I woke up one Monday morning feeling terribly and beyond exhausted after a full eight hour sleep the night before. Drained of energy, I was dragging myself to the office, also quite ashamed of how I felt. I came across a coworker on my way in, asked each other the usual questions such as "How was your weekend?" and/or "How is it going?". I let him know about my weird level of tiredness and he immediately answered with, "challenge yourself for 30 days to not eat red meat...". A big aha moment came to my mind right away, that I had eaten (not purposely) nothing but red meat for the last three days. No wonder, I felt this way I thought. That was on July 20, 2015, the first Monday I challenged myself to go meatless (no beef, pork or poultry).
{On my seventh day, I attempted to make these eggplant pizzas.}
{You can find the recipe and many others in my delectable fare Pinterest board.}
So I turned to just tofu and vegetables. Lots of it the first two weeks. I didn't notice a major difference in how I physically and mentally felt until the 2nd week of my 30 day no meat challenge. I found that there was a difference in how I perceived everything, my mind was so very clear and focused. I also noticed that I had more energy and my mood has definitely improved. My clothes felt a little looser although my weight remained the same. But I couldn't live on just tofu so I decided that I needed to incorporate seafood on my third and fourth week. This decision also made dining out with my husband a whole lot easier.
{My favorite dinner of all time is this tofu stack and asparagus spears at a local restaurant.}
{ I experimented on this tuna poke nachos at a downtown spot. It was yummy.}
It has been determined that after my 30 day no meat challenge that I would just keep going with the same pescetarian diet. It works so well for me that I don't crave beef, pork or chicken when it's presented to me. It's very odd to me as I've been a meat eater all my life. But I'm happy that I don't have the urge to eat it at all. Want to know which level of vegetarian you're willing to go? Check out this article here. But precaution must be taken, as I recently learned that boiled shrimp is very high in cholesterol. I also recently discovered that orange roughy (a type of fish) has the least calories and cholesterol level in all of seafood. Curious? Check out this seafood nutritional chart and a great Huff Post article on 5 Reasons to Become Pescetarian.
One of my great discoveries of eating just vegetables is that my cost of grocery expenses have gone done tremendously. Since not eating seafood on a daily basis, there have been nights where my roasted vegetables are my main course.
Realizing that today is officially my two month anniversary of becoming meatless, I found myself picking up a copy of the Vegetarian Times magazine for more innovative veggie recipes and I can add seafood to it as I please.
Need more reasons to try the meatless route? Read this last article here.
I hope you find this helpful.
Thanks so much for reading.
~ marissa