I almost don’t feel like the same person I was just 5 years ago. Granted, this is my first 5 years of working full-time, outside of schooling, so I’m no longer actively studying and practicing my mathematical skills.
But beyond that, I just feel like I don’t have free will? My health is degrading because I have unhealthy eating habits, and I really want to stop, and I don’t even really enjoy eating unhealthy food anymore, but I think I might actually be chemically dependent on the refined sugar, carbs, and fat. I work 10 hour days and then I’m too exhausted to eat healthy. If I meal prep healthy food, I sometimes just waste it because I’d rather order a couple burgers. I used to be vegan, and I still think vegans are basically correct, but I no longer have self-discipline.
It feels impossible to fix this shit. Reading what I’ve laid out, I think, “what you need is therapy”. And yeah, maybe, but I’ve had like 7 different therapists and somehow I feel like it usually just becomes a space for me to go and be all introspective and sharing everything about myself to this quiet professional who isn’t really leading the conversation, isn’t contributing much, isn’t giving me an idea of what therapy is supposed to be. There’s just long awkward silences while I think of things to say? And I’m paying $90/hour? So far the only utility to me has been a place to vent. But now I’m doing that here instead because it’s free.
No. If anything I think I’m stagnating less in my 30s than I did before; same for the unhealthy habits. I sometimes wonder how much of that is due to my regular psychedelics use, mind you. In fact I hesitate to suggest it but if you have no counter indication at all exploring such a use yourself (if you never did) might be valuable.
I prepare gigantic meals on Sundays that last me and my partner all week. Even if you like diversity during the week this isn’t necessarily a problem if you have freezer space (I don’t): make several such gigantic meals and freeze it all in portions; unfreeze what you need/feel like eating when needed.
This is both better for your health (including your mental health), and the environment. Got to like cooking though.
This is genuinely weird to me. Been vegan for close to a decade and it doesn’t take discipline at all to not consume animal products (well it did for perhaps the first initial six months I’d say); it doesn’t even register as food anymore - pure disgust. This includes smells of cadaver parts being cooked that I remember I thought attractive before switching. Didn’t you get disgusted by cooked flesh after a few months ? I assumed this was universal (it certainly happened to my partner as well, switched together).
It does take incredible discipline to be around people that do consume them, though; seeing people you sometimes appreciate actively participating in the greatest act of continuous, industrialized exploitation, torture and murder in the history of the planet is depressing.
I remember when I had been vegan for a while, chicken still smelled okay, but beef smelled rancid (which was not how I felt before going vegan). Anyway I probably first went back to eating cheese, then chicken, and I’ve been at it long enough that my palette has adapted. And it did indeed occur when I was living with family, none of whom were even vegetarian.
When I first went vegan I was surprised how easy it was, and given that it’s both better for animal welfare, and basically required to prevent an ecological collapse, I was really optimistic that veganism would be growing. If we need to do it to survive as a species, and it’s easy, then of course we’ll do it, right? But then seeing how obstinate and careless people in my own family were, I kinda just became hopeless and nihilistic.
I don’t mean to be making excuses because I can see flawed reasoning in this. Frankly it’s only recently that I have been able to put words to what I was feeling back then, but now I’ve built the habit. That being said, when going vegan I was introduced to a lot of dishes that I now consider staples and really love, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too hard to get back on that horse (veganly).
Thank you for answering. I guess the main difference is perhaps the rational behind it; seems mainly environmental for you; you even mention the survival of our species. While I appreciate greatly the impact veganism has on my carbon footprint, it has never been the trigger for it. It’s the animals.
For example the term “animal welfare”, like we should take better care of them while exploiting them, but all animal exploitation (outside of, perhaps, survival contexts) is wrong, period. It’s not about larger cages or better conditions for animals - it’s about them not being used by humans at all. And it goes beyond food, which your comment goes in depth about; it’s no leather, no cosmetics tested on animals (even if they don’t include animal products themselves), etc.
Also I’m sorry if that part of my comment read as aggressive; I was genuinely curious. But also please think of the animals - watch Dominion maybe (except I tend to agree with other commenters what you described sounds like depression or burnout, so maybe not the best time); not exploiting them and trying to convince other people of doing the same is literally being the voice of the voiceless. They cannot speak. They are objects to the vast majority of people. Yet despite all the carnist normalization and propaganda they are sentient beings - capable of feeling, loving, enjoying life, and they’re being tortured in ways worse than most people realize (or want to know, really). And every time one buys leather, or flesh, it means participating in this.