How often do ask yourself where your food comes from?  Or how it was grown, what chemicals were sprayed on it, what part of the world it comes from?  Maybe, even, who the hardworking farmers are that work the land.  I’d imagine, after childhood, not many put a whole lot of thought into it.  I mean, look the obscene level of obesity in our country.  It would appear that not much thought is really put into what we consume on a daily basis.  It’s really disturbing to me.  In 2007 I really started to ask myself these questions.  I was at a pretty low point in life, and just wasn’t doing or feeling well at all.  Life had dealt me a few crooked cards.  I found myself pretty depressed, and on an absolutely shoestring budget.  Seriously, I had $70 every two weeks for food, and any kind of “fun” that I might attempt to have.  It’s quite remarkable what you can accomplish when you live that cheaply for a year, mind you.  As a result, my diet was completely dismal.  I consumed enough Taco Bell and Top Ramen to put any college kid to shame.  These rough times didn’t last forever, gladly; and I eventually found myself in a much better financial situation, and generally happier in life (it’s sad really how closely those two things can coincide).  After this miserably tough year, one of the first things I wanted to get back on track was some semblance of a consistent diet.  I felt wretched almost every day because of my poor eating, and I took to some heavy research, looking for anything that might help me feel like a human again.  Eventually, the digging led me to a lot of pro Vegetarian/Vegan answers.  Now, I had heard of being a Vegetarian since I was a kid.  Growing up in North Dakota, meat and potatoes was what you ate three meals a day, 365 days a year.  So, people like that were “weird”, by their standards, and very rare.  As for being Vegan, I didn’t really have a clue as to what it was all about.  I was a huge AFI fan when I was in high school, so I knew that Davey Havok was Vegan, and I knew technically what it was.  But, I didn’t really grasp onto the concept in any kind of fashion until sometime later.  But, we’ll get to that.  In any case, the idea of a cleaner, healthier diet was where I knew I needed to go. 

 

The first thing I did was take to buying most of my groceries from Trader Joes, and Whole Foods.  Stuff that was better grown, healthier, and ‘Organic’, right?  Well, there are some really good aspects of shopping at these places, but, what I learned really quickly was that it mostly just destroyed my bank account.  I felt kind of better, like the foods sat better with me and that I had a little more energy throughout the day.  But, I still thought I could feel better.  After talking to some friends who were Vegetarian/Vegan, I thought that I might give it a try and see what all of the fuss was about.  Me being me, I figure if you’re gonna do the damn thing, you might as well go the full nine, and went strict Vegan right out of the gate.  This first try was pretty comical, the meals I ate were pretty atrocious.  Vegan, yes, but nowhere near was a balanced diet should’ve been.  As a result after keeping it up for about three months, I started to get sick, and had to give it up.  So I went back to my regular diet, but being more choosey.  One thing I stuck with was not drinking milk.  I hadn’t had a glass for one reason or another in around two years at that point already, and it didn’t really do anything for me, so meh.  This was also around the time that I had started cycling competitively.  So, all my cyclist friends were pretty on point with their diets, and seemed to be doing well.  The next obvious step for me was to see what they were doing.  To my surprise, most of them were Vegetarian, Vegan, or somewhere damn close.  After initially consulting with my coach, I had worked out a mostly Vegetarian diet, and I was on my way.  

 

As time went on, a few years in fact, I eventually moved to San Francisco.  I had started living with my current girlfriend who was, in her past, a very strict Vegan(but not when I had met here).  So, some conversations about the diet had come up here and there.  One day, in July 2012, I did some searching on Vegan athletes.  Namely cyclists.  Not sure why, but, something still intrigued me about the possibility of this diet, and I wanted to know more.  I came across a track cyclist named Jack Lindquist.  He was absolutely killing it, and looked to be in incredible shape.  I had made the decision then and there, that I was going to make this a reality.  After being inundated with a lot of anti-vegan rants and raves.  I knew that I needed sound advice and a lot of educating to not repeat my previous mistakes.  So, on to more research I did.  But, once I started looking in the right places, I started to get into a darker part of this quest.  One that I hadn’t really considered.  I stumbled across a man named Gary Yourofsky.  I watched one of his speeches for a college class, and was blown the fuck away!  

 

Note: This is pretty intense, be warned.