I became a vegetarian a little over 4 years ago. I did this for several reasons:
1. I tried it out and felt healthier, started losing weight
2. Ethical issues regarding factory farming
3. I had a huge crush on a girlfriend who was a strict vegan, which was why I gave it a try in the first place.
Well, here I am 4 years later:
1. I've been gaining weight despite being pretty active. I have mondo sugar cravings that I indulge way too often, and I know my diet is a bit out of whack because it's got too much carbs and not enough things like fruits and veggies.
2. I still have ethical issues about factory farming, but compromise them all the time for dairy products so I'm being a bit hypocritical there.
3. The aforementioned friends cut me off a couple of years ago and no longer speak to me.
So, I'm thinking about eating meat again. Not a lot of meat, and preferably organic/free range meat from animals that have been humanely treated. Probably not all that often. Humane meat is also healthier meat, ditto with dairy. I think, though, that I might just start with some wings, eating out with DH.
At the same time, I'm going to start getting a grip on my sugar intake, and keep working on minimizing processed foods in our diet. I've done it before, I can do it again. Lucky Luthien gets to go along for the ride.
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3 comments:
I'm in a similar boat. I'm a vegetarian and I'm thinking about switching back to eating meat again. I just feel terrible, keep gaining weight despite leading an active lifestyle, my skin looks bad and I'm craving meat and fat like crazy.
I reccomend going to www.westonaprice.org - as a starting place. I changed my diet 4 years ago (cut out soy, watching for msg, making bone broths and gravies plus I always enjoyed raw dairy) and I felt so much better. I lost my baby weight in 9 months and never dieted at all- full fat yogurt, milk and cheese plus eggs, bacon, chicken and beef in the crockpot and still sweets and some junk food) of course I was still nursing (and still am) so I'm sure that helped. Good luck, and I salute your concern about factory farmed food - it is a real problem.
I've been a vegetarian for 10 years and cut out dairy and eggs last July. I, too, had a couple phases of thinking "maybe I should go back to meat, maybe it really is necessary for health" but after doing a lot of reading (Fuhrman, Robbins, The China Study) and getting the whole "what vegan foods can I eat?" thing figured out, I'm glad to be boycotting the factory farms :) If you're putting on weight and craving sweets, you might want to figure out if you could have a yeast overgrowth. Whenever I start getting to the point where I feel CONSTANTLY hungry and I'm eating up all our sugar, I then realize it must be yeast and sure enough I have other symptoms (pain with nursing, daughter gets diaper rash and some cradle cap). I've been using Grapefruit seed extract and it has been helping, no more huge sugar/carb cravings. Good luck!
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