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Vegetarian or Vegan? To be or not to be…..

November 10, 2012 By Milen Gala

It’s 7am in Seattle. We’re doing a little house addition….basically adding on a mud room and changing some doors. I’m sitting on the deck drinking tea and watching the sun come up over Lake Washington. The construction guys are hammering away downstairs and both kids are fast asleep up top. In anticipation of the early start I naturally wake up 2 hours earlier…. for some reason on these mornings I just can’t seem to sleep. With the hours of early morning peace and serenity, my mind becomes preoccupied with thoughts of the blog. We’ve started putting up some of our favorite recipes. Friends and family have started trying many of them with great success but for some reason I still feel like something is missing…. So, here comes the stream of consciousness…

For about a year now, I’ve been an on-again, off-again vegan. Becoming vegan for a vegetarian isn’t really all that hard….or is it? I’ve read many of the books (Super Immunity, The China Study, Disease-Proof Your Child, Green for Life, etc, etc). I’ve read about how cow’s milk is custom-designed for calves…not humans, and how actually consuming it can be detrimental to our health… How NOT eating animal products can prevent many diseases and even cancer… I’ve watched the movies (Forks Over Knives, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, etc). V and I have several friends that have gone from being omnivores to herbivores and have dramatically improved their health: lowered their cholesterol, their blood pressure, controlled their diabetes, shed unwanted pounds, cleared their complexion, and become exceedingly fit…

On the other hand I have parents and siblings who think it’s all crazy, warning me that not giving my children dairy products would be detrimental to their health. What about the protein and calcium? How will they get enough? They need strong bones to grow….In response, I tell these loving and well-intentioned vegetarians that people say the same thing about meat and we’ve all turned out just fine without it…. But really, where do we draw the line? It’s all very confusing.

So, have I just been swept up by the Pacific Northwest lifestyle? The desire of those around me to be über healthy and hyperfit with little regard for boobs or superficial beauty… We now live in a place where every restaurant has a vegetarian menu and being vegan is not only accepted but is somewhat desired… We lived in the South for a few years before and I can tell you veganism never even crossed my mind…

But as our parents’ generation gets older, and with V being a doctor, lately it seems we hear too much about a deterioration of health that has taken the lives of many of our parent’s friends and some of our extended family…

And so I’m taking it step by step… the weeks I am totally vegan I do feel an incredible glow and lightness…and when I go back to eating dairy I feel a little heavier and things seem a bit harder to digest. But change is hard…and I still can’t help but question… is it really a healthier way to live?

As we enter the holiday season, over the next few weeks and months there will be a lot of cooking and a lot of eating.  While butter, milk and cheese may still find their way on to the pages of GalaKitchen, we will continue to explore the virtues of a plant-based diet… And so, I guess it’s going to be an evolution… Let’s see where we go from here.

More Great Stuff:

1-Bowl Banana Coconut Muffins
Ginger Honey Garlic Tofu and Veggies with Farro
How to Properly Balance Protein Intake

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Filed Under: Health and Wellness, Nutrition Tagged With: Health

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Comments

  1. arvind s grover says

    November 17, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    We eat vegan whenever possible. Sometimes we make exceptions and it is amazing how angry my body gets! It is funny, people always say things to me like how do you stay so thin, you must be so good, you must exercise a lot, but then when I say I’m vegan, they get nervous and start asking me so many questions about whether I am being healthy or not – The image above says it all. Hang in there and do whatever is right for your body.

  2. Shivani Gupta says

    November 19, 2012 at 7:04 pm

    I have been vegan for over a year now…went cold turkey from eating almost all meat/seafood. The immediate change was incredible I almost couldn’t believe it – increased energy, less need for sleep, greater exercise capacity. The few times I’ve eaten non-vegan in the last year my body, as Arvind said, was so angry! I was also really surprised how easy it is to be vegan…even in the midwest! Great work on the blog and looking forward to trying some recipes!

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Hi Everyone and welcome to GalaLiving! I am Milen Gala. I live, love, work and play in Seattle, Washington with my husband and our 2 kids (ages 11 and 9). We initially created GalaLiving in 2012 to share vegetarian and vegan recipes with our friends and family. In the past couple of years GalaLiving has transformed from a simple little food blog to a much loved space where several thousand people make and share our recipes and health and wellness inspirations. At GalaLiving, we like to eat wholesome, energizing dishes and incorporate lifestyle habits that keep us glowing and make us feel like a million bucks. We hope you enjoy discovering and tasting new things along with us!

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