Read This True Story!!!

by Vegan Chauhan Consultant,Speaker,Author,Poet...

This Story was changed many person's life and now they are become a successful person by a new and different way which is given here.

Many people have asked me why I eat a vegan diet, so I’m long overdue for a post on this topic. But before I dive into it, let me first say I’m not interested in trying to convert you to veganism. While many vegans are conversion-happy, for me this is a personal lifestyle choice, not a religion. In any event I’ve noticed that people tend to go vegan when they’re ready for it, not because they’re beaten over the head with statistics and health knowledge. As the saying goes, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” So take this article as an insider’s report on my path to a vegan diet rather than conversion rhetoric.

Going Vegetarian...

After eating animal products for most of my life, during the early 90s, I started reading health books as part of my novice-level interest in personal growth. My initial changes including adopting a low-fat diet and exercising regularly. I switched from low-fat to skim milk, favored leaner meats, and reduced high-fat products like cheese and butter. I also reduced my sugar intake, switching from regular sodas to diet sodas. I took up running as my primary exercise and would run about 25 minutes per day, sometimes longer. Overall I’d say I was in fairly good health — no major health problems or serious illnesses. I never smoked in my life, and I shunned alcohol too except on rare occasions.

Eventually I got curious about the vegetarian diet after reading about it in a nutrition textbook. I read that vegetarians supposedly live longer, need less sleep, and have lower risks of many major illnesses like cancer and heart disease. That sounded attractive, but I really didn’t want to be a vegetarian for the rest of my life. I figured that was a bit too extreme and probably unnecessary. I had a vegetarian friend during my late teens — a skinny Indian guy — and I found it funny that he could never eat pepperoni pizza. But he did seem fairly healthy and intelligent. He would regularly whoop me when we played poker together.

In June 1993, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to try going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days just to see what it was like (no animal flesh but dairy and eggs OK). At least then I’d know, and I could be done with it. I’d been through enough habit changes to know that a new mindset always looks different from the outside looking in than from the inside looking out. So I wanted an insider’s perspective on the diet. Otherwise, I’d risk going my whole life without knowing what it was really like. I was 22 years old, so I figured I might as well have this experience now. I fully expected to return to my previous way of eating after the 30 days.

I was surprised at how easy it was to go vegetarian. I thought it would take a lot of discipline, but it really didn’t. I just made obvious substitutions: cheese or veggie pizza instead of pepperoni, pasta dishes, rice dishes, stir fry veggies, etc. If I did this today, it would be even easier due to all the vegetarian products now on the market that weren’t available back then. I acquired one vegetarian cookbook (which I still have) that helped me with a few recipes, but mostly I found that cutting out flesh was painless.

I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms or detox effects (no headaches or back pain or anything like that). I wasn’t overweight when I began this experiment, so I don’t recall losing much weight, but I did notice an increase in my overall energy level, and I felt more energetic during my morning runs. I also noticed I could concentrate better, especially during meditation or while doing programming work. These increases weren’t huge, but they were noticeable.

At the end of the 30 days, I had adapted well to the habit, and I found it so easy that I couldn’t think of a compelling reason to switch back. After putting off my return to carnivorous life for several months, I eventually concluded, “Well, I guess I’m a vegetarian.” I gradually lost my appetite for animal flesh, so those old foods no longer appealed to me. I had no sense of deprivation because I was eating what I felt naturally drawn to eat. It took no discipline to stay vegetarian, since I was simply eating what naturally appealed to me. Over time the thought of eating animals became repulsive to me, not from a moral standpoint but from a gustatory one — I no longer wanted to put dead flesh into my mouth.

When I met Erin in 1994, she wasn’t a vegetarian. In fact, her diet was pretty poor, consisting of large quantities of fast food. But eventually she decided to try going vegetarian for 30 days too — without even telling me – and her experience was similar to mine. After 30 days she simply didn’t want to go back.

Going Vegan...

During my vegetarian days, I occasionally considered eliminating all animal products and going 100% vegan. From what I’d read up to that point, I was convinced that the vegan diet would be healthier for me than a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. I also went to Tony Robbins’ fire-walk seminar in 1996 and learned about the Fit for Life diet, a book I later read. Tony is the most energetic person I’ve ever seen, and he was pitching a mostly vegan diet. I became curious about how a vegan diet would affect my energy level.

Erin and I were learning "Tae Kwan Do" at this time, and I was becoming interested in distance running, so the high-energy promise of the vegan diet appealed to me. I’d already seen an energy boost after going vegetarian, so it wasn’t hard for me to fathom that going vegan would be even better.

As you can see, what motivated me to try veganism wasn’t animal rights or environmental issues — it was simply the possibility of enjoying more energy and vitality. I wish I’d been the kind of person who’d have genuinely listened to those other arguments for veganism, but I have to be honest and admit that I wasn’t. My curiosity was driven entirely by self-interest.

In January 1997, Erin and I both decided to try going vegan for 30 days to see what it was like. Both of us were convinced, however, that the diet would be too hard and too fanatical to sustain in the long run. We kept thinking about all the delicious foods we’d have to give up — the hardest ones for me were cheese pizza and veggie-cheese omelets. But we figured we could manage it for 30 days. At least we’d know what it was like, and if the diet beat us down, we’d be comfortable concluding that it wasn’t for us.

Going vegan was very different than going vegetarian. During the first 7 days, Erin and I lost 7 pounds each! We were eating abundant calories and drinking plenty of water, so where did that weight come from? Seriously, it went down the toilet. A lifetime of accumulated dairy clog came washing out of our intestines. Wow! We had heard about detox, but 7 pounds in 7 days was beyond our expectations. After the first week things settled down, and we lost a few more pounds over the remaining 23 days.

After the first week, my energy had increased massively. This was a much bigger increase than when I went vegetarian. I’d say that for the total increase in energy I experienced from animal eater to vegan, the change from vegetarian to vegan was about 80% of it. This energy boost was most pronounced during "Tae Kwan Do" classes — I suddenly had a lot more energy during sparring — my endurance was much, much higher. I also noticed it was easier for me to run longer distances without getting tired, and my breathing felt smoother and more effortless. Exercising became easier, and I started enjoyed that runner’s high feeling much more often.

After doing 3-5 mile runs for several years, I gradually increased to 5-10 mile runs. Running felt so good that I often didn’t want to stop, so it felt right to just keep going. Within a year I was doing 14-mile runs down the Santa Monica beach, and in 2000 I ran the L.A. Marathon.

Despite the increase in physical vitality, the #1 benefit I experienced was a marked improvement in my mental clarity. It felt like I was coming out of a long-term fog of brain — if you saw the movie Awakenings, it was similar to that, except that my starting point was the state we call “normal.” I thought, “Wow… so this is what clear-headedness is supposed to feel like.” Imagine the feeling of having totally clear sinuses after eating super-spicy food… but applied to your brain.

I noticed a significant improvement in my ability to do computer game programming, which was my career at the time. I could solve challenging problems more easily. The problems were just as hard, but my ability to tackle them had increased significantly.

Interestingly, Erin’s experience was different than mine. I don’t recall her having as much of a boost in mental clarity or physical endurance as I did. But she enjoyed a significant boost in her psychic sense. I didn’t notice it at the time (because I wasn’t looking for it), but I also experienced an improvement in my intuitive clarity after going vegan.

Once again when the 30 days were up, Erin and I found it easy to keep going, and the benefits were so obvious that we’d never want to give them up. By day 30 animal products had lost much of their appeal anyway, so we just kept eating the way that seemed most natural. Again, it didn’t take any discipline to maintain the diet. And to make the initial switch we used curiosity instead of discipline. As you can see I really love the 30-day trial.

I get a lot of compliments on my depth of thought on certain subjects, and as odd as it may seem, I have to credit much of that to my diet. The mental benefits are probably the #1 reason I decided to stay vegan. I just can’t go back to the fog-of-brain I used to regard as normal. People who eat animals often regard my diet as being deprived (outside looking in), while ironically I regard their lifestyle as being far more deprived (inside looking out).

While some people would regard my diet as severely restrictive, it feels nothing of the sort to me. I’ve been eating this way for almost 10 years now, so to me it’s normal. In some ways it’s a little odd eating out with people who still eat animals, since they tend to be a bit fanatical in their blood lust for flesh… as if they’re vampires or something. It doesn’t bother me when people eat animals in front of me — they’re free to eat whatever they want. I do notice, however, that people often feel uncomfortable eating animals in front of vegans. And I imagine the animals aren’t too comfortable with it.