Making the Transition to a Vegetarian

 

I’ve mentioned a few times that I don’t eat red meat, well, that makes me what they call a Semi-Vegetarian/Flexitarian/Pollo-Pescetarians; a Pollo-Pescetarian is someone who eats fish and poultry but not red meat from mammals. If I only ate fish and not poultry I’d be called a Pescetarian and if I only ate poultry I’d be called a Pollotarian.

Just recently more restaurants offer white meat choices like turkey bacon or chicken sausage and even turkey burgers, but for years my only option was a veggie option because the restaurant I went to only had red meat options for some foods. Therefore a lot of people assumed I was a vegetarian because I would always order a vegetarian meal, depending on where we went to eat. With me doing so I became somewhat use to eating like a vegetarian a lot of the time and I also began to love vegetables and introduced myself to a lot more vegetables than ever before.

For me change comes gradually, I have to work my way into making a life change when it comes to a habit and the way I grew up. I stopped eating pork in 2004; it wasn’t until 2007 that I gave up beef. I can’t remember the exact year I stopped drinking milk but I know it has been a couple of years since I’ve had it.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve really been thinking about becoming a vegetarian, I would love to say it’s about the animals but sorry, it isn’t I do believe in the food chain. I have different reasons for giving up pork and all other red meat, in my opinion pork is a very unclean meat and I have a lot of reasons that I’m not going to go into for giving that up; that brings me to beef and other red meat mammals; I did not give up red meat because I felt it was bad, I just feel like it is bad for me, I just cannot digest red meat properly and I find myself not feeling well when I would eat it. That is the reason I allow my kids to eat beef, even though I have noticed recently that my daughter has been shying away from the beef and beginning to eat more like me. For my children beef has always been like a treat they get to have when they aren’t at home, because even though I allow them to eat it I do not cook or buy it. I know that I probably will not be able to do the same thing with chicken or fish though.

Becoming a vegetarian is a personal choice I am making for my own health, when I gave up red meat my children were a lot younger so it was easier, but with that being said, if I make something and it is good, my family will eat it.

Right now my hardest decision is how I will go about making the transformation; I’ve received a few opinions on how I should start but I know what works best for me; so what I have decided to do is create a meal plan with recipes to keep me going for four weeks, that will be my starting point, I will then start tweaking my own favorite recipes and collecting new recipes that I will begin to add to my recipe book.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and I have a lot more reading that I will do up until I begin this new way of eating (January 5th), my plan is to stay strong and keep with it but as we all know there may be a moment of relapse. What I haven’t quite decided on is whether or not I am going to cut out both poultry and fish at one time or if I will only cut out poultry then work my way to fish. I actually do not eat a lot of fish now but I have a feeling that if I cut out the poultry that I will end up increasing my fish intake. I can lie, there is nothing like a succulent lobster tail and some steamed crab.

Of course while I am giving up meat I must make better food choices because one of the things that vegetarians can fall into is bad eating habits by eating everything else they can eat that isn’t meat (i.e. junk food), so I have to keep in mind my good eating habits in order to really be able to benefit and feel the effects of cutting out meat. 

I will keep you posted as the time comes near and I will give a four week update once I am complete, I won’t be blogging daily or weekly, I know it will probably be good for accountability purposes but I won’t make any promises, we shall see.

And…It Is What It Is!