my fuel

This is quite the long story, so if you’re cool with reading a novel, continue on; if not, I’ll sum it up for you: I’m a vegetarian, short and sweet.

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I like most types of food.

I enjoy eating and am just beginning to enjoy the process of making food….still don’t enjoy cleaning up though!

I find it strange that food can encompass such a huge part of our lives and can impact other decisions we make-how much to exercise, our sleep patterns, the nutrient/vitamin/mineral makeup of foods.  It’s strange, yet enthralling.

I don’t want to feel controlled by food-like I’m living my life in fear of eating that oatmeal raisin cookie cause it might make me gain .2 pounds or whatever.

I’ll tell you what I DO want to do.  I want to eat without feeling any guilt whatsoever.  I mean, why should I feel guilty?  I am able to buy healthy, affordable food for myself; I should be thankful.

And I am thankful.  Thankful for the many “healthy living bloggers” out there- without them, I wouldn’t have the same healthy attitude towards food I have now.

My food journey or my revelation, if you want to call it that, began in college.  In college, I had free range in the land of “holy crap, I can have fries and ice cream every single day. This is awesome”.  This is not a good land to be in my friends.

To sum it up, my food choices in college were very unhealthy, filled with indulgences and resulted in quite a few extra lbs.

I knew how to eat healthy, I just didn’t want to.  I mean, who wants to eat a salad when your size 2 friend eats fries and pizza everyday?  Little did I know that that’s ALL they were eating.  Me, I ate three meals a day.  Here’s a little look back at what I typically ate in a day during college (post coming soon!).  Let’s just say my activity level was certainly not high enough for the amount of calories I was consuming!

On to the present though.  I don’t really like labels, but if I had to choose one, it would be “vegetarian”, an lacto-ovo vegetarian to be specific.

I know, I know-it’s so trendy to be vegetarian, everyone’s a vegetarian nowadays.  I’m almost uncool of me to say that I don’t eat meat.  I’ll let you in on a little secret though-I’ve pretty much been a “veggie” since I started college.

Sure, I’d have the occasional piece of bacon or turkey sandwich, but I typically stuck to hummus wraps or veggie stir-fry’s to be honest.  If given the choice of chicken patty, turkey burger or veggie burger, I chose the veggie burger (they actually tasted pretty good!).  It helped that the burgers looked pretty gross too.

So, it’s not like this whole veggie thing is a complete overhaul of my diet.  It’s really not.  If you want to get specific, I’ve been a veggie since December 2009.  Yes, I ate turkey at Thanksgiving that year, but at the Christmas celebration a month later, I had finally committed to becoming a veggie, so no meat for me (but lots more mashed potatoes and green beans!).

Needless to say, this was quite a shock to my family.  My mom was cool with it cause I’d occasionally come home during college and declare I wasn’t eating meat……all the while she had just cooked a bbq chicken meal to welcome me home (here’s where I felt guilty).  Thank goodness for her-she was accepting and never questioned me why.  I am thankful for that, because at that point I still didn’t know why I became a veggie-it just felt wrong to eat meat.

I dabbled with eating only chicken/fish and that certainly helped the transition to becoming a veggie.  At this point, I was out of college and making a conscious effort to only eat chicken or fish-usually chicken.  My favorite meal during this time was chicken fingers dipped in a “secret sauce”, fries, texas toast and sweet tea.  IT. WAS. DELICIOUS.  Of course it was, I tell myself now, cause it was all friend and coated in butter.  As time started to pass, I cooked less and less meat and would only eat it when dining out-which I did a lot of after college.

This is where the healthy living blogs come in.  I wish I could remember the first blog that I read or how I stumbled upon this new, magical world, but sadly I cannot.  All I know is that these women were making easy, affordable meals….most of which could be adopted to be vegetarian.  Sidenote: I stand firm that’s it pretty easy to be a veggie-just don’t put meat in your meals.  Chicken pot pie?  Take out the chicken and it’s now a veggie pot pie. VIOLA. Really not that hard to do. Or maybe my view is warped since I’ve been choosing no meat for a while now?

But those healthy living blogs inspired me to start making healthier choices-eating vegetables, exercising more, eating less packaged/processed food. So, THANK YOU to all those bloggers out there making healthier choices and inspiring others-you rock!

So that’s pretty much where I’m at today.  I eat mainly vegetables, fruit and some carbs.  I’m finding that as I eat a cleaner, healthier diet, I can’t eat the same things I used to.  Fried foods don’t sit well in my tummy, tons of carbs makes me feel bloated, packaged food tastes too sweet, etc. Here’s a mini food diary for all those visual people out there or in the words of Bella to Edward “Now, watch me hunt” (oh, Twilight)-

(pictures coming soon!)

Thanks for listening to my rambling! I hope it all makes sense

One last question I wanted to share that I usually get: “Can I eat meat in front of you?”  My answer: of course! I’m not gonna preach to you, so no need to worry about eating/taking about/thinking about meat in my presence…..unless you ask me a question about why I eat the way I do.  Then and only then would I feel comfortable unloading my opinion and thoughts on you.

Promise