Personal story: Why I'm no longer vegan

Lucy Newport • March 20, 2023

Reading time: 12 mins

This is not a piece I ever thought I’d be sitting down to write. For years, I was what I’d refer to as a “vegan vegan”; someone who took veganism very seriously. Living in London I was doing street activism weekly, I attended animal rights marches and volunteered at a farm animal sanctuary. I took part in a vigil, bearing witness to pigs arriving at a slaughterhouse by the lorry load, looking into their eyes and seeing the pain and terror there. It was absolutely haunting.

Veganism was a huge part of my life and I wanted to help create a world which no longer treated beautiful, sentient animals as a commodity, a product. Although that sentiment is something that’s still very much in my heart, my perspective has very slowly shifted over the last 2 years, and to the surprise of myself and those close to me, I can no longer say that I am vegan. How can that be? Let me explain… 



Why I’m sharing this


A family member suggested that I don’t talk about this online, that instead I quietly get on with my life, eating whatever it is I feel I need to eat. As tempting as that is, there are three reasons why I really do want to put my experience out here:


  1. I help women with their relationships with food and their bodies and I can’t do that fully if I’m not being open and honest about my own relationships with food and my body. 

  2. I especially help women who relate to being highly sensitive and / or empathic because that’s my experience of life too. I believe that these deep feeling and compassionate women are more likely to be vegan or aspire to be vegan than the average person because it’s in their caring nature. And I believe that there will be many who have had or will have a similar experience to mine, and will benefit from me sharing what I’ve gained from it. 

  3. As a vegan activist, I played a role in other people deciding to become vegan. I feel it’s only right to share the truth about how my beliefs have changed. 


There will be people reading this who will feel angry at me, disappointed even. I know because in the past I watched, read and listened to other people telling their stories of why they’re no longer vegan and I felt outraged. I felt like they were betraying the animals and doing the vegan movement an injustice. I felt like they should have just tried harder; that all they needed to do was find the right balance of plant foods and supplements to be able to leave animals off their plates. 


There will be those reading who believe animals and their “products” are essential to human health. That vegans have got it all wrong and think it’s no wonder veganism wasn’t sustainable for me in the long term. 


There will be those who wonder “what’s the fuss? Why does this even need to be written?”. 


And there will of course be everyone in between. Wherever you sit, I’m grateful you’re here and I hope this piece opens a new perspective or understanding within you. 


Why I became vegan 

To tell this story fully, I need to take you back. I finally made the commitment to “going vegan” in September 2015 after being pescetarian for around 3 or 4 years, but feeling bad about the eggs, fish and dairy I was eating. I was very much in my binge eating disorder at this point (you can read more about that journey here) and although my bingeing had a lot to do with how I restricted food, cutting out all animal foods felt very different to me. It wasn’t something I was doing to try and lose weight, it was bigger than me. I wanted to do it primarily for the animals, and secondly for the planet. 


I had watched Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives and Earthlings. I felt heartbroken and disgusted at the way that we treat our fellow beings and I didn’t want to be a part of it any longer. I was also deep in my yoga practice and saw veganism as a part of my spiritual beliefs. “Ahimsa”, one of the disciplines within yoga means the “absence of injury” - it is the practice of non-violence to others, including animals. 


As well as this, I’ve been a people pleaser most of my life. I’ve wanted to be “good”. To be loveable and accepted. And with veganism, although it’s quite polarising, I felt the sense that it made me a better person. It made me one of the “good ones”. To be blunt, it gave me a sense of moral superiority. 

It all changed with eggs

I’m telling you all of this to show you that deciding to eat animal products again wasn’t an easy or light decision. It started in April 2021 when I had been fully vegan for over five and a half years. I had breakfast with a friend, avocado on toast (a solid favourite of mine) but they had a poached duck egg on top of theirs. As I watched them cooking this egg, I had two realisations which totally shocked me:

  1. My whole body was saying “I want that egg”.

  2. I noticed that this wasn’t a new message from my body. It had been an underlying ask that I had been suppressing for months.

I didn’t tell anyone this at the time. I thought that I would be able to “fix” my body's needs without having to ever eat an egg. A couple of days after this discovery I moved to Mexico with my ex-partner Mark until the end of the year. I changed the supplements I was taking and looked into what nutrition eggs delivered, eating more sunflower seeds for folate and making protein-rich quinoa and lentil soups, for example. 


Mark had never been vegan and most mornings he had fried eggs for breakfast. Again, my body was saying “I want those eggs” and some days I had to fight the urge to stick my finger in the yolk and lick it off. 


It went on like this and I didn’t eat an egg. I did however stop talking about veganism on Instagram because I was no longer sure that it was the answer for many of us. During my time in Mexico, I’d also done some of my deepest inner work and had been binge free for months by the end of 2021. It was at this point I realised that I wanted to help other women to stop binge eating, and I started to move from teaching yoga to 1-1 coaching. I also knew that I couldn’t teach others to listen to their bodies whilst so blazingly ignoring my own. 


After returning from Mexico I told Mark, my Mum and my Dad about what I’d been going through with eggs and they agreed that yeah, I should probably listen to my body. Although I had come to that decision myself already, a little part of me wanted to have that validation - especially from my Mum who is also vegan. 


Finally in February 2022, over 10 months after realising I was needing eggs, I had my first one. I bought the fanciest organic and free-range eggs I could find and I sat with them; thanking the eggs, the chickens who laid them, the farmer who gave their care and Mother Nature for being the ultimate provider. And I had a single scrambled egg with toast. 


In the moments I was eating that egg, I felt the deepest gratitude from my body. It was like it was saying “Yes! Thank you! This is what I’ve been asking for all of this time!”. It tasted a little funny - metallic - but the sense of relief I felt was overwhelming. Over the week I ate the rest of the 5 eggs and feeling sated, didn’t have any more for a month or so. When my body told me it wanted eggs again I’d buy another box, and it went like this for the rest of the year. 



Next came fish

It was around June 2022 that I noticed my body telling me it really wanted fish. Particularly oily fish. It was such a visceral feeling that’s hard to explain - like a part of my brain especially needed it. And again, it took me a while to come to terms with this. I thought about the fish being dragged up from the sea in huge nets, slowly suffocating. And the identity that I was attached to, of being a good, kind vegan woman was crumbling. I definitely felt a little lost. 


Finally, at the end of this January (2023) I sat down and had my first piece of fish in over 7 years; a side of smoked mackerel. And oh my goodness! Just like that first egg, I felt the most profound relief, but this was something even more. It was like a part of my body had been dormant, a part that I didn’t even know existed suddenly turned on. It was like all of the mitochondria in my cells were singing and dancing together! 


Following this meal, I felt some sadness for all of the time I deprived my body of what it was needing. But I know that this is an important part of my journey with food and my body. I couldn’t have just heard a story like this from someone else. I had to experience it for myself. 

Then there’s the liver


It was pretty much at the same time as the fish that I noticed my body was wanting liver. I kept being shown an image of a liver in my minds-eye with that visceral feeling of “I want this please”. 


Again, it took me a long time to get there but very recently, I bought some Ox liver from my local organic and regenerative farm. When it arrived I was surprised at how un-squeamish I felt when I slid it out of the package and rinsed it off. I sat with the liver, thanked it, thanked the cow, thanked the farmer, and thanked Mother Nature. 


I had expected to have a similar awestricken experience as I’d had with eggs and fish but honestly, the smell, texture and taste of the liver made me wretch. I just couldn’t swallow it. And so I now have a tupperware full of liver in my freezer.

Despite this, I’m still getting the same wanting from my body and I’m not too sure what I’m going to do with this information right now. Thoroughly researching beef liver capsules is on my “to-do” list and I wouldn’t be surprised if I eat beef in another form this year. I’m sharing this because I’m still very much in the process of figuring some of this out for myself.



My views on veganism now


I was very much identified with being vegan. We usually say, “I am vegan” rather than “I eat a vegan diet” or “I follow a vegan lifestyle” because it is a part of who we are. There is pride in being vegan. So when I found that my ideals weren’t aligning with the truth I was experiencing, that was really hard. By my own moral standards I was becoming a “bad” person. 


Sitting with this, I came to see how I’d been putting my ideology in front of my biology, and as nice as an idea it was - it wasn’t “it”. I had been ignoring the fact that I am an animal myself, and in trying to bypass that, I had lost part of my connection to the natural world. This spun me out a little, because I thought veganism was bringing me closer to animals and to the planet. But it was disregarding my biological truth; that I am as much a part of nature as anything else. 


My relationships with food, my body and nature have only deepened over this time. The reverence and gratitude that I feel when I eat an egg or a piece of fish almost bring me to my knees, and this is something that I’m incorporating more and more into all of my food - not just those from animals. It’s what I call “devotional eating” - connecting to and giving gratitude to my food and where it came from as I’m shopping for it, preparing it and eating it. It’s a practice and something that I’m far from mastering, but something I’m very much feeling called to. 


I do still feel the ways that we predominantly farm, kill and eat animals lack the love, respect, and devotion they deserve. This is where we’re out of relationship and harmony. We have lost the connection to the animals on our plates. Some might say “well how can you have love for an animal but also eat it or its eggs and milk” and this is very much where I was. But I can now see how these can be two sides of the same coin. It’s brutal, I know and I wish it wasn’t this way, but it is life. 


I don’t have the answers, but I feel that small, local and regenerative farms are the closest thing we have to this right now (unless we homestead) and I’m grateful to those who farm with a strong relationship with their animals and with nature. This is a vast and nuanced topic which is beyond this piece today but is something I’m interested in exploring more. 


Right now I’m eating about one egg every other day which is organic and free range via the local regenerative farm that I get my vegetables from. I’m eating wild caught fish roughly twice, every other week though I don’t have such a satisfactory source to buy it from (the supermarket is having to do). And I’m eating these very much on my terms - I likely wouldn’t eat them out or want someone else to cook them for me. 


I am also open to my views changing again and again, as life presents me with new experiences and perspectives. Maybe I won’t feel the need to eat eggs for years at a time. Maybe I’ll begin to eat meat weekly. Maybe dairy will become part of my life. Maybe I’ll be vegan again. I really don’t know. All I do know is that I have to keep listening. Listening to my own body, and to the little nuggets of wisdom we all receive when we’re open to receiving them. 


I think that is all any of us can do. To stay open and continue to cultivate relationships with ourselves, with animals, with land and nature in all its forms which are based in both love and truth. And to be loving and accepting of ourselves and others as we navigate this path. 


If you got this far, thank you for reading. This was a cathartic exercise for me, but I really do hope my experiences can offer some helpful insights to you.