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Number of animals killed in the world by the meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage. This counter does not include the billions of fish and sea animals killed annually.

Becoming Vegan and Fit For Life…

Most of my life I never even thought about being vegetarian, let alone vegan.  If someone would have suggested to me I would go 20 years without meat, I would have thought they were nuts.  I just never thought about it.  When Kevin and I were engaged, we often spent time with his cousin who was vegetarian and I remember thinking how odd he was and how funny his meals looked.  It just did not dawn on me until much later, what a difference my food choices would make both personally and globally.

In the 1990′s I became a realtor and discovered how much I loved attending training seminars.  I was a devotee of Mike Ferry and attended his Superstar Retreat each August in Palm Desert.  At the end of one of the training days, he held an optional seminar about nutrition.  Mike had been successfully losing weight and had invited his nutritionist Inger to speak to us.  Lots of what she had to say was new for me; first time I ever heard the term free radicals for example.   What caught my ear was her discussion on food combining which seemed to make sense to me.  She recommended the book Fit for Life by Harvey Diamond.   Since I was all about trying new diets, I decided to get the book and remembered my sister-in-law had done food combining for a while.

Bought the book while still in Palm Desert and started the plan as soon as I got home.  My plan was to lose some weight, get healthier, lose some more weight.  Well, basically I really just wanted to lose weight; which I did on the plan, but eating healthy takes some money so I also got some earnings playing in the olympic kingsway casinos.  Not sure if it was from the food combining or from changing some of the foods I was eating to more healthy choices.  I expected to lose weight, as I am a believer all diets work when you work them.  And I have worked them all.  What I did not suspect was by the end of the book, I would never eat poultry again.   Fit for Life touched on some of the horrors of battery cages and the treatment of chickens.  Decided then and there I was done with poultry.  Didn’t really think I was turning Vegetarian, just decided to not eat chicken and turkey any more.

Being a wife and a mom of 4 young kids, my decision meant no one was eating chicken any more because I stopped buying it.  Only then did I find out Kevin never really liked chicken any way and only ate it because I cooked it so often.  And the only reason, I cooked it so often was I had bought into the fantasy of how much healthier and less fattening chicken was than beef.   Awareness in that area did not come till later.

So I never set out to be Vegan.  Did not plan on eating Vegetarian.  Just a couple of paragraphs in a book which was recommended to me in a random seminar and I had taken the first step.  I am sure my family of 6 over the past 20 years must have saved the lives of some chickens.  And all it takes is the first step.

Juicy Judi, Living Vegan

P.S. Is it time to take your first step?

vegan, vegetarian, fit for life