Deciding to Meet and Eat No Meat

My first "attempt" at not eating meat was pretty much a dare.  It wasn't really an attempt to change my life, I was just harassed into it by a friend who was vegetarian.  It was one of the most agonizing weeks of my life.  That's right, one week, that's all I could muster.  I had eaten single meals that were meat free, even had favorite dishes at a couple of vegetarian restaurants, but the meal before and the meal after always contained something that used to have face.

For years I was content in my carnivorous ways.  I even converted my vegetarian girlfriend to the dark meat side.  I slowly grew more conscious of the food I was eating, mostly based on how crappy I felt afterwards.  Fast food was reduced to a road travel necessity.  Words like "organic", "free-range", and "grass-fed" became required pronouns to any food purchase.  Regular grocery stores were out, "fancy" grocery stores were in.  All these things were good moves, but these changes didn't make me feel that much less crappy, physically or mentally.  Despite the changes I made and relative lack of results, I still hadn't hit "rock-bottom."

Eventually the aforementioned formerly-vegetarian girlfriend decided to ditch the "sins of the flesh" and return to her vegetarian ways.  At this point I entertained giving up meat for the first time in my life.  This wasn't a "keep the girlfriend happy" move.  This was a "examine your life and what it really means" type of decision.  I came up with my own personal mantra/statement/theory/reason/rule for not eating meat.

I will only eat what I personally could produce from start to finish.

This pretty covers all my bases:  cruelty to animals, killing of animals, environmental concerns, fair-trade concerns, and plain old self-reliance.  Having seen video and in real life what it takes to make a living animal ready to slap on the grill,  I can honestly say that I don't have it in me.  This one simple rule is what convinced me to give up eating meat.  And it worked.  30+ years of eating chicken, cow, pig, etc. everyday (save for that one week) were over.

"So great.  Now you don't eat meat.  You can have your self-righteous, salad eating life and ride off into the sunset on that cow you didn't eat.  But I like to eat real food."

By the way, that was you, the reader talking to yourself in your head.  I can pretty much guess what you were thinking since quite a few people have verbalized their thoughts to me on this subject.  But let's get one thing straight, I still really don't like salad that much.

I was born a picky eater.  Having milk allergies I was raised on soy formula, then moved on to jello water (essentially kool aid) and then to peanut butter sandwiches.  Growing up I hated starches that weren't fried or mashed potatoes or white bread.  The only vegetable I would eat was corn.  When I went to a salad bar I would come back with a plate of croutons, bacon bits, and cheese covered in Italian dressing.  I routinely made myself a peanut butter and something sandwich (more on this later) for dinner because I turned my nose up at what my mother had made.  Only slight improvements were made as I got older.  My diet was textbook, true to America "meat and potatoes."

I am slowly moving toward a more healthy overall diet, but it's still pretty much "meat like substance" and potatoes.  I'm guessing it's going to take some amount of time measured in years before I lead a self-righteous salad eating life.  Until then I'll keep finding ways to make tofu, wheat gluten, and beans (battered and fried of course) as equally as satisfying as their hooved and feathered counterparts.

As for you, now it's your turn.  What is the one simple thing in your life that will challenge you to give up the meat?