December is a pretty special month to me. Outside of the fact that it's mine and my parents birthday month, the 1st of December marks (or I say it does cause I don't remember the specific date) the day I stopped eating meat. Now, I'm going to try and avoid sounding preachy or cliche, but it's going to be difficult because this literally changed who I am.

This year it's officially been 5 years since I've eaten meat and it was the best decision I ever made. Ironically, I don't remember the exact date, but I do know that the last animal product I ate was Wendy's chicken nuggets. Is that sad or what?

So I was 14 when I decided to make this decision that really annoyed my mom at first. It's something I had thought of before. I think most of us as little kids say they're going vegetarian when they first learn where meat comes from, but they don't stick to it.

I decided to really do it for a lot of reasons, but three stick out in my head.

This first one is gonna sound stupid, but when I was 14 is when I first started watching "YouTubers" and it's really funny that most of them are vegan. Watching their content I started to learn more about it, how easy it can be to make certain foods vegan and how much deeper it goes than food, which I'll get into later.

Second is that I was required to do a persuasive speech in my English class, the topic I was assigned (it was like fate) was animal cruelty and testing. Doing this project made the decision final for me. After researching this topic, hearing about it and contemplating it for so long I knew it was the right thing for me to do.

It was the best thing I ever did.

The third reason, which I never usually tell people is that giving up meat made me feel more confident in my appearance. As a girl, especially at the age of 14 when this was, I was incredibly insecure. We all are, I still am, it's okay.

Going vegetarian really helped me gain confidence in myself. I lost weight and now maintain it pretty well, and my skin cleared up, I felt better about myself and I'm not nearly as sluggish or tired anymore.

I know you hear this from everyone who makes a significant dietary change in their life, but giving up meat was the best thing I ever did for both the animals and my body.