It was a Friday night and my husband, and I had just come home from walking the dog.  Cousin Clint was preparing for a camping trip with friends and his groceries were on the counter.  My eyes immediately zoomed in on the 6 pack of CHEESE BUNS sitting on the counter.  At this point, I hadn’t consumed cheese since sometime in April 2021.  I had sworn off dairy and was doing my best to transition to vegan and hadn’t eaten any meat since April 2021.

Me (demanding):  Give me a cheese bun.

Clint (calmly): You don’t eat cheese.

Me (firmer):  Give me a cheese bun!

Clint (still calm):  No, you don’t eat cheese as he grabs the buns and heads downstairs.

My husband laughs.  At this point we had been re-watching Game of Thrones in preparation for the final season.  We all head downstairs to watch but before we started watching, I searched the basement high and low for those cheese buns.  I looked on shelves, in cupboards, closets, under the bed.  I couldn’t find them.  The sight of the cheese buns had triggered a craving so intense, it felt like I could not ignore it.

I proceeded to plead with Clint during the entire episode to give me just one cheese bun.  He would not budge.  My husband was amused at Clint’s will and said he would’ve given in long ago to get me to shut up.  Clint has will of steel. I kept trying and kept getting denied.  I would plead for just one but knew I was lying. I knew the second I got my hands on that cheese bun bag I would devour them all.  I think Clint knew that too, which is why I never got a cheese bun that night.

The next day, I woke up not even thinking about the cheese bun.  I thanked Clint for not giving in to me and said goodbye as he left for his camping trip.  I went to yoga and on my way back decided to get hummus and pita from a local middle eastern market.  Here’s where things take a turn. While at the market, I asked if they had any cucumber.  I love having cucumber with hummus and pita.  It’s so fresh and adds such a nice crunch.  They did not have cucumber, so I went to the Sobey’s across the street, which wasn’t my usual haunt, but it was close, so off I went.

I walked into the store in search of my cucumber and the way this store is set up, the bakery items bleed into the produce.  I grab my cucumber and look to my left and there’s an ENTIRE shelf of cheese buns starting me in the face. An entire shelf?!  I had one mission, grab a cucumber and get out.  I had no intentions of eating a cheese bun, buuut I was weakened from the night before and now the cheese buns were back in my head with a vengeance.  My first thought was you have got to be kidding me and my second thought was, what kind should I get?  It was that fast.

So having made the decision to eat the cheese buns, I was on a mission to select the cheesiest, best buns.  If I was going to do this, I wanted the best tasting choice.  I picked up every single kind of cheese bun available.  I inspected each package searching for a generously sized, hardened cheese crust at the bottom of the bun.  I smelt each.  I imagined how each would taste in my mouth.  Was I feeling like olives on the buns?  Jalapenos?  Nah.  Just cheese.

I made my selection, and my next thought was, where will I eat them?  I didn’t want to go home and eat them in front of Paul, as I didn’t want him to know, so I thought I’d eat them in the car.  I am deciding this all while walking to the cash register.  Then I decide firmly, no, if I’m going to do this, I can’t lie about it.  I have to come clean and eat them at home.  I decide this is the best choice, pay for my cheese buns and leave the store.

I kid you not, the next part was a clear sign from above highlighting my addiction.  As I stepped out of the store, and headed towards my car, there was a lady in my direct line of vision sitting on a bench shooting up heroin.  My immediate thought was I am no different than this woman.  She is using her drug of choice and I’m about to use mine.  I got in my car and drove back home, still fully prepared to eat the cheese buns but this insight really stuck with me.

By the time I arrived home, Paul was in the shower.  I hollered “I got cheese buns and I’m going to eat them,’ and I sat on the back deck eating one cheese bun at a time.  By the time I had eaten 5 cheese buns, I was so full, I could barely move.  I had long forgotten about my hummus, pita and cucumber, which were the original intent of my shopping trip.  I made the conscious choice to toss the last cheese bun in the organic waste green bin because if it was left in the plastic bag, I would have been tempted to fish it out from the garbage to eat later on.  This decision solidified, I was done with cheese buns.

Or was I….

The next morning, I woke up and my cravings were back with a vengeance.  I had been living life craving free for months and it was a peaceful state to be in.  My life wasn’t dictated by my stomach.  As though I was an investigator, I started paying attention to the cravings and noticed that I physically felt the cravings in my chest, and it radiated down my inner arms.  It was an intense physical craving that felt impossible to ignore.  I cannot even imagine the intensity of a heroin craving, mad respect to anyone who has ever gotten off heroin or any drug for that matter.  I couldn’t even make it through a cheese craving for f’s sakes.

This cheese bun moment spurred a weeklong binge of ALL the things.  Unfortunately, meat and dairy were back in my belly.  I ate many foods that were dangerously close to pizza but weren’t actually pizza so this justified my decision to binge somehow.  I was eating the animal products I had previously decided I no longer wanted to consume, BUT as long as I didn’t eat actual pizza, I was ok with myself.

I had always considered myself an animal lover and still did, though my life change up to this point was mainly due to health reasons so the animals weren’t necessarily a big part of my why.

I felt compelled to eat and eat and eat.  All I could think about was food.  I went out to get a pedicure with my cousin the next day and I pulled into the parking lot of the new place she was going to and if you can even believe it, the ONLY parking space left in the entire lot was in front of a Pizza Hut that was next to the salon.  Not only am I a former Pizza Addict, but I’m a former Pizza Hut addict.  I pulled into the parking stall with Pizza Hut staring me in the face.  Naturally, this put pizza on my mind.  I knew when I pulled up and saw that sign, that I was going to have something that resembled pizza later that day, but that actually wasn’t pizza because then I could keep my ‘pizza sobriety.’

Before I drove home, I decided I wanted Eggplant Parmesan from the Olive Garden.  I called to order so that by the time I drove back to Calgary from Chestermere my order would be ready.  This is a 15-minute drive. They told me the order would be 1 hour and I told them never mind.  I wanted food immediately, if not sooner so I drove to Mr. Sub instead.  I ordered a footlong Pizza Sub with cheese. It wasn’t enough.  I wanted more so I drove to Boston Pizza and sat in the lounge solo and ordered my second dinner which was Pizza Bread with Cheese and meat sauce on the side.  Here I am telling myself I am not breaking my pizza sobriety date and I intentionally binged on two dinners, both which had PIZZA in the title.

I carried on behavior like this for about a week.  It was awful. I wasn’t living my best life.  I was living craving to craving.  I had no brain space to do anything but think about what I wanted to eat.  It was very sad actually.  I woke up with a belly ache every single day.  I felt lethargic.  I stopped working out.  All of my habits and ethics went out the window.  It was a really hopeless feeling.  It wasn’t an enjoyable time.  When you are AWARE of what you are doing, it’s much less fun to eat these foods.  It’s really just sad.  

When I was a pizza addict in the past, I had an inkling I had a problem, but I had never officially DECLARED to anyone, not even myself that I had a problem, so it was easier to unconsciously eat and eat and eat, mostly without guilt.  This time was different.  It’s like having an out of body experience.  My wise self was just watching my addicted self-eat.  So here I was eating, but now I had my wise self-watching me.  It really takes the fun out of binge eating.  I wanted out of this cycle, and I went back to the basics of when I first got off pizza.  My counsellor had given me a sheet on how to deal with cravings, I had notes in my journal that had identified when I was emotionally eating and had suggestions of what to try instead to get my mind off food, which had worked in the past.  The sheet is simple and two pages long but is essentially four steps: avoid, confront, distract and remind.

Avoid getting in situations where you are tempted in the first place.

Confront talks about the fact that you will not always control whether or not you will have an urge to use, but you can control how you respond. This includes confronting your self talk. Don’t worry about the urge, take a step back and let it run it’s course and know the feeling is temporary. It will not last.

Distract is my favourite. Some of my favs are to just go to bed, take a bath, go for a walk, dance, sing or phone a friend.

Remind yourself of the reasons you wanted to stop using in the first place, remind yourself you want better health. Essentially, remind yourself of your WHY.

Initially getting off of these high fat animal foods, felt like walking on eggshells.  Everything had to be carefully planned.  Hunger was the enemy.  Shame and self-hatred were the enemy.  I had to carefully plan plan plan to ensure I stayed on track and to get through the cravings, which I knew would pass.  I was very cautious of my surroundings and even who I hung out with to ensure I wasn’t around trigger foods at all.  I didn’t watch commercials that could trigger me, I avoided driving by my trigger restaurant, eating with anyone who ate my trigger foods or walking by items in the grocery store.

When I first started the journey of giving up pizza, it took a mere three weeks for the cravings to subside.  It feels like a lifetime when you’re IN the thick of it, but it’s not much time at all.  I understand it also takes approximately three weeks for your tastebuds to change.  If you can get through those initial three weeks, it’s mostly smooth sailing from there and little tweaks to adjust as you are ready to improve.

This second time around, it only took me about one week to get off the foods.  While I was so frustrated that I had made my life hard again, it was clearly a lesson I needed to learn so I focused on what this situation could teach me. There was something else I needed to learn about or work on to stay on the vegan path I desired.

The lesson was worth the suffering so that I wouldn’t end up here again and so I offered myself self-compassion.  I still have a printout from my Self Compassion book by Dr. Kristen Neff and I glance at it anytime I need to help get me through and as a reminder to go easy on myself.  CHANGE IS HARD.  Have mercy on yourself.  Treat yourself as you would a friend.  You will 100% run into obstacles and the path WILL NOT be linear, but you can get just 1% better every day.  The key is to kick those obstacles down when they arise or figure out how you can move around them and create a new path.  When an obstacle comes up, I just know that I need to do a little more work on a particular topic, learn a little more.  Do not let setbacks deter you from your aspirations.  You MAY not succeed every step of the way during your journey, expect hardship and KNOW that you can work through it.  Like a child learning to walk who gets up time and time and time again after they fall, you can do the same.  I know you can.  There is hope for you.  For so long I thought I was a hopeless case.  I hope that by sharing my vulnerabilities and stories with you, you can relate and know that if I can change you can to. 

I have also learnt that you cannot get hope without action.  When you have hope, when you believe there is a solution for you, you take action.  Focus on that.  There is an abundance of hope.  Have hope that you CAN absolutely change and if you are feeling that you can’t, you just have to break the problem down into tiny-er steps, re-vamp your ‘why.’  Every obstacle I have come across in this journey, I have investigated the shit out of to get a complete understanding of what led up to it and what I can adjust to make it easier for myself to succeed.  Obstacles are truly opportunities.

I shared this cheesebun relapse story with a group I am in called Plantspiration. Plantspiration is essentially a support group of like minded people who have or are transitioning to a plant based diet. This group is intimate and offers weekly cooking classes, a Saturday support group and so much more. When I shared my relapse story, Jon Ignoffo, husband of Stefanie Ignoffo (founder of Plantspiration) said to me ‘isn’t it enough to know that dairy is bad for your health? Bingo.

Jon had planted a seed and this seed was EXACTLY the next step I needed to take. I honestly answered that no, it wasn’t enough and that I was unfortunately ok with eating foods that were harmful to my health. As a self described animal lover, I KNEW it was time for me to learn about what happens to the animals. My goal was to learn just enough about what the animals endure, that it would keep me away from dairy so that my health would benefit.

I started my learning journey by listening to The Cheese Trap by Dr. Barnard. I cannot recommend this book enough. Truly this should be mandatory reading for all.

From there, I signed up for the Animal Justice Academy. This is FREE for anyone. Just sign up here. Video number 5 from Week 1 of the course is entitled “The State of Animals Used in the Food Industry.” This video is less than 40 minutes and gives an excellent overview of what the animals go through to end up on our plates. I watched this video and was not only ready to get animals off my plate for health reasons, but I wanted to do something to stand up for these wonderful beings. They do not deserve all the horrors we put them through. Their collective suffering is endless. The animals have little to no rights preventing individuals and corporations from doing what they want to them. They have no say in what happens to them. Our laws are archaic and outdated and offer little to no protection. In fact, this article by Animal Justice on the new dairy code was just published. Please read and scroll to the bottom to take action for dairy cows.

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂

p.s. If you eat meat, fish, seafood, dairy, eggs and/or honey, have you ever thought about WHY it is you hold the belief that animals are YOURS to use? Have you ever explored WHY you believe you need to drink the secretions of another species? What is holding you back from changing? I’m genuinely curious. I’m happy to chat with anyone (judgment free) or provide resources. I was once you and now here I am.