Was it a conscious choice?

Did you guys actually chose to be a vegan, or did it all came naturally?
I was wondering why I can't really blame people for eating meat or dairy, and then I realised I myself never actually chose to become vegan, it just happened. From the moment I had to cook my own meals, I never bought any milk, meat or egg product, just veggies, grains, pulses and fortified soy milk, and I was perfectly happy with that.
I guess this is why I never really try to convince people to choose a vegan lifestyle, because I never had to choose either.

Any thoughts?

Did you guys actually chose to be a vegan, or did it all came naturally?

I pretty much stumbled into not eating meat while my decision to no longer eat dairy products was, most decidedly, a bigass conscious decision. OTOH, and I think this ties in vaguely with your description of how you got to where you are, if I wanted to eat meat I would. It's just that knowing what I know and believing what I believe I have no desire to consume meat or dairy products. What it gets down to is that I don't do anything I don't want to do nor do I refrain from doing anything I want to do. For me then it was part of the process of taking control of my life. So to answer the quoted question again - it was both a conscious decision and one that came naturally.

Yes.

I have never encountered a good anti-vegan argument, and it is nowhere near as difficult to cut out dairy products as some vegetarians will claim.

I do not think there is a good reason not to be a vegan, unless you support oppression, hate animals and/or like to have a negative impact on the environment.

Yes, it was. I readed (and saw) all the information together,and I couldn't wait to stop eating bodies,milk,etc. So,I became vegetarian the first week,and then the second I became vegan. I've always cooked my meals,so it wasn't a problem. The problem was that I didn'l like veggies that much.haha.
The only cases I've listened of people becoming vegan ´just because´ it was because of a girfriend/boyfriend.

-Veganism is not an end in and of itself. It's just a tool.-

Soyaboenne said:
So you're not an "ethical vegan"? You just like vegan food? That's awesome.Well, I'm still very aware of animal ethics, plus I'm a rather committed environmentalist. Perhaps these ethics are so deeply rooted in my subconsciousness so that my conscious self didn't have a choice.
You know, my 'softcore' approach towards veganism has already directly inspired some of my friends to pay more attention towards their food habits, apparently I even converted a vegetarian girl to a vegan, and she literally told me I'm her food guru.
Anyway, it usually goes like this:"So, I heard you're vegan? That's neat, I mean, I've known you for 6 months now, but I had no idea. I didn't know vegans could be so cool about it."

Altruism said:
But what about products that have only have small amounts of animal ingredients? Unless you'd only eat wholefoods perhaps. But even then, being vegan doesn't stop in the food department.Well, my dad's a fanatic macrobiotic (although he doesn't mind fish and poultry), so the time I spend with him, I got used to cooking whole foods, but that's just something everybody should get used to again, vegan or not.
But yeah, at parties and stuff, I won't go batshit because some gut extract has been used to clean my beer bottle or some cattle bones have been charred to refine the sugar.
Now, this is where Bruce Friedrich's quote comes to mind:Bruce Friedrich said:
We all know that the number one reason why people don’t go vegan is that they don’t think it’s convenient enough, and we all know people whose reason for not going vegan is that they “can’t” give up cheese or ice cream. But instead of making it easier for them to help animals, we often make it more difficult. Instead of encouraging them to stop eating all other animal products besides cheese or ice cream, we preach to them about the oppression of dairy cows. Then we go on about how we don’t eat sugar or a veggie burger because of the bun, even though a tiny bit of butter flavor in a bun contributes to significantly less suffering than any non-organic fruit or vegetable does or a plastic bottle or about 100 other things that most of us use. Our fanatical obsession with ingredients not only obscures the animals’ suffering—which was virtually non-existent for that tiny modicum of ingredient—but also nearly guarantees that those around us are not going to make any change at all. So, we’ve preserved our personal purity, but we’ve hurt animals—and that’s anti-vegan.

becoming a lacto-ovo vegetarian was a gradual process for me, but going vegan (which i did about 4-5 years ago) was a very sudden and voluntary choice

Only the choice to cut eggs and honey from my diet was a concious one. I had already sort of grown natuarally into ovo-vegetarianism. Rather just because I didn't want dairy and meat in my body than that I was convinced of the negative ethical consequences of the consumption of animal products.