I'm a vegetarian only when I'm not eating meat. It's an on-off thing. :)

When I was 7. I didn't agree with the idea of eating dead animals when I had perfectly acceptable alternatives available. So, how? I stopped eating meat. Fortunately my mother's support made it pretty simple, she bought vegetarian foods and made meals with vegetarian alternatives like soya.

I am still trying ...i am not one yet :-)

I became a vegetarian when I was 12 about 13 years old. What triggered it was watching a PETA video 'Meet Your Meat'.....watching animalsget decapitated and slaughtered in the most barbaric ways is disguisting. Also, my mum has been a vego since she was 18 and I always wanted to be just like her lol

Like the majority of vegetarians, I became a vegetarian a decade ago because of ethics so I'll answer it along this line. I simply stopped eating meat ! Of course, it is more than that and for those who are thinking of becoming a vegetarian for ethical reasons, needless to say, I congratulate you for finally awakening to realise the utter perversion of eating another's flesh. The following is the reasoning I had and it has hepled me through the initial period of undoing the meat-habit. If you set out to be a vegetarian from a righteous and heroic point of reference, that one should not murder and rob the living flesh of another living being, be it human or non-human, because all lives wants to live and avoid the pain of being slaughtered, just like you, then you'd succeed as a vegetarian. If you can compare the nasty things some people have done to you in your life and yet you weren't able to even pluck a single hair off from that person, then how can you cast the ultimate harm of death on an innocent life who you have never met and has done nothing to you? If you truly realise this fact, truly able to equate it instinctively, then you should never put selfish desire for taste first but your heroic sense of righteousness should dictate what you should eat. To think like this is to truly think like a civilised and righteous human being with heroic characteristics. To compare human beings with the less evolved carnivorous animals as a poor excuse to eat flesh is to underestimate the extend of human evolution and is thus thinking like a less evolved animal or sub-human with inherent characteristics of a bully and robber combined. I have watched slaughter footages from hidden cameras and I am forever mindful of the barbarity, brutality and the perversion of murdering and robbing the healthy, living flesh of an innocent life for the indulgence of one lousy, selfish meal; and after which all you create is a stinking burp and fart out of an innocent life. Like quiting any other bad habits, at first, it will take some seriousness and detemination from you. The key is to be mindful of the utter barbarity and perversion of robbing the irreplaceable flesh off from an innocent life who has done nothing to you. You'll find that it will get easier and easier as the years go by when a new vegetarian eating habit establishes in you. But still, you need to always be mindful of the reasons you became a vegetarian, lest peer pressures from meating-eating friends or your significant other lure you back to the dark side. Having said all that, you need to eat proper wholesome foods, just without the stolen flesh. Being a vegetarian doesn't give you the right to eat more junks than before because you lack appetite for foods without meat in the initial phase. As mentioned, it takes time to undo the old meat-eating habit formed since childhood and establish a new healthy and righteous eating habit without meat. So be mindful, be determined and be heroic in knowing you save lives in every meals whereas others murder and rob lives in every meals. Finally, below are some very educational and useful hidden camera footages I used on myself before and is "extremely" useful for any new vegetarians to watch and be exposed to the ugly truth of killing innocent lives in order to muster enough seriousness and determination to be vegetarian all the way without fail. Talking about it is one thing but watching it is so much more enlightening.