I have been a vegetarian for three weeks now. It has been surprisingly easy! I have not missed meat in the slightest. The hardest part has mostly just been eating at other people's houses - eating at home and eating out at restaurants is easy :) ...it just requires a bit of preplanning is all (which being mostly gluten free, it's already a habit of mine to preplan when going places)
Anyways, why vegetarian? A few reasons:
1. My course has changed me. I have read so many books and philosophies, and proven studies that plant based diets are your most healthiest option possible. (Read "Healthy at 100"). I wanted to see if I felt any different after going plant based.
2. Doing this nutritionist course, I wanted to try vegetarianism so that when people who are vegetarian or want to be vegetarian come to me, I can direct them accordinly - because I have tried it myself.
3. I heard some theories that there's a ying and yang to everything, and meat and sugars are (in many books) a ying and yang to each other. So if you take out meat, technically your sugar cravings should diminish. I wanted to try this. So far this has proven to be incorrect for me. (however, halloween is a terrible time to try the theory lol). I noticed a distinct decrease in cravings the first week, but then my usual cravings came back the 2nd and 3rd week (and last week was halloween). Will see! Still making notes. :)
So teh course (Holistic Nutritionist) is coming close to an end for me. I have finished all the bookwork, and I am currently working on my case studies. I am almost done 4 (of 11), goal is to be done by Christmas. The case studies take longer because I can't do them when my kids are around - I need to be able to sit down and -focus- on them uninteruppted.
I am LOVING this course tho! I look so forward to the years of actually learning and remembering the course material i've gone over. As I said before, it has changed me. I look at labels and I am disgusted. I read a whole line of bread's labels and the THIRD ingredient was benzyl peroxide (might be spelling that right). that was the bread's shelf preservative. Isn't that gross? You bread eaters are potentially consuming peroxide! (not all bread uses that particular preservative), it was just one of those 'ah ha' moments about labels.
The things that have changed already:
1. I'm reading labels more
2. I buy very little canned goods - only tomato sauce/stewed tomatoes - no more soups, no more canned beans - I soak my own beans, I make everything from scratch.
3. I don't buy prepackaged kids snacks. The only bagged things I buy is nacho chips and rice cakes and nuts (pistachios, etc)
4. Going vegetarian and whole, clean foods, my grocery bill has cut IN HALF. Literally. I used to spend 150-200 per week on food. Now I spend 50-100 per week.
5. I do not buy organic vegetables/fruits (except for carrots - I think they truly do taste better organic), but I DO buy organic meat. (did you know that ham has wheat in it? I started to buy michael gf ham - who knew!) Meat is surprisingly filled with stuff.
6. I have started phasing out plastic tupperware and we are going more glass.
I think that's all :) It's been a fabulous journey! I don't feel -different- going off meat yet, but that just makes me that much more confident that it's not a necessity to life. (And I do NOT do tofu, for the record).
Oh, and I do still cook meat for my family, but they are also getting more vegetarian meals as well. Logan is already a self proclaimed vegetarian and has been for a year or two (he eats meatballs and -sometimes- a hamburger)...and not by request, only if I serve it to him.
My goal was to go 1 month. I think I will continue it longer though :)
