21–30 of 67 posts
I did it within minutes. Watch the film on YouTube: "Earthlings" Try to watch it in a full sitting. You probably wont be able to, but try. Then walk to a mirror and look yourself in the face, and ask if you and this world are really real, that is, do your own version of a reality check. Then you will see your proverbial red pill and blue pill. Dont do it because you think you might lose a few pounds and impress some…
Transitioning slowly really set me up for success. Doing so allowed me to adjust my habits. Took longer for my tastes to change.
I thoroughly enjoy my diet now. It doesn't feel like a burden and I don't feel like I have to compromise on enjoying food.
One thing that is really easy is just eating less meat. By just cutting down, you don't have to change/think about your diet. Just eat less meat, more everything else. Cutting it out entirely takes a bit more work (still totally doable).
When my wife and I took the plunge I had been eating lots of meat at lunches...mostly in sandwich form and we had been unintentionally transitioning from all meat to chicken and fish to mostly just fish at home for dinners...wife's preference for fish over other meat drove that.
Then we watched the documentary "Forks Over Knives" and, regardless of the scientific accuracy of the film, said "Why don't we try going vegan for a month and see what happens".
So after a New Years trip to see family in LA where we are a ton of meat we drove home and then...never ate meat again. After the first month "test" we asked each other if we should try it again for another month, agreed to do it, and then never asked again.
Over the holiday break in 2014 we ended up eating a bunch of eggs and decided we really wanted eggs and cheese, so we ditched the veganism and went vegetarian. We probably eat 80% of our dinners as vegan still, unintentionally, but we don't feel bad about eating cheese anymore.
One quick tip if you try to be vegan...be flexible if your not doing it from a moral standpoint. If I ordered a sandwich and they accidentally put mayo on it, I just ate it anyway. If a coworker brought cookies or cake, I ate it. I didn't ditch my shoes or belt. True vegans would probably be appalled, but life is so much easier if you go with the flow. Try to stick to it, but don't fuss or worry about the occasional lapse.
Hell, I know plenty of vegetarians that are 99.9% vegetarian but occassionally grab a slice of pepperoni pizza or slice of bacon or whatever. There aren't any rules...it's a personal decision. Do what makes you happy.
I love animals and care for their welfare (and still do), but reflecting back as an adult, the reason did it was because I wanted to control over some aspect of my life, and I consider my own vegetarianism (and my young cousins 'low fat high carb veganism') as eating disorders.
If you're planning to go veg, my suggestions would be
1. Go all-in straight away.
2. Stick to it all the time. It's easier on others if they just know that you won't eat meat rather than guessing
3. Prepare a canned answer to the "Why" question. You'll get asked this every time you share a meal.
4. Don't preach it, just do it
5. Don't equate vegetarian/vegan with healthy. Any diet can be healthy or unhealthy.Vegetarian - just stopped eating meat one day to see if I could keep it up. (The reason being that I had already been thinking for a while how gross it actually was to eat animal corpses, and that I'd also rather be alive than dead, so others shouldn't suffer that fate just because I had to satisfy my taste buds) That was the easiest part - the social aspect of it is a lot more complicated than that, mostly because I…
If everyone did this, then raising of animals for food would stop. That wouldn't keep any animals from being killed for food; instead, it would mean those animals never existed in the first place, and never got to have any life at all.
Now, I don't know whether that's better or worse: is it better to have a short, somewhat unhappy life than none at all? This is a question for philosophers. But it's something to think about. But the point is, you're not saving any animals from being murdered by not eating meat.
So I turned vegetarian and started exercise (tennis, walks) and I started feeling the benefits.
Hindsight (20/20) of course, I think it was just exercise that was needed. I think we are what we eat but we are polished if we exercise.
Last year I tried just eggs a bit (for me vegetarian = no meat/fish/eggs, definition I guess allows eggs) but did not like the taste, after 6 years of vegetarianism.
I woud overall say, listen to your body, eat what you like, but don't forget to burn those fats irrespective of if you eat meat or not.