It is definitely part of life to change and adjust, but there is one thing that for some reason just keeps coming back to me. It's like my North Star! What in the world an I talking about? Why I'm talking about the consumption of meat! I am talking about going to a more vegetarian lifestyle.
When I was young, still in school and living with my parents young, I went through a stage where I didn't eat a whole lot of meat. It just wasn't something I liked. I can remember eating steak, sitting at the kitchen table at the house my parents owned in Johnstown, PA and chewing a piece of steak and thinking, "This really doesn't taste like anything I want to eat". At that point I became extremely picky about the meat that I would eat. I remember many meals where I would have the jar of peanut butter beside my plate. But, eventually I grew out of it. (ok, maybe college and cafeteria eating had something to do with that....). I was still never a huge proponent of a lot of meat, but no one around me picked up on any alteration in my diet.
Fast forward to my early to mid 30's and I was driving down the interstate and happened to be riding alongside a cattle truck. I looked over and those cows on that truck looked out at me and they had such gentle sad eyes. It broke my heart as I knew that they were going to the slaughter house for their death. And that was the day that I stopped eating beef. A while later I read a story about how pigs are actually quite intelligent and how they are raised make them literally go crazy. Crazy enough that they bite off their own tails. What???? Oh heck no...I can't eat pork was my next sentence! Bye bye pork! On a rare occasion I would indulge in either pork or beef, but the longer I went without, the less I liked it! I went quite a few years in that manner.....either eating no meat with a meal or defaulting to chicken or turkey. (As a side note, someone once asked me why I could still eat chicken and/or turkey and my response was "they have beady eyes" So I guess it's the eyes and intelligence that get me!)
When I met Jason I was eating meat about once or twice a week. He jokingly made the comment "Give it six months with me and you will be eating meat again." His comment was made as a joke, but it was so true! I started eating meat...regularly!
But about midway through last year we started to talk about our health and what changes we need to make and Jason started talking about eating less meat. Yes, Jason! I started to talk about incorporating more vegetarian meals into our weekly menus. And I tried. I really tried! But it was so much easier to default to the tried and true recipes......which almost always were meat laden. One vegetarian meal a week was a struggle most weeks. But we kept talking about the benefits.
I talked to a coworker who mentioned that she gave up meat when a personal trainer told her that her love handles would disappear if the meat disappeared from her diet. So she gave up meat And guess what? The love handles were gone in a month! REALLLY? I sat up and took notice! For sure!
In December Jason and I had a serious conversation. Ok it was a random conversation that was serious. We decided to just dive into eating more vegetarian. Jason was all for diving all in 100%...but from my experiences, I fought for less than 100%. I told him that I would be happy with eating 5-6 days of vegetarian existence. I reasoned that starting that way would allow us to still have the foods that we do love and would definitely miss. (I know from experience that the ONE beef item that I would occasionally crave was a burger......and the pork item would be bacon!) I also reasoned that we could go 100% at a later date if we wanted.
So on January first we started. Thus far it is going well. The first weekend in the new year I broke the vege-fast with a Jimmy John's turkey sub. And the second weekend I broke the vegetarian fast with some homemade ham salad. (We had some ham left in the freezer.) I'm really not missing meat at all though and we have been eating lots of fun unique meals.
If you have any awesome vegetarian meal ideas...pass them along!
So what goes around comes around is so very true in terms of eating meat....at least for me! I don't know how long this will last for us....but I'm enjoying it for sure! The question is this....how is this going to affect my weight loss efforts? Will eating a more vegetarian diet help the weight fall off? (I can only hope!)
