This Vegan Thing, is Totally Happening

It can be so frustrating, but it is paying-off big time!

Let me start at the beginning. In December of 2007, with lots of encouragement from my long-time-vegetarian-for-health-reasons Mother-in-Law, I took the plunge into vegetarianism not sure how long it would last. I had been meat averse for a long time but never taken a firm commitment to the diet. A vegetarian co-worker of mine was excited for me & very encouraging. She mentioned that the first 6 months was the hardest, so I figured I'd stick with it that long & see how I felt about it in June. I stayed vegetarian for three and a half years.

This summer as I was preparing for my first trip to Europe (many more blog posts on that trip to come soon) I decided that I wanted the ability to experience new cultures through their traditional cuisines. So, I slowly began adding meat back into my diet. I had heard horror stories of vegetarians accidentally being fed meat & becoming rather ill. As I was not raised vegetarian & I still consumed the occasional preferably white only egg & home-cooked salmon, I figured my digestions system still contained the proper enzymes & what have you, in order to prevent that from happening. With the exception of a week long rash after consuming who knows how many different kinds of seafood at a sushi bar, I was fine. I actually did not eat as much meat on the trip as I thought I would & was able to maintain a mostly vegetarian diet, while enjoying some traditional foods. More importantly due to my earlier experiments I was able to travel worry free about consuming, say a soup with hard to translate ingredients & becoming sick.

When I came back to the states I was not sure how my diet would proceed. Although I am not sure why it surprised me to learn this, I discovered I simply found the taste of most meats disgusting. I decided I would stay mostly vegetarian but enjoy the occasional meat I enjoyed such as bacon, or a slice of pizza that also happened to be topped with say pepperoni. One thing I would do while vegetarian, based on a fear of food illness, was refuse a taste of something my omnivore husband offered, simply because it had touched a piece of cooked meat. No more. I felt free to sample things that I wanted to taste without fear of digestive retribution. My decision was bolstered by reading "The Omnivores Dilemma" by Michael Pollan which confirmed that semi-vegetarians could live just as healthily as strict ones. (Although I feel the need to make the statement here that Mr. Pollan's book was not my only source for coming to the conclusion that this could be a healthy lifestyle for myself. While I HIGHLY recommend the book to everyone, it is not the end all be all on the subject of diet.) Then, the incident occurred. I was eating a seemingly innocuous slice of Hawaiian pizza, when what should I sink my teeth into? A bone chip. That was it. My ass is now much more firmly placed on the vegetarian wagon. Yes I will, occasionally try a morsel of something new, but I will no longer be ordering non-vegetarian meals at restaurants.

Now we come around to the vegan part of this tale. I have had a milk allergy for most of my life, my sister, and if memory serves, brother have it as well. In the past several years it has been growing steadily worse & I have done the bare minimum to avoid its consequences. You see I have always had a massive fondness of cheese. This grew when I met my husband & he introduced me to that fact that there are WAY more than 5 types of this particular nectar of the gods. Finally I had to say enough is enough, and I decided to give semi-veganism a try for 30 days. I would not cut out dairy completely, but cut back large quantities at one time. No more cheese or cream heavy dishes, no more meals consisting of wine & cheese, no more cheese & crackers for a between meals snack. I thought that this massive reduction of cheese would allow me to enjoy our pizza & movies 1 night a week with friends. It made it worse. So, I had to cut out pizza all together. I didn't realize how much cheese & dairy I had been consuming until I wasn't anymore. I think that the vegetarian diet especially, is heavy on cheese. When you go to a nice restaurant the vegetarian option is usually something rich & creamy like risotto. or vegetable lasagna. I think that many vegetarians consciously or unconsciously think that because they aren't eating meat they are eating healthier & therefore are allowed to consume more dairy & still be healthier than the average American.

So what was my conclusion after the 30 days? I didn't even notice that the 30 days was up. I just kept finding ways to reduced the dairy in my diet. How do I feel? I feel much more energetic, as if my body isn't wasting energy trying to consume something that is making it sick. Kinda obvious I know, but sometimes I can be so stubborn it takes doing it to see I can. How do I look? So fine! I had been at weight loss plateau for about six months. I am now within three and a half pounds of my end of year goal! In the foreseeable future, I will not be a strict vegan looking for animal byproducts in everything I eat & use but just eliminating the big sources of milk products like cheese, cream or butter based sauces, soups, and desserts; that sort of thing. Now that I am a semi-vegetarian, semi-vegan, weight loosing, high energy machine, I'm looking forward to how this new commitment will affect me.

Vegetarian Musings

I have been a Vegetarian for a year! A fellow veggiesaurus (yes, I just referenced Jurassic Park) told me that the first year is the hardest, or was it six months. I don't remember, but anyway apparently the hard part is over. Not that it has ever been all that hard.

When I started out on this endeavor I didn't give any thought as to how long I planned on living this lifestyle, I was just concerned about having enough self control to not backslide. I still don't know how permanent this is, I'd certainly like it to be permanent, but who knows, maybe I'll decide to have kids and when I'm pregnant I'll crave meat. That would be horrible! It happened to a friend-of-a-friend, she couldn't stop eating McDonald's, and they are the worst.

Here are some cool things about being a vegetarian:

• Spend less money on groceries
• Spend less money at restaurants because things like pasta primavera are always cheaper than steak, or even chicken.
• Spend less time deciding what to order at restaurants. I'm notoriouse in my family for taking forever to make up my mind about what to order. Now I'm always the first one done because as soon as I see the words, beef, chicken, steak, lamb, goat, shrimp, crab, turkey, etc. I move on to the next thing, or better yet when the menu is organized by protien I can skip entire sections! I get excited about the strangest things, i'm weird, I know, my mother-in-law tells me all the time.
• Eat less fat, especially saturated
  
• Eat less calories overall
  
• Eat less soidum & other things that are bad for you
• Tends to make you eat more fruits, veggies, whole grains & other things that ARE good for you, partially because you have to read the labels on EVERYTHING. For instance: cambell's minestrone soup is made with chicken broth and its not all that good for you because like most canned soups it's high in sodium, like 960mg! That's almost half the amount of salt you should eat each day!
  
• I lost a few pounds, yay!
  
• Less cholesterol
• I get to feel good about myself when I read articles or hear stories/news reports about how bad mass farming is for the environment, and how wastefull it is. So humble of me, isin't it?

Sorry about getting preachy in there about some stuff, but I want to encourage you all to think about what and how much goes into your body. You don't have to become a vegetarian, just take care of yourself.