This question bubbled up in my inbox this week and it's one I get frequently:
Is Scott vegan? How did you get your husband on board with eating only vegan?
The short answer is: yes. Scott is a vegan.
But he wasn't always.
Scott is one of those great success stories of how switching to a plant-based diet can change your life.Before he was vegan he wasn't at a healthy weight, even with regular exercise. Scott also struggled with tummy problems --- namely, IBS, which went away once he was vegan.
Scott...before he was vegan (or vegetarian).
So how did it happen? Did I make Scott go vegan? Not quite.
When I first went vegetarian, Scott was resistant.I made him watch all those awful PETA videos in hopes to convert him but nada. He refused. He loved his meat. Eventually, we came to the agreement that we would only eat vegetarian in our home. Scott was free to eat however he pleased outside of the home, but our home was vegetarian. It seemed like a fair compromise.
Then when I went vegan, things changed. While Scott could deal with my vegetarianism, he thought vegan was just too extreme. He couldn't understand why someone would willingly give up his favorite food: cheese.
I told him how important going vegan was to me, that it really mattered to me, and if he truly loved me, he would support me.He stood firm that he wouldn't changehis diet but if this is what I really wanted, he wouldn't try to talk me out of it... but I would have to make our meals.
Scott had no idea what to cook a vegan. Up until that point, he had been the cook in our relationship (I was a terrible cook). So, meals were on me. (I realize now, had my hand never been forced, I'd wouldn't have become the Happy Herbivore! Crazy!)
A few months later (about a year from when I went vegetarian initially), Scott went vegetarian on his own accord. One day he said to me in passing: "Hey! I've been a vegetarian for a month." I nearly choked. Scott explained to me that he'd been reading up on the environmental consequences of eating meat and it had really motivated him to be a vegetarian. "Eating vegetarian is more green" he said and that was it. Scott was a vegetarian.
Although I hadn't really pushed my veganism or vegetarianism on him bu that point, once he was a vegetarian, all bets were off.I had a foot in the door and I was going for it. I would casually drop in to conversation about how unhealthy all animal products were. Anytime he complained of his tummy troubles, I'd lightly mention how all my digestive issues cleared when I cut out dairy. I started stocking the fridge with an array of vegan substitutes....
Somewhere along the way, Scott finally dumped dairy. I'd encouraged it, true, but it was still his ultimate choice. Pizza was what had held him back and once we found a decent vegan pizza in LA, he made the switch. You see, Scott loves pizza more than life itself. I sometimes wonder if daiya had existed back then, if he would have made the switch even sooner.
That was a few years ago.
I sometimes can't remember our lives before we were vegan. Scott is a huge, HUGE proponent of the vegan diet now to the point where he talks about it with strangers. Sometimes I think he's a bigger activist than me. It's amazing how changing our diet really changed our life.
Scott...40 lbs lighter thanks to a vegan diet.
Scott also runs marathons now--something he never thought he'd be able to do! and climbs mountains:
If you ask Scott... if something happened to me, would he still be vegan? His response: "I could never go back to eating animals. Ever."
So there you have it! The story of my vegan husband.
In other news, Scott's going to start blogging on happyherbivore.com--about what it's like to be a vegan dude!
Have a question or comment for Scott?
