Yoga Girl

I absolutely love food and I love to cook (and eat!), but since my first
year living in Costa Rica I had been a very strict vegan. is lifestyle
makes me feel the healthiest, and to this day what I aim for in my day-to-
day life, but I’ve learned to let go of the label. I was a strict vegan for six
years, staying far, far away from anything that contained even the
possibility of animal products. When I say I was strict, I mean strict—I
wouldn’t cook in a pan if it might have been used to cook anything with
dairy or meat in it, no matter how many times it’d been cleaned. I had a
roommate who would stash cans of tuna under her bed because I didn’t
allow any animal products in the house. Really, I was super vegan!
Also, I liked to share my views on veganism with the world. Loudly.
Talking about the health hazards of eating meat and the ethics behind
slaughtering animals is not great dinner conversation, I’ll tell you that.
Labeling yourself as one thing or another puts you in a box that’s very
hard to get yourself out of. As I got more and more into teaching yoga,
with all the exercise I was doing and all the classes I was teaching, I felt I
needed something more. If I lived in a place that had a farmer’s market or
a health-food store, I probably would have kept the label of being vegan,
but it was not easy being vegan in Aruba.
Now the situation has improved slightly, but at the time, there were no
vegetarian restaurants, no health-food stores, no farmer’s markets—
nothing! I found myself obsessing over keeping up with my vegan eating
habits. Preparing dinner became a struggle. I even got annoyed walking
through the grocery store, feeling like there was nothing proper for me to
eat. I fought Dennis about it, feeling as though I had found a big flaw in
our lives on the island.
It took me a little while to understand that I needed to transition
toward a more vegetarian diet. It was hard in the beginning because I was
very attached to the vegan label I had given myself. With time, however, I
started eating some cheese and then some yogurt and then even a little ice
cream. Becoming more relaxed about my eating habits helped me stay
fueled throughout the day without feeling stressed about what I was