Vegetarian Life

About 6 weeks ago now I made a choice to become a vegetarian, I was briefly a vegetarian in my early teens due to a friend who lived on a working farm told me how her and her dad slaughtered sheep and how this one time it went "wrong" and they had to repeatedly give a lamb the gun to the head, she went on in detail of the seizure's that happened as the lamb was dying. Yes we were teens, yes this may of been the norm for her, but me, I was traumatised by it and became vegetarian for 2 years. 

I've always been a bit of a fussy arse where meat is concerned, I'd never eat fat, rind or gristle, the very idea of pork scratching turn my stomach! I wouldn't eat sausages, mince or burgers, if I had mince in spag bol it'd be the 5% fat version and if I found the slightest fatty lump, that would ruin the whole dish for me, I'd wretch my arse off. Same with cod or tuna, slightest bone and it'll have me running to the loo throwing up. Yuk Yuk Yuk.

So the meat in my diet consisted of chicken breasts, turkey steaks and rindless bacon and pork loins. On the grand scheme of things I didn't eat an awful lot of meat anyway and nutritionally I would get a lot of my protein intake from shakes and bars. More and more recently I've been hyper aware of what I'm eating and where my food is coming from having a tendency to overthink the meat that I'm eating, that this animal was born and bred to be killed to be eaten, and the guilt broke me, any meat food waste would really upset me as I'd feel that animal died so it could sustain us and we're just putting it in the bin, so they died for nothing. I could go on and on about my feelings towards no longer eating meat but I don't want to come across as preaching. The final straw for me was when I was sat eating a portion of my spaghetti Bolognese pasta bake whilst scrolling on facebook and I came across a news article about a man finding a calfs eyelid and eyelashes in his mince meat. Well that was me, I scrapped my pasta bake into the food waste bin and there and then made the choice to never eat meat again.

My choice was met with mixed reviews, some family members scoffed, some said they weren't surprised, my partner has been the upmost supportive as he knows me better than I know myself sometimes and he knew how important of a choice it was for me and to be honest I feel so much better spiritually for being a vegetarian, that guilt has gone and I feel a massive sense of achievement and happiness in my choice. At first I found it incredibly frustrating, I couldn't make all the usual family meals, eating together with my partner became a pain in the arse and for the first 2 weeks I was living off a bland carbohydrate based diet, which reflected in my body, I retained water and my skin became incredibly oily and spotty. Then I was introduced to quorn, which had been a god send! With that in my daily diet I have managed to maintain a nice healthy 100+g of protein a day which my body prefers. I find a similar amount of protein & carbs in my diet with roughly a third of that amount of fat works for my body, but everybody is different, so a typical day for me at the moment is 120g carbs 120g protein 40g fat.

Plus with the discovery of quorn mince and pieces I've found i can tweak my recipes and still do my usual cottage pie/spag bol, chilli con carne and pasta bake, I've also created an amazing cheeseburger omelette which is high in protein and super yummy and filling, today I also cooked up an amazing Cajun cheeseburger salad... nom nom nom. i will be trying to post a few of my own vegetarian recipes on my recipe page on the blog so please keep an eye out for them. Thanks for reading guys.


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