Giving Up Meat

That's one big kohlrabi!

I have this really great husband to whom I can suggest anything reversible, and he's always willing to try. Early fall, I made a rather scary life change suggestion: "What would you think about trying Veganism for awhile?"

We weren't even avoiding meat (not at ALL. We love our local meat), but something had happened that really had changed how I felt about eating it all the time: my father had suffered a heart attack. After doing a lot of reading and research, I started a new running routine and thought that some diet changes could really be helpful in keeping our bodies working well. The diet change was approved, and we went from eating meat nearly every meal to no meat, dairy, or eggs. We were already sugar free and mostly oil and pasta free, so we knew it would be an adventure!



I will add, here, that we didn't adapt our breakfast schedule so as to disclude eggs, as my husband makes breakfast, and I didn't want him to have to make an abrupt change. I gave him dairy substitutes to use, and we drastically cut down on how many we ate, but we were still eating eggs for breakfast. I felt that the changes were already drastic enough that we'd still notice a difference if there was a difference to be felt.

It's been over half a year since we made those changes, and there have definitely been some changes. I feel better energy when I'm eating lots of vegetables, and when I am eating meat, I don't feel so great - often I feel heavy and gross for hours, until I can sleep it off. I can tell it gives my body a harder time. It was probably doing this before - I just didn't notice because I hadn't ever been free of it long enough!

I would definitely not say that we are strictly vegan. We aren't even strict vegetarians. I think Flexitarian is a better term. I don't buy meat for us to eat, but we don't refuse it if we're invited to someone's home and that is what they serve. We have drastically cut how much dairy and eggs we eat. We used to eat about 4 lbs. of cheese and drink four gallons of milk between us in a week. Now we hardly drink milk and have cheese on one or two dishes a week - mostly breakfast meals. We have noticed a difference and enjoy eating veggies and exploring new ways to cook them.

As far as how hard it was: I really enjoyed the challenge of finding meals we would really enjoy. There were a lot of flops. I found I really don't like legumes, which are considered a staple of the vegan/vegetarian diet. I could tolerate hummus, but the texture was intolerable for me. I can't eat garlic when I'm pregnant, so that was a common flavor to work around. I also have a fairly rare intolerance to salad greens - excepting spinach - so salad more than once or twice a week wasn't going to work. I have read enough studies on soy I neither trust nor distrust it, so I wanted to avoid it become a main part of our diet.

My husband loves what are called "Buddha bowls", but we call them "Eat-a-bowls". As long as the sauce was good or there was a healthy portion of hummus, he would eat almost anything I put in front of him. I only remember completely throwing away a few dishes that turned out inedible. I am firmly convinced that it's a pretty easy diet once you know what you need to enjoy it - instead of trying to conform to what all the other vegans/vegetarians eat.

Have you ever made a drastic change to your diet? What was the hardest thing about that change? Did you feel your health was better or worse?