Is There Such a Thing as a ‘Relaxed Vegan’?

Labels are usually helpful but in the world of food eating styles their perceived precision creates levels of inflexibility, rigidity and exclusivity that often leads to fights, name calling and finally, lingering bad feelings. Is all this necessary? I think not and the reason why is intent. I believe that whatever food camp you describe yourself as being in is simply your way of trying to truthfully and accurately describe where you stand the day you make that statement. Okay, some people might use the label to be part of a specific club, like wearing a badge of honor, but more likely self-description is used for convenience. So, for the badge-wearing folks, take a deep breath, I am not trying to hurt your pride or sneak into the club without paying the dues. It is just that the labels we each decide to use might most accurately describe us. This all leads me to share my own label of being a ‘relaxed vegan,’ why it is not a form of cheating, how I got here, and why this oxymoron is exactly right for me.
What exactly is a relaxed vegan? First, you need to know that this is my own made-up description for where I stand, eat and live. “Real vegans,” please be patient and hear me out; I understand your passion on all aspects of veganism, from food, to animal rights, to environmental issues, and politics, really I do. Quite simply, my land of relaxed-vegan pertains to food and means I am a vegan in food consumption 99% of the time but not 100%. Why? How I got here tells some of the story, and admittedly I don’t claim to wear the badge of being an all-in vegan, but I am so much closer than only vegetarian (which includes dairy), so ‘relaxed-vegan’ it is.
I eat and live a vegan lifestyle almost all of the time but I do not expect my clients to because we are all individuals, have different nutritional needs, and different challenges in our lives. I now eat plants and plant-based foods exclusively with a few exceptions. Here’s the back story. In 2011, I ate a heavily plant-based, organic, omnivore diet – very paleo-ish. It wasn’t getting me healthier (remember individuality). Then after exclusively eating plants and experiencing rapid weight loss and better heath than ever before I could not help but to begin to get it that plant-based foods were the Holy Grail to health for me. I did not wake up one day saying I would become vegetarian, or hard-core vegan; I just got to where I am naturally with a lot of influence from research and learning about the classic American diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The better I felt eating all plants, the less I had a desire to eat dairy, eggs, fish, and animals. It was health first for me and I am guessing that most who are here reading are first concerned with their health too.
My exceptions to being full-fledged vegan are simple. I relax my food rules at times towards vegetarian. Usually this happens when it comes to eating out or at someone’s house who really tried but wasn’t quite perfect. For me ‘relaxed’ means that I will not have a melt down or chastise someone over a tiny bit of butter that the cook honestly forgot to leave out of the dish that is my meal, or having one egg in something or honey in tea or dressing. I might also use a very small amount of organic, grass-fed mozzarella on a homemade vegetable pizza (for an Italian like me, Daiya cheese simply does not taste like mozzarella, sorry!). Finally, a few times during past summer months I also have had ice cream but always regretted how hung over, congested and awful it made me feel. Hence, no more Martha’s soft serve, Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen-Daaz unless I am willing to give up a day recovering. Do you see how ‘relaxed vegan’ was formed?
In the end, it is always my intention to be as close to 100% plant-based as I find possible; therefore I feel comfortable calling myself a relaxed vegan. And although, most hard-core vegans will slam me because I purposefully avoided the discussion of animal rights, rest assured that my household no longer turns away from that aspect either. It’s simply that I believe that more movement towards plant-based eating will occur if we start with what is good for you directly and move forward from there.
I would rather support and embrace someone calling themselves a relaxed anything that is better than where they were yesterday, and having them feel good about that than telling them that they are a failed whatever because they don’t pass a test of perfection. As a health coach and a businesswoman, I look for progress and end results, and I believe that getting individuals and then society moving in the right direction for their health - towards plants and away from animals as their primary food is better than battling over labels and not focusing on the real intent. I love being a ‘relaxed vegan’ – it’s perhaps imperfect but I wear that label proudly, not in shame of falling short, but with a sense of ownership and truth.