Diet: From Atkins to Meat-Free?

In my previous diet post, Healthy Diet Goals and Guidelines for 2010, I mentioned I wanted to eat less meat, even though my body seems to thrive on an Atkins-like diet high in animal fats.

In this post, I’ll discuss the why and how of this decision in detail. My goal is to gradually change my diet, so that by the end of 2010 I won’t be eating any dead animals anymore. A 100% plant based diet would be ideal, but I’m not sure I could go that far yet, so my goal is just to eliminate all meat from my diet.

If you’re a seasoned vegetarian, please feel free to post advice and suggestions for an aspiring lacto-vegetarian, especially if your diet is low in grains and low or moderate in carbs! I might need your advice!

Why Vegetarian: The Trouble with Meat

My decision to give up meat has nothing to do with health. It’s purely a spiritual and ethical decision. Actually, if it wasn’t for health issues, I’d be a vegan already!

While I believe it’s natural for animals (including humans) to eat other animals, I think the way we humans treat them is everything but natural. Factory farming, enslaving and breeding animals just so we’d get food, is unnecessary, cruel, and totally despicable. Animals should be able to live a happy, natural life.

Why Omnivore, Then?

Despite this ethical problem, I’ve been eating meat, simply because I don’t feel well on a vegetarian diet. I feel the best when I’m on a low carb, high animal fat, and moderate protein diet, very rich in low to moderate carb vegetables. When I went on this relaxed low carb, high animal fat diet on 2007, I experienced so many health benefits it was incredible.

I’ve done a few vegetarian diet experiments and I’ve felt miserable during them… Even though I know I’ve gotten plenty of protein from various plant-based sources, I’ve eaten a variety of veggies, grains, nuts, legumes, seeds and so on, and I’ve made sure I got adequate calories.

At the moment, the choice seems to be suffering: either the animals will suffer or I’ll do. And, let’s be honest here, I’m selfish. My personal health and well-being is more important for me than the well-being of other animals. That’s why I’ve just eaten meat, although I’m aware of all the dark sides of meat eating. Sorry. But at least I’m being honest here.

Last year, however, something incredible happened. It changed my views for good.

The Spiritual Healing Incident: I Got Healed?

Last summer, I was healing a sick plant with my energy. Yes, I do seem to be gifted with some healing abilities, but know I’d need some more practice to take full advantage of them.

The plant healed successfully, but something strange happened right after it: I suddenly lost my appetite for meat. It’s as if a switch suddenly went off in my head! For a couple of weeks, I simply wasn’t able to force myself to eat dead animals, so I was a lacto-vegetarian for three weeks.

The Vegetarian Experiment

Spiritually, I felt fantastic during this time. My psychic powers got a huge boost, and I also felt good about not eating dead, tortured animals. I also felt a surge in creativity, probably because I was eating more carbs than before.

Physically, though, I didn’t feel well. I had to eat every two hours or I got so hungry I nearly fainted, which was very annoying because I’ve gotten used to eating every 4-6 hours. My skin also got worse, I lost a little weight but became bloated, my blood sugar levels changed too much (sugar highs and crashes, hunger pangs), and my stomach objected to all those grains and legumes. You don’t want the details. Let’s just say I emitted quite a bit of greenhouse gases during that experiment.

I quit the experiment when I got the symptoms of a flu, something I’ve always gotten after a couple of weeks during my vegetarian experiments. If I eat my usual low carb, high animal fat food, I never get sick. This time, I didn’t want to endure the upcoming flu, so I quickly went back to my old eating habits, and the flu symptoms vanished. As did my skin and stomach problems.

Something Changed for Good…

Something changed for good, though. That was the first time in my life I seriously considered the possibility I might give up meat one day, even though my body seems to need it. Since then, I’ve eaten a little less meat, and every now and then I have days when I just feel I don’t want to eat any meat.

I’ve called the Law of Attraction to help me. I set out the intention of being a vegan and I often visualize being one. Since I began doing that, my appetite for meat has just kept going down. My motivation and mental need for becoming a vegetarian has become stronger and stronger – so strong I know it’ll overcome the physical problems eventually.

I know it will happen some day when I’m ready, but as much as I’d want to go cold turkey on all animal products, I know it’s not reasonable. Therefore, I’ve decided to listen to my body and spirit, and go along as they want. I believe that if I gradually change my diet, my stomach might get used to vegetarian food.

I’ll just need to get around my perfectionism. I either want to do everything by the book, or I won’t do it at all. I would totally want to go cold turkey on meat and all animal products and become a strict vegan, just so I could slap a label called vegan on myself, but I know it’s not sensible. A gradual approach seems to be the best one.

My Meat Free Plan

Ok, guys, this is where I need your help! But first, I will “officially” state my goal:

My goal is to gradually change my diet, so that by the end of 2010, I won’t be eating any dead animals anymore. A 100% plant based diet would be ideal, but I don’t think I can go that far yet, so my goal is only to eat food that doesn’t have to be killed before I can eat it. This would mean I can include milk and honey into my diet, and maybe eggs, too.

I promise to be merciful with myself and take care of the needs of my body, not just my mind and spirit. I’ll remind myself not to strive for some “ideal vegan diet” or to be “pure”, I will just gradually eliminate animals from my diet. If I feel the need to eat meat, I will do so, but I’ll look for fish and eggs as my first choices of animal protein.

Some things might need clarification.

Why eggs, you may ask. Eggs aren’t fertilized so they’re not dead animals, unless you intentionally buy fertilized eggs from a health store. No, this isn’t a cop-out, honestly! I’m not that big a fan of eggs so I don’t need any excuses to eat them. But during the healing incident, when I just wasn’t able to eat any meat, I was able to eat eggs for the first couple of days. I wondered why but I guess it was because they weren’t fertilized.

Honey won’t be a big issue, either. I use very little honey anyway, so I’m not going to pay much attention to it until I’ll be eliminating all animal based products from my diet. The same goes for obscure food additives that may be of animal origin – if something is hidden behind an E number, I won’t stress about it.

Fish and milk will be my biggest issues.

Got Milk? I Do. Here’s Why

I’m painfully aware that drinking milk isn’t any more ethical than eating the cow herself. It would be ideal – both health-wise and ethically – to have access to raw, unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk of a free-range, grass-fed cow. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to any at the moment.

1. Cheese! Actually, I drink very little milk because I can’t stand the taste. However, I’m a huge cheese aficionado and I can’t see myself letting go of that pleasure anytime soon! (Look, I’m still not claiming to be totally selfless, ok? )

2. Healthy fats. I think dairy fat is healthy for you and keeps you thin. Yes, I know my opinion is rather unorthodox, but it’s based on my personal experiences and some diet studies.

3. Cream and butter. I cook with butter and real full-fat cream, and I’m not going to touch any margarines or those horrible, unnatural cream substitutes. I’m not quite sure how healthy the milk of a tortured cow is but unfortunately, I think it’s way healthier than any of those vegetable oil based substitutes. At least it tastes better, and I’ve learned to trust my taste on health issues.

4. Calories. Also, during my vegetarian experiments, I’ve noticed I just can’t get enough fat if I eat vegan food. If I use vegetable oil in cooking, it tastes icky greasy if I add a lot of it – yes, even good quality extra virgin olive oil. The same goes for soy cream – it’s actually pretty tasty, but still tastes icky greasy compared to real cream, even though it has 50% less fat. As a result, I can’t get enough fat and I’ll be starving. If I substitute those fat calories with carb calories, I’ll need to eat every 2-3 hours, and I don’t like that either.

Adding dairy products into my diet seems to make a huge difference: I feel so much better on vegetarian food if I can add cheese, butter and cream into my diet… even though the combination of grains and dairy seem to generate mucus and a foul taste in my mouth. Dairy without grains, or grains without dairy won’t do this. But it’s a small inconvenience, so I guess I can take it.

So, despite my ethical objections to how milk is produced, I’ll be aspiring to be a lacto-vegetarian, mostly for health reasons but also for some culinary reasons.

Fish vs. Eggs

At the moment, I feel horrible – mentally and emotionally – if I eat any sort of meat. Eating meat feels more repulsive each day. Interestingly, it’s began feeling worse physically, too.

For the last week or so, I’ve been eating mostly lacto-vegetarian food already, but I will feel weak and hungry if I don’t eat any meat, so I’ve eaten some kind of meat once a day. It’s been mostly pork and poultry because that’s what we’ve got in our freezer. However, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to eat them.

It seems, at the moment, that fish is the only kind of meat I can eat. It’s fortunate, too, because fish is a nice source of Omega 3 fatty acids. I also believe that if I just have to choose between two evils, eating fish might be a little more ethical than eating eggs (unless they’re pastured eggs from a local farmer or something, but I don’t have access to those). Also, at the moment, I can stomach eating fish but for some reason, eggs repulse me.

So, it seems fish will be the last meat on my menu. I guess I could call myself a lacto-pesco-vegetarian now, but I don’t like the label, because it’s an oxymoron. The words pesco and vegetarian kind of contradict each other over there, no? I’ll just call myself the omnivore I still am, no fancy labels with foreign words here.

How about Nutrition?

I realized I didn’t really discuss nutrition in this post. This one’s already at a marathon length, so I’ll save the nutritional discussion for a later post. I’ll be following the general nutritional guidelines I discussed in my diet goal and guidelines post, so nothing new there, except for the details.

In my next diet post, I’ll tackle the following issues:

• My protein/carb/fat ratio. Yes, I’ve learned to listen to my body pretty well, so during my previous diet experiments, I’ve been able to come up with the best ratio for me.
• How I know it when my proteins, fats and carbs are ok. Yes, I’ll give you some tips on how to do it yourself.
• Fats: How I’ll keep my Omega 6 / Omega 3 fatty acid ratio in check.
• Processed foods: Because I want to keep my food as natural and unprocessed as possible, I won’t be gorging on mock meats or highly processed soy products at every meal.
• Protein: Where I’ll be getting my protein from.
• Carbs: My diet will be a little higher in carbs than usually, because it’s going to be lower in fat and because all the best sources of unprocessed plant protein also contain lots of carbs.
• Vitamins: Shouldn’t be an issue, really.
• Fiber: Definitely not an issue! I’ll get plenty of it from nuts, legumes, veggies, and whole grains.

With a vegetarian diet, it would be ridiculously easy to meet the official dietary recommendations of our government, with flying marks. However, that’s the problem. I’m totally not going to follow any official dietary recommendations because they’re a total disaster and I’ll feel horribly unhealthy if I follow them.

That’s why I’ve gotta make my own.