this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
1158 points (88.3% liked)
vegan
2626 readers
67 users here now
Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
We ask that the you have an understanding on what veganism is before engaging in this community.
If you think you have been banned erroneously, please get in contact with one of the other mods for appeals.
Moderator reports may not federate properly and may delay moderator action. Please DM an active mod if an abusive comment remains after reporting it.
Welcome
Welcome to c/[email protected]. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
- Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
- Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- pictures of text require alt-text;
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
- Content warnings are required for triggering content.
- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
- Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
- Misinformation, particularly that which is dangerous or has malicious intent, is subject to removal.
Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Guilty conscience meat eaters use concern trolling to salvage their own self-esteem. In my experience, those expressions of worry are back handed compliments at best. They never come from people who are in better shape than I am and they don't come from people with better nutrition either.
Wow you really nailed it.
I lost 58kg and the only things I ever heard was concern trolling from my friends that resented me for doing what they could not.
Never heard word one about my body while I was unhealthy and unhappy, and the shitty remarks started as soon as the weight reduction became noticeable.
"Woah slow down, don't want you to disappear!" "You've proven your point! You can eat a donut!" "Why do you want to be miserable and only eat seeds?" "Fuck dude you're vanishing! Eat a hamburger!" "You think you're better than everyone now!" "It's actually really unhealthy to be as lean as you've become." "Don't like hanging out anymore, you make me think about every molecule I put in my damned mouth!" "You look like a skeleton now."
And so forth.
Wow those are shitty people. Good on you for losing that weight, as a hefty fellow it's fucking haaaaard work and you should be proud of the effort you put in!
Thanks for the support!
I made so many changes in my journey. I taught myself to cook and made every meal from scratch ingredients... for 6 months. I'm reminiscing now thinking about how many tortillas I've pressed, sauces I've made, things I've fermented, and hundreds of hours on the cutting board. How many times I ordered a "kid size" pizza or sundae on my "cheat" days lol
I ran (poorly), swam, rode, lifted and burned so many calories. I meditated every day and did monthly therapy to help with the mental stress of the physical and lifestyle changes. That is all time, effort, pain, money, and sacrifice.
Every day without wavering I made a hundred difficult little choices that prioritized my goals vs my desires/old patterns. Food everywhere and people genuinely insulted when I wouldn't partake with them or in their way. Watching my friends literally not enjoy their meal from their own shame, just because my serving was conspicuously smaller. Dealing with my biology compelling me to eat one way while I was consciously reprogramming myself to eat another way. Massive social pressures from all sides.
I never really even told anybody of my goals or changes. I didn't make it my personality or a thing. Never spoke of it once or advocated anything to my friends. Only spoke about being slimmer when specifically asked.
That's why it was so hurtful to undertake such tremendous responsibility for my own personal transformation, and then have people internalize it, make my journey about how them and how they feel shitty when they look at me, then make a snide or sinister comment. Only my best friend of 30 years gave me any positive feedback.
The whole thing was kind of a rough ride. Worth it in the end, but wow it was so much more than just eating less.
Thanks for listening. I really appreciate your comment a lot!
Such and interesting read and I hope you found it worth it in the end..! You've verbalised a lot of my experiences with quitting alcohol. It was the hardest thing I've done and lost a lot of 'friends' along the way. But ended up happier, healthier, and genuinely enjoying life again.
Good for you my friend! Yes it was the same thing when I quit alcohol 8 years ago! Quickly find out that people are happy for you to quit drinking until you actually do it, then it's like ... what you think you're better than me? Come on have a drink!
Wow this is the truth of the post. Not just that it ia demeaning that vegans get harassed but why it's counter to the reality of the effort being made.
Good on you, yeah you can't downplay the fortitude required to make such life altering changes. It's so easy to slip back into the status quo. That being said for anyone else reading, if you've tried, and failed, remember that you got further along than if you never tried at all. Keep at it, don't beat yourself up, you can do it!
Congrats on the weight loss.
I had to stop at 40Kg because my heart meds went out of balance... and have pretty quickly gained 12Kg since.
Ah that's interesting and something I hadn't considered. I wasn't really on any meds except Nexium at the time. Is your heart medication dose dependent on weight? I genuinely don't know anything about the conditions or treatment.
What do you credit for the 12kg regaining? Just wondering, my weight still swings about 8kg this way and that but I seem to have generally stabilized in a range.
It's somewhat interesting, because the main heart meds are metabolic blockers (ramipril and bisoprolol, respectively an angiotensin-converting enzime inhibitor, and a beta1-selective blocker that inhibits cAMP phosphorylation), so they can only block certain metabolic paths and once that's done, they can't have more effect no matter the dose (they're basically non-overdoseable).
But... at the same time, I had a diuretic added on (dapagliflozin) as part of a combined diabetes treatment, that used to work fine at the top weight, but at the bottom weight turned out to both reduce blood volume, impacting blood pressure, and lower blood sugar by too much, so that one had to go.
Reduction in stress (an extreme stress peak is what made me lose most of the weight), along with depression, and general despair due to a double back hernia that left me barely able to walk. I'm slightly better now after some physiotherapy, but still moving way less than before, so it's anyone's guess how it will go. It also made me switch to a worse diet, since I can't stay up long enough to prepare healthier stuff.
Thanks for sharing, I don't know why you are being downvoted or who is in this thread being a dick.
I'm gonna be honest, I wanted to argue against this, but I can't deny it. I'm part of a relatively overweight family (actually mostly because of immune system problems that thankfully I didn't inherit) and all I get from my parents are "You're looking skinny" or "You're worrying too much about weight" just because I want to exercise and eat well. Even then, I'm ~20lbs over weight. To be devil's advocate, I think part of it is that overweight people have struggled with problems of being too hard on themselves before, and so don't want to you fall into that, but go too far the other way. The conversation of overweight/vegans doesn't exactly overlap perfectly, but it made me think of it.
le epic funny 🤣🤣🤣
You think animals are there for a fated reason? Like all animals have a destiny? Because your comment relies on this notion.
Sure if you're both Stretch Armstrong lol. They're both silly appeals to extreme.
Could you find a situation where something is there to be or do something without it being decided beforehand?
Now apply that to something you disagree with and see how you go.
You don't need to use swear words.
The ones who felt guilty about it in this context have stopped doing it. You must have felt so smart though!
I felt guilty about it and became a vegetarian and, once I leaned about how milk and eggs lead to death and suffering, a vegan. I have been so for 10 years plus now.
Yes, but only in the same sense that woman are there for the plesure and serving of men. It's a social construction and is, as it thankfully has with the perception of woman, changing.
I don't think so. I think you'd ramble in about how unethical it is to eat a sentient beeing and how cruel this hypothetical lifeform is. Because that's how we are build. It's easiest for us to feel empathie towards our own sorry asses.
You can learn to expand your empathie tough. Start here. Watch it completely. No skipping. Then we can talk:
https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko?si=MT8NgPIU0bpIpg3i
We bred them to be like that tho there were wild versions of chickens. Ever seen a wild turkey? Fuuuuck. Talk about risk if you miss that things taking an eye out. Bovines were easier prey but in the wild would have been protected by bulls, I think?
Ever heard of cannibalism?... or E. Coli, just get a bit in your blood and it will eat you in no time (aka: sepsis).
Okay, let someone murder you and eat you if they are hungry then. Plenty of people go hungry each year, why don't we eat each other? Or why won't you capture and eat my dog?
How do you know if you haven't tried?
You have to be truly deranged to compare the rights of lower lifeforms to those of humans.
This, ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinaries in finery, is what fascism looks like. "I'm biologically superior", "I can do whatever I want with lesser beings", "the whole world exists to serve me", "I can create an industrial machine of killing for my pleasure". That's called fascism. And we don't tolerate fascists.
So you don't eat medicines?
"I dont have a conscience so I assume no one else does either."
Yeah, it's called COVID-19. It wants to use your cell nuclei to grow its children from your body's energy stores, and it doesn't mind if it shuts down your respiratory system until you can't breathe. And there are a hundred deadly diseases like it.
Every time you wash your hands, blow your nose with a tissue, or cover your mouth to cough, you are showing you value life above the supposed right of predators to eat you. And that's okay. Everything has a right to live and that's okay.