Personal Change– I’ve made a change of becoming vegetarian- for a week.

I have a few friends that are vegans, as well as vegetarians and they are always impacting my decisions when we eat because I tend to involve their eating habits around where we go. Whenever they want to try a new vegan place or somewhere with a vegan friendly menu, I go along too. I have never been huge on eating red meat anyway, and when I buy groceries I don’t typically buy any meat products. I get items such as pizza or burritos just plain cheese. Since my diet is already not all meat based I thought it would be an easy task to take it completely out of my diet for a week. I wanted to see if it would be a challenge and if I would feel any healthier after. Especially since any meat intake can really effect the environment and your health. Meat production factories not only use up about one third of the worlds fresh water, but they produce lots of waste and chemicals that aren’t helping the Earth. Also, eating meat raises your chance of getting heart diseases and cancer.

I’m not going to lie, after going a week trying not to eat meat it made me realize how frequently I actually do. I work at a sports bar so after a long shift, my friends and I usually grab food to go from there. (Chicken tenders, a burger, chicken salad). But, during this week at work I switched my chicken salad- to just a salad- and my chili nachos to just nachos without the chili. I feel like it’s an easier choice to make when we get pizza or Mexican food, because I always get plain cheese or beans. It got tougher later on because most of my sandwiches and main meals when I go out involve turkey or chicken.

I also didn’t realize Chick-fila was my campus go-to meal when I got out of class. I had to change a lot of my habits, but I think it was good for me. Also eye opening because it is possible to change your diet and if everyone went vegetarian for just ONE day, we would save around 100 billion gallons of water, 1.5 billion pounds of crops, 70 million gallons of gas, and so much more. Even though I’m just one person, I’d like to think that my 7 days had a positive impact somehow on the earth. I’m not sure if it will be a permanent change for me at the moment but, I do think I will work my way up to it. Especially since I

already don’t include meat into all my meals now; I will get to the point of less and less days during the week that include it, and get to where all my meals are better for me, and the environment and completely meatless. If someone were trying to go vegetarian, I would suggest trying meals you already know that you like, just minus the meat. So that way you aren’t trying a whole new meal that you might not enjoy, because it could trick you into thinking you won’t like any meal without the meat.

Also, after doing the ecological footprint homework, my carbon footprint really went down after changing my diet to only meatless products. I feel like if I 100% changed my diet to being meatless, along with a convincing a few more of my friends, it would be the start to a (small) but helpful change to the impact we have on our limited environment.

A personal change that I considered changing was to eat less meat in order to live more sustainably. Prior to this attempt of this lifestyle change, I never realized how much meat I incorporated with my diet for a protein source (chicken) and how much red meat (steak) I eat weekly. So, for the past week, I decided to cut out meat from my diet, and instead of seeking poultry for protein, I substituted that source of protein with pinto beans and black beans. I’ll be honest and say that I am not a huge “bean person.” This substitution was probably the most difficult aspect that I had to adapt to, because I never liked them in my childhood because of the texture of the beans. Meat generation is a standout amongst the most ecologically dangerous enterprises on the planet, in charge of huge measures of water use, ozone harming substance outflows, pollution and territory annihilation. You have three possibilities daily to enhance the strength of the planet, by diminishing your meat utilization you can decrease your ecological impression.

Eating privately sourced products of the soil additionally brings down the measure of fossil fuels used to transport nourishment over long distances. Which leads into what I want to continue to make different changes in order to enhance the way of living more sustainably. I want to try next to change where I get my fruits and vegetables; attain produce locally.  Eating less meat, or just cutting it out like I did, will help with your health and energy levels tremendously! While I just cut off meat completely last week and being an active meat eater prior, I struggled with not thinking about eating meat. I would have a tendency to constantly have a craving for meat, but consciously knew I couldn’t because it would mess up my recording of how the week of not eating meat felt like. So for me, as you can tell it was pretty hard. Like I said before, looking to beans and nuts for protein solely was a huge change for me and by the end of the week, I did get used to the texture and taste better. An unanticipated benefit was that the change in diet made me feel more full for a longer period of time than did certain meats (nutrient-dense foods). An unanticipated challenge during this diet would have probably have been fighting the impulses to get meat during the duration of the week.

In my experience, I would like to stick to this change in moderation because it did make me feel good. I do not think that I will be able to cancel out meat completely so drastically, but I do think that gradually I will be able to reach that point by controlling portion size to having like say 4oz of meat a day, and then gradually leading to weekly, monthly, etc. My advise to others contemplating a similar change, is that you can do it! And the fact that this simple change can do so much good to yourself and the Earth just make it all much the better! Also, if there is anyone like me, that the best way to do this is eat meat in moderation and gradually diminish in the timing you feel comfortable with.