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  • The History of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness


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    The History of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

    by Robert Cheeke, Vegan Bodybuilder,November 29th, 2005

    Growing up I was always playing sports and was a pretty gifted athlete. I was fairly small but had a huge interest in Pro Wrestling. I always wanted to be bigger and stronger.

    In 1995 I became a vegetarian and in 1996 became vegan, as a result to my older sister Tanya's influence.

    In 2000 I started taking weight lifting seriously and competed in the 2000 Body-for-LIFE challenge.

    In 2001 I was inspired to take up competetive bodybuilding by my childhood friend Jordan Baskerville. I moved out to Arizona and met up with Mr. America Troy Alves, who became my personal trainer. In 2001 I entered my first bodybuilding contest. Unfortunately just before the contest I got mononucleosis and was unable to compete on stage. I watched from the audience and probably would have finished 2nd place.

    In 2002 I started my business Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness in hopes to become well known in the fitness industry and promote veganism on a world-wide level. My goal was to make money running my company full-time and donate most of the money made to help animals and live simply with any extra. Why make a business out of it? I wanted to focus all of my attention on promoting veganism and make enough money to do so, and avoid having a standard job that would take time away from my passion; saving animals.

    Also in 2002 I attempted to buy the website domain for www.veganbodybuilding.com. I had planned on it for about a year prior to buying it. I was out on a cruise ship working in the Caribbean for 7 months during this time. When I decided to buy the domain, it had already been purchased 3 weeks ahead of me by someone in the UK. I settled for www.veganbodybuilder.com.

    I was in contact with the owner of www.veganbodybuilding.com and he featured me on his website. He was a nice guy and had a site featuring many different vegan strenth athletes. A year later that site switched to www.veganbodybuilding.org. Since www.veganbodybuilding.com was my original plan for my site and was available again, I bought the available domain name.

    This site as been registered on both www.veganbodybuilder.com and www.veganbodybuilding.com since sometime in late 2003 or early 2004. Since the switch to www.veganbodybuilding.com we incorporated many new athletes and now our site features some of the best vegan athlets in the world.

    In July of 2003 I entered another bodybuilding competetion since I was off the ship and back on land. I placed 4th out of 7 in the INBF contest and enjoyed the experience. From October 2003 to August 2004 I was out on a variety of cruise ships in Mexico and Northern Europe on my "Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness World Tour." I promoted my website and company in over 15 countries.

    In April 2005 I competed again and won 1st place at the INBA Northwestern USA Natural Bodybuilding Championships. In October 2005 I was runner-up at the World Natural Bodybuilding Championships from Sacramento, California; the same city I placed 4th in my show in 2003.

    Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness has grown over the years. When we first started we had a forum on the website in 2003 but it wasn't used very often. Then we upgraded in 2004 and it still wasn't used very often. In May of 2005 we started a NEW forum and it has had over 15,000 messages and over 500 active users in the 7 months it has been online. Needless to say, it is now being used more often.

    We've also had some success with our products. After all, we are a business. We provide hundreds of pages of free information and answer questions and inspire others, but we also sell fitness clothing, movies, calendars, gloves, and in the future, books and supplements too.

    Currently we have our Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness clothing in 23 different countries and nearly every US state. Our standard Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness shirt is by far the best-selling vegan fitness shirt in the world. We've been featured in many magazines, newspaper articles, TV shows and commercials, and nearly 100 websites.

    We sell both Vegan Bodybuilding and Vegan Fitness clothing and a combination of the two, our company name; Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness. All current clothing items are Made in America material. Current products can be viewed on www.veganbodybuilding.com/products.html

    Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness was created to promote veganism through sports and that is what we've done. Some vegans may not like celebrity culture but we feel that it is important to get veganism in mainstream media to reach a greater audience. We will continue to promote Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness in many avenues of media.

    We appreciate all the support over the years and we will continue to promote Veganism through sports the best way we know how to.

    As a personal thank you....After all these years of hard work and dedication to a greater cause of saving animal lives, I'm finally close to being able to live out my dream of having Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness sustain my life and I will be able to devote even more time to promoting veganism.
    Robert Cheeke
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