I'm Going Vegetarian

Or, trying to, at least. Maybe somewhere in between vegan and vegetarian? I don't know. Anyway.

Hello!

So yeah. Big lifestyle change coming right up. You're expecting me to give you a lecture now on animal cruelty or about the meat industry and honestly, no. And it's a bit of a prejudiced view to have that that's how these kinda posts go, but I'm guilty of it, too. This has been in the works for a really, really long time. Longer than probably my closest friends probably realise.

I posted a thread on Twitter on Sunday night, basically spilling out all of my thoughts, and at the time I was watching 'What The Health' on Netflix, which is a documentary made by the folks from Cowspiracy. I was bored, I found out it existed but this isn't what swung me over the edge. I'm always very sceptical about documentaries of this nature because they're such a bias view, and I like things to be equal. I'm all about equality, I need both sides of an argument and things that are one sided make me very uncomfortable, even things like this. So, no. This isn't the reason why I've 'suddenly' came to this choice, but it trigger an internal thought process which has long been embedded inside me.

You see, when I was around 12, I one day decided, and told my mum; 'Mum. I want to be vegetarian.' I can't actually remember the reason why, I just know that it was moderately important to me at the time. She was supportive about it, because she is wonderful, and that night she brought me a vegetarian dinner through to my room. I say moderately important because I was a stupid, stupid 12 year old, and I stopped being a vegetarian after just one day because I realised I'd be giving up McDonald's hamburgers. To this day, I still hate myself for allowing that thought to cross my mind, and for not considering that my desire to be vegatarian should have outweighed the want for a bloody hamburger.

I wasn't strong willed. In fact, I don't think I'd ever been strong willed. I was just a kid.

Growing up after this, I still didn't eat meat very much. I stuck mostly to just chicken and steak. On the odd occassion it was something else. I didn't like fish. I didn't like cheese (there are a few, very weird, exceptions to this.) and I didn't like dairy - milk or yoghurts. I'd still have them now and again, don't get me wrong. My yoghurts thing came in peaks and troughs, sometimes I'd go a month always eating at least one yoghurt, then I didn't touch another for 3 months. With milk, I rarely ever had it, and it was mostly just in tea. Then eggs were never really my thing either, except for French Toast. Growing up, I was a really fussy eater. (Sorry, mum!)  Only now am I thinking back on it and considering whether my dislike of other meat, such as bacon (yup), sausages, pork, etc stemmed from the fact that I'd made a decision when I was 12 that I didn't stick to.



Let's leap forward to 2015. In the October, I decided to cut out fizzy drinks, pizza and sweets for one month to see if I could break a habit. Fizzy drinks because I needed to drink a LOT more water, pizza to encourage me to eat something different and sweets to stop me snacking so much. The experiment was a sucesss because I managed to cut my caffeine addiction. I had caffeine for a little bit afterwards, but as we all know from me more recent post, I'm now caffeine free, with the exception of the odd cup of tea. (What I forgot to mention is that a year after the experiment, I also cut out milk from my cups of tea because I was convinced it was making me feel bloated.)

So... I've proven myself to have gained the skill of being strong willed.

Moving into my flat at university presented me with another challenge: now I had to learn how to cook. I'd never prepared meat before, but I figured that mince was easy enough to cook, so I went to Morrisons, bought some mince and decided to make myself spaghetti bolognese! Sounds easy, right? Yup! Except that touching the mince to put it in the pan made me feel physically sick. It felt disgusting! I ended up buying myself Quorn mince so that I didn't have to go through that again. Then, I bought some chicken, which was another horrible experience! I don't like blood in meat. Even my steak has to be very well done, and every bit of diced chicken has a small bit of red in it. The touch of raw chicken was vile, and when I cut it, I threw so much of it away because it wasn't up to my standards. Which is terrible, and I hate making that admission.

Now, I'm moved out of that flat once again and I live with family. I don't have to touch meat and cook it, but I am eating it, and I'm eating it a lot more regularly. I've noticed that I've put on weight which is probably due to the fact I'm, in general, eating a lot more. And then I watched that documentary, and it made all these thoughts spring back into my mind. Truthfully, I ended up only half watching the documentary because I was distracted by my thoughts. But I think I've managed to come to this decision. Which I know probably isn't going to be easy.

So, I haven't really talked about why I'm cutting out the meat. Truthfully, please don't be mad at me for this, but I just don't like meat or dairy. That's pretty much it. I don't agree with the food industry, I don't agree with the slaugher of animals, but I just don't like meat or dairy. So you see, I'm not going to lecture you to join me in this, I'm not going to get mad at you if you continue eating meat, because that's your choice, and your choice alone. Just like this is mine.

I've had people before try to push/convince me to become vegan because 'you don't really eat meat anyway, Gail!' and it's always been a sore point for me because of that 12 year old little girl who didn't have the strength, so it's always pissed me off when I see it being a forced ideology. You do you. Make your own decisions. Eat what you want to eat. For now, I'm going to give this a bash, and hope that this time, I stick to my guns.

Until next time, be excellent to each other.