my blog.

Please start off by giving a brief description of your health before going vegan.

I have been obese since the age of 11. I tried every single diet known to man between 11 and 30 years old. When I was 25 I was diagnosed with diabetes. At the time, it was so severe that my systems were starting to shut down. For 5 years I went to doctor after doctor, trying to get help. My diabetes kept getting worse. Last year I got an infection in my right calf, and there was a possibility that if it did not go away I would have to have part of my calf amputated. My blood sugar numbers were on a constant roller coaster, despite trying every medication and every diet. All in all, before going vegan my health was a disaster. I was on over 100 units of insulin per day and 8 medications for various problems.
*Currently I am taking no insulin and I am not on any medications, and my blood sugar is completely in control and I continue to lose a lot of weight.

What is/was your relationship with food.?

I never knew how addicted I was to certain foods. Not until going vegan did I realize that all of the animal products I was consuming were causing some powerful addictions in my brain. The chief one was dairy products. Little did I know that dairy has a very powerful and dangerous hormone for humans called casein, which causes a lot of addictions and other problems. When I started to discover what was in food, and what I was meant to consume, what my body was actually set up for, things started to change. Once I discovered how my body works, and that I was never supposed to consume animal products, my relationship with food became a lot easier. I no longer felt guilty for eating, and I no longer had the very powerful side effects of an animal based diet. When I found out that food could work for me, not against me, every thing changed. I now love food, but I do not fear food. I now love to come up with new, healthy meals that are completely satisfying and filling. Food is now something that is healing my body, not hurting my body.

How was the transition from carnivore to vegan? did you find it hard to eliminate different foods from your diet?

Looking back on every thing – I wish I knew how easy going on a plant based/vegan diet really was. In the beginning I really didn’t do my homework. I would eat really bland meals, and I never tried new things. Now I eat all sorts of things including raw pastas, vegan sushi, breakfast scrambles, pancakes, vegan burgers, vegan lasagna with cashew ricotta, smoothies, stir fry, chili… and the list goes on and on. There are so many great vegan cook books out there that I really did not know about.

One of the most difficult  things to eliminate was cheese. Cheese has 10 times the amount of every thing found in a glass of milk, which means 10 times the amount of harmful addictive hormones and chemicals. I really struggled with cutting it out, but I would say that eliminating it made the biggest difference in my weight loss and my diabetes control.

In the end  as far as what I eat every day, I would say it is the easiest, most satisfying way that I have ever eaten, and that is saying a lot, I grew up Italian!

The hardest part about transitioning was not food, it was people. I still get made fun of by people who are close to me (or not close to me) for being vegan. It was really hard for me in the beginning. I finally realized that the people who were giving me the hardest time were generally the people who were most insecure about themselves, and had some guilt and fear over the way they lived their life. I had to put boundaries down for a few people that really did not get that I did not find it funny to be ridiculed for the way I live my life, more so something that has saved my life. You might get people who make ignorant comments or say things that really get to you, but you have to stay strong and know that you are doing what is best. Soon, they will care a lot less about the way you are eating, and you will be able to move past it.

Do you have any advice for people who are thinking about going vegan?

I would first say that there is no reason not to. My husband has severe allergies to nuts, almost all raw fruits and plants and some cooked, and was able to become vegan and have a completely satisfying food life. If he can do it, really, anyone can.
It is a way of living that is with out a doubt the most healthy way to live for your body, it is the most environmentally sound decision, and most importantly, you help end the suffering and the slaughter of millions of innocent living beings.
Living a vegan life has been completely satisfying in every way I could imagine, so much in my life has changed for the good since making the change and sticking to it. .It takes about 1 month to get past some of the addictions, and to get used to the lifestyle, and then after that things will start getting a lot easier, and soon it will be something that you will not understand why you did not do it earlier.
I would encourage people to read as much as the can. Understand the food industry, how animals are used and killed. Start to find out how the food industry is making us sick as a nation, and what they do to continue to make us more sick. Start to read the health and environmental reasons for being vegan. Don’t take my word for it, do your own research, and most importantly dive in and know that there are plenty of vegans who thrive in their life, and plenty who are willing to help if you need it. Check out vegan blogs, and vegan twitter accounts, the more support you can get the better it will be!

You can read more about her journey at http://veganhope.com and you can follow her on twitter @veganhope .

For a long time I was ashamed of being vegan, I knew it was the rite choice so I never gave up on it. I came across the “Vegan Freak” podcast one day and quickly became addicted to the show. At this time I was only vegetarian, I knew milk and cheese came from a cow but I never realized that these products came from the same animals that suffered in the slaughterhouse videos I have seen that turned me off to meat in the first place. I am to sad to say I was blinded by all of the propaganda that organizations like Peta was feeding me I didn’t think twice about all of the dairy I was eating, all I knew is that I loved the taste of it.

Some say “its to hard to hard to go vegan” or “I could never live without cheese”, well I am saying how would you know if you don’t try it. I went vegan “cold tofu” I just gave it up and I don’t miss it nor do I think being vegan is hard at all. Yeah in the beginning from time to time it got to be a little annoying when you have to read every label but after time you know what you can and cant eat. Thats not what veganism is all about I feel that I have a moral obligation to the animals not to eat them, I know the cruelty, pain, and exploitation all the animals go through to become to become food.

My whole personality, all of my thoughts and beliefs are summed up in one word. Vegan. Vegan says I will not participate in the exploitation of animals, I will not eat them, I will not wear them, and I will not treat them as things. The problem is in our society is we are obsessed with food, every holiday, famaily gathering or pretty much any other social event involves the eating the flesh of a murdered animal. There was a time when I stopped seeing meat as food, now I see chicken as a living breathing….. Chicken.

Im not in any way saying im better then any one and I am not saying that my thought process is more developed. All I am saying is a good tasty meal is not worth all of the pain and suffering the animals go through for it to become your meal. You must reconsider if what you are having for dinner really matches your moral beliefs, we must stop the exploitation of animals.

Animals are not property, they have a rite to live, be happy and enjoy life.

There is a peace movement going on rite in front of your face its call VEGANISM. You will never find peace in this world or peace within your self if you continue support the exploitation, murder and war that goes on every day to animals that are used for food.

For some its easy to ignore where there food comes from, for others its just more convenient to not think about it. Humans kill approximately 53 billion animals for food per year in the United States not including fish and other sea animals. If you eat animal products you are contributing to this mass murder, the blood is on your hands.

“There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.”    -Isaac Bashevis Singer

How is there going to be peace in this world when you murder and eat living beings? You see a “thing” and I see a living, breathing, intelligent being. Animals do not speak the same language as us but they have the same desire for love and compassion. Before they are brought into the slaughter house they are ripped away from there families they know fear, they feel pain.

The next time you look at you dog, just think “are the animals I eat really that different”

Do you regard you dog/ cat apart of your family, I do I have two beautiful, loving and compassionate bulldogs. My dogs get excited when you say “cookie” or when you say “walk” they run to the door before you can finish the word ready to go. Dogs feel many of the same emotions as humans, dogs feel pain, sadness, happiness, pleasure, they get scared when the thunder is to loud. But when your dog is scared you are there to let him/ her know its okay. We even regard these non-human animals apart of our family.

Like the non-human animals that you consider apart of your family, cows, pigs, chickens, and fish all feel the same emotions as the animals you live with. Animals that are raised in factory farms never experience happiness they live scared a life of fear until there life is taken from the.

What im trying to get at is, you love one animal so much you regard him/her as apart of your family, but other animals that where murdered to get on you plate you have no problem eating. You sit down to eat every meal and stick you fork into the dead body of an animal thats just as smart as the non-human animals in your own family.

There is some thing terribly wrong with this, what’s you best excuse? You like the taste of it? Honestly if you eat animals you need to sit down and really thing about what you are doing….

I am vegan because I love animals, therefore I don’t eat them.

Your addiction to cheese is a mental addiction, if you want to give it up you will. I have heard the excuse so many times “I could never give up cheese” the truth is you can give up cheese but you just don’t want to. It is not natural for an adult human to drink milk, milk is for babies. We are the only species that drinks the milk of another species, and we are the only species that still drinks milk after we are babies. So why do we drink milk at all?

People are blind to where there food comes from, some people ignore to see it because the truth is to hard to understand. If you see the torture involved in feeding you the only logical decision would be to go vegan. People do not go vegan because they say “its to hard” or whatever excuse they may give. Stop being lazy and go vegan.

Three reasons to stop making excuses and go vegan already. Im not going to make a list of benefits of being vegan I am just going to tell you that veganism is the rite thing to do.

1. Think differently! Eating animals is nothing more then a tradition just because every one else is doing it that doesn’t make it okay. I don’t care what you say there is no evidence proving to me that humans are supposed to eat animals.

2. Look at your food for what it really is, and the path it took to become a meal. The animals you eat lived in fear and died in fear, animals feel pain, happiness, and sadness. If live with one type of animal (dog,cat) and eat another animal you are to stupid to look at things how they really are.

3. BE YOUR OWN PERSON, you shouldn’t care what other people might think about you. Yes people wont understand why you are vegan (unless you tell them). Veganism is not about impressing people its about knowing you are doing all you can to eliminate as such suffering in this world as you possibly can.

Please stop killing animals, they are my friends.
GO VEGAN

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