Summer

Well considering I haven't posted since winter, I'd say I've left things a little too long! What can I say, sometimes life just gets in the way...

A lot can happen in 6 months though. I'll do my best to catch you up on the goings-on.

The financial situation I was hinting at for ages has now changed. This is the reason I was giving up my hair dye amid a strict budget - I have moved out of home! The breathing space that this move has granted me is phenomenal. Independence at last!

The hair saga has calmed down... shortly after moving out I bought a packet of vegan hair dye from a health food store in a shade that I hoped was as close to my natural hair colour as possible (I think I must've looked pretty funny squatted up in front of a tiny mirror holding the hair swatch up to my ever-lengthening roots to match the two). A few small stains on the carpet later (that I hoped the landlord wouldn't notice) and voila - my hair was brown again! That was about 4 or 5 months ago now, and the semi-permanent colour has definitely faded. My hair is now looking pretty good, although there is a slight colour difference between my natural hair growing out and the left over colour from the tinting that went on a while ago. I like to think it's a subtle and oh-so effortless nod to the balayage trend that's sweeping the fashion world.

I'm happy to say that I no longer sit on a couch made from animal skin - the good thing about living in your own place is that we could start from scratch and say NO to animal products.
But by far the number one biggest improvement in our vegan lifestyle since moving out of home? We are the proud owners of our very own full size fridge/freezer, which we keep stocked full of delicious food, none of which has in it even the slightest hint of animals. Aaaah life is good. We plan our meals each week, and I'm still building up a repertoire, so I have to search through the many many vegan cookbooks that we own for meal ideas - poor me! Then every night I come home from uni and get to work in the ktichen. And it. Feels. Good. No more disgusting imitation mee goreng! No more pasta with store-bought sauce. We eat real, fresh, healthy food. And we are loving it.
In all honesty, our food habits need some improvement. I need to get into the habit of eating breakfast every day, something I've struggled with since I finished high school. Plus we really need to force ourselves to shop at the farmers' markets every week instead of the local small supermarket, so we know exactly where our food is coming from. But we are getting there, and it feels so wonderful to finally be able to practice what I preach in the diet department.

Financially, my health has taken much more of a priority too. I'm a regular at the chiropractor now, and in a month or so, I'll be making my first appointment with the naturopath whose office is just across the road. My wisdom teeth are finally being removed in April, after 4 years or so of problems and pain. I've laid my hands on a meditation CD by Sara from The Space In Between over in Melbourne ( and just quietly, I really want to treat myself to one of her theta healing sessions... the fact that I'd be forced to have a short trip over to Melbourne to do so is just a problem I'll have to deal with!) and I've got my eyes peeled for a beautiful cushion or rug that can create a sacred space for me to meditate in every time I sit down. I've also got some bare-bones plans for an August trip to Samudra for a yoga retreat which I am beyond excited about and which I can use to establish a yoga routine for me at home every day. I'm on the lookout for cheap Pilates classes nearby and I'd also like to take up Tai Chi this year but what with the yoga and Pilates too, we'll see how much I can squeeze in! I'm also waiting to bring my beautiful bike over from home so that I can ride her around in the mornings, and the evenings... hell, anytime I want!
In 2011 I was regularly attending counselling sessions with a fabulous woman. Changes to the laws by the Federal government meant that even with referrals to a mental health worker (counsellor, psychologist, psychiatrist or otherwise) the number of annual visits allowed under Medicare had been slashed from 18 to 10. This meant I had to abruptly end my visits at the end of 2011, and I never quite seemed to get around to rescheduling in 2012. Well this is a brand new year, and I'm looking forward to booking in with this woman as well as trying some couple work and even some hypnotherapy!

And then there's the usual stuff on the cards: full-time uni, part-time work as well as getting my hands nice and dirty with plenty of full-on wedding planning! So I'm sure that latter will feature heavily in the blog over the next year and a bit.

Well I think that about sums things up for now. Until next time!

Online!

The internet issue has been resolved (at least for now... my modem's a bit temperamental). So this is just a quick post to say hello and give some updates.

After talking it over with my partner, I have decided to go blonde for the few months before money gets quite tight. I'm sure there will be an intermediate orange stage but I'm willing to pull it off. In a way I don't think the ginger will be quite as bad as the weird colours that seem to come out when hair is tinted. Then it's up to me to source some vegan hair dye for the move back to my natural colour. It's quite exciting actually. I really miss being blonde (honestly, they do have more fun) and it'll only be for a few months so I'll have to enjoy it while it lasts. That plus there are many people in my life who have never known me with my natural hair colour. Hmmm, interesting.

I had a dream the other night that I was about to break my 'vegan vows' and eat Krispy Kremes. All I needed was the go ahead from my partner and I would have launched right into them! This is actually quite far from the normal patten of my dreams where I wake up sweating after a nightmare in which I've unknowingly consumed meat or cheese. Ahh it's quite funny to see how veganism really does penetrate your whole life - even your subconscious!

Off to bed for me now. I need to make getting a decent stretch of sleep every night a bit of a habit... 40 hour weeks of class time and poor sleep are starting to wear me down I think.

Happy dreaming!

Exceptions to every rule

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I would be talking a bit more about medication and how it relates to veganism. Obviously my last post made it clear that I believe wherever possible, if you can drop animal products from your lifestyle (including those in medication) then you should. But I do think there are exceptions.

If you google veganism or go on a trail of inspiring stories found on the internet, more often than not, the overwhelming consensus among converts is that magic seems to happen. Their anxiety decreases, their hair gets stronger and shinier, their skin clears up, they feel happier and healthier, and of course the weight usually just falls off once they cut animal products out of their life. My guilty secret is that while I wish I could add my own success to all the other stories out there, I can't.

I'm going to assume it wan't related to my shift to veganism, but unfortunately for me, my most serious health scare came shortly after I became a vegan. Bad timing. 2010 had been a tough year for me, but 2011 may have been even harder. The result was that in about September/October of last year I was diagnosed with depression. It was a shock to say the least, as someone with no history of mental illness in her family. I'm glad it was recognised when it was because it was a horrible place to be in, and I was able to be pulled out of it relatively quickly. My doctor who specialises in mental health was quick to precribe antidepressants to treat me but I wasn't so keen on taking them. These were mind-altering drugs we were talking about here, not just some antibiotics and I knew that if I did choose to commit I'd be staring down the barrel of months of strict drug-taking. My depression was telling me that there was no point trying to treat anything, that there was nothing to treat and that no treatment would work anyway. But I was approaching exam time at university, and after discussing my current state of mind with three separate experts on the subject, I felt reasonably confident, if very shocked, about my diagnosis. I decided my last semester at uni was too valuable to jeopardise and so I started taking the antidepressants.

Around the same time, I was given a new pill packet with lactose listed as one of the ingredients, and it didn't take me long to check the SSRI packet. Yep, lactose. This whole ordeal presented me with two dilemmas. First of all, I was a new vegan who was consuming lactose every night before bed. Second of all, my shift to a healthier lifestyle unfortunately coincided with a bout of depression. It meant I wasn't able to claim all the wonderful improvements that other vegans claim. It wasn't a dramatic shift to a healthier me, a me that was happier, stronger and more peaceful. Instead, I was at my lowest point: weak, afraid and sick.
Part of me thinks that perhaps my shift to veganism did have a role to play. I was suddenly so aware of all the endless atrocities that humans were performing against every animal imaginable. The grief and helplessness were overwhelming. I also became a vegan rather reluctantly; I have a massive sweet tooth and for a long while I was lamenting the loss of all the foods I couldn't eat. I found comfort in delicious food, and that security blanket was ripped away. Maybe these things were the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak? Or mybe it was just a case of unfortunate timing. Whatever the scenario, I'm here to say that the shift to a healthier lifestyle doesn't always have instantaneous benefits. I wish it had for me, but it just didn't.

Mentally, I'm stronger now (although it's quite disconcerting to be aware that your own experience of your mental strength may be due to medication you're on and not actually coming from within. This makes it difficult to trust that I'll be okay once I do stop taking the antidepressants). The difficulty I face is that I knowingly and willingly consume animal products. So why did I have such a strong opinion on this in regards on contraception? In my honest opinion, contraception is not a necessary drug. By this I mean (excluding rare cases of hormonal imbalance etc.) most people choose to start taking the pill to avoid pregnancy or to control their period, and they could stop it whenever they wanted with only a minor inconvenience in terms of finding alternate forms of contraception, or having to deal with bad skin or heavier periods. But once you start taking an antidepressant, it's a bit of a sentence. As much as I feel fine, I'm not stupid enough to ignore the role that this drug is playing in my brain chemistry and the havoc that it could wreak if I suddenly stopped taking it. Your metal health is not something you should mess with. Even if it means you're technically not a vegan because of the ingredients involved.

So, as much as I hate it, the way I see it, I genuinely don't have a choice here. I've been told that at least 6 months is an adequate amount of time to take the antidepressant, and when it's up, I'll be glad to stop. But until then, my mental health is more important than the trace amount of lactose I'm ingesting. It's a tricky situation, but isn't life full of those? I've experienced personally and secondhand how things can go wrong when someone is mentally unwell, and it's not a risk I'm prepared to take.

I'm vegan but...

This post may be a little TMI so don't say I didn't warn you...

One of the interesting things about re-jigging your whole lifestyle is that while you may get used to checking the labels on everything before you buy it relatively quickly, the stuff that you already own seems to just escape your attention.
It was this way for me for my contraception (the pill). I'd been on the same type of pill for approximately 4 years when my doctor gave me a packet of a different type with a prescription to match if I felt like changing. And we all know what I'm used to doing with packets... reading the ingredients! I was surprised to discover that this pill contained lactose in the ingredients list. So when I got home I checked the pill I normally used: lactose. WTF? Why is milk in fucking everything?!
I didn't really give a whole lot of thought to it after that as there wasn't much I thought I could do about it, until one day I was cruising my favourite vegan forum and found a thread about contraception. One poster said she was vegan but that she needed to be on the pill to avoid becoming pregnant and there wasn't much she could do about the fact that one of the ingredients was lactose. Needless to say, I understood her point of view at first. But my logic seemed kinda twisted once I read another post. This person was claiming that to be aware of the animal products contained in medication and to take it anyway was not only hypocritical and lazy, but voided any claim to veganism. You can't be vegan in every way except for the pill, she was saying. You may as well be vegan in every way except for the chocolate. And I realised she was right. If I didn't at least try other avenues of birth control, I just wasn't vegan*.

Where am I going with all of this? I've recently bought and nearly finished reading a wonderful, enlightening book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. This book covers intimate details of the female reproductive system and provides the reader with information to avoid or plan pregnancies using the Fertility Awareness Method, which is more reliable than the Billings or Rhythm Methods, and is all-natural, so very good for vegans or just health-conscious people who are fed up with the constant side effects and risks associated with various current birth control methods.

Now that I'm adequately educated, I'm finishing my current pill packet and will be starting the FAM as soon as it's done. I'm really excited to learn as much as I can about my body but also to be ridding myself of artificial hormones and animal products. Yay!

*This is my attitude concerning medication such as contraceptives. There are exceptions to every rule, and medication such as those prescribed for mental illness are just one example. I will post later with my thoughts on this subject.

The China Study

If I had ever wavered on consuming dairy products before I found this book, I was as strict as could be after reading it. Putting my ethical concerns aside, I now avoid dairy, meat and eggs like the plague. They may as well be.

I discovered this book after becoming vegetarian, in the early days I spent trawling through animal issues on the internet, scrolling down through seemingly-endless comments on various blogs. I was learning a lot but how reliable were my sources? I could never be sure that what these vegans were talking about was truth or just biased information. When one commmenter claimed that "milk causes cancer", well, I was blown away. This was extreme, especially with the reverence and fear with which we treat "the Big C". But my interest was piqued and I kept reading. The China Study was mentioned. I kept reading. The China Study was mentioned again. And again, and again. I went to different articles, different blogs and this title to a book I'd never even heard of before just kept coming up. So I researched the book, told my partner about it and not long after we bought a copy from our local New Editions bookstore. My partner read it before me (normally I would find it unbearable to have to wait to read a new book but I was so busy with university that I didn't even mind) and would excitedly relate to me snippets of information from the book, all the while begging me to please stop drinking milk.

The title of the book tends to put people off, I think. It is all about nutrition, so why the China Study? Well, the research presented in this book all stems down to an ongoing epidemiological study started decades ago in China by T. Colin Campbell, PhD where the effects of nutrition on human health first began to be truly realised. In the book, the results of the China Study are presented, as well as the results of many other scientific and medical trials and studies, all relating to nutrition and the role that it plays in our health. Basically, animal products are ridiculously dangerous for our health, and plant-based whole foods are ridiculously good for us. We all sort of knew this already, right? Everybody knows that fruits and vegetables are good for you, and that eating too much cheese or red meat may cause health problems. But I was, and I suspect most other people who consume a Western diet are, totally unaware of the true impact that animal products have on disease development. For example, although heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in Australia, we all sort of think of it as an fat person's problem, yeah? That if you eat a well-balanced diet, drink alcohol in moderation, and exercise regularly, then we'll be exempt, and that heart attacks are bound to happen if you're overweight or just generally unhealthy..? Well in the 1950s autopsies were performed on the bodies of 300 American soldiers killed in action in the Korean War. The average age of the soldiers was 22 years old. Military medical researchers found that 77% of the hearts of these soldiers showed large evidence of heart disease. Now when you think of heart disease I bet a fit 22 year old soldier doesn't spring to mind as the typical victim.
But heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, gall stones, obesity, multiple sclerosis and dementia can all be prevented or their effects reduced by avoiding animal-based foods and consuming a plant-based, wholefoods diet.
On a personal level, I have in my extended family one family member who may be obese, two who have died from cancer, four more who have fought cancer and survived, some of them multiple times, one family member with Type 2 Diabetes, one with Alzheimer's dementia, and immediate family members who have struggled with weight issues and had multiple incidences of skin cancer. (Editor's note: I can now unfortunately add one family member who has had a massive stroke.) So, no heart disease, and no autoimmune diseases, but just about every other sickness that could be prevented or managed with a plant-based diet. And while written like that it may seem like a lot, is it really? Think of your own families, and people that you know. What's the bet that your own experience of these diseases is not too dissimilar to mine?

I am incredibly grateful to have found The China Study. So many myths about food have been exploded, so many fears about inevitable illness allayed. I'm no longer feeding myself with poison. From a health perspective, I am so relieved that veganism is the absolute best way to live. I found the information in this book so precious that I gifted a copy to each immediate family member for Christmas in the hope that they can avoid a life of illness. I only hope that they read it, as it truly is a life-saver. I wish everyone could have access to the information that this book provides. Well they all do, it's just a matter of choosing to read it.