Going meatless.

I am a creature of habit. My finance, on the hand, is a creature of habit wannabe. He really wants to have regular routines, but he is a magpie. He is constantly researching and trying new things to improve his life. Sometimes, I'll admit, he researches himself out of doing anything useful, but it is endearing to know that he is always expanding his perspective and trying new things.

Now, with my tendency to not fluctuate from my routine and my finance's desire to figure out just what his routine will be, we often fall into this pattern: finance reads some new research on a topic, we decide to try it out, and then I stick to it longer than he does because he's on to something else. Our most recent endeavor, and one we've been pretty good at (with some obvious concessions), has been going meatless.

Question No. 1: Is this about animal welfare? Well, to a degree, yes. I'm both an animal lover and a born and bred meat eater. When I was about eight my family drove from Oklahoma to Colorado. On the way, there was no shortage of herds of cattle lining the highways. I remember thinking as a kid, "Well, they don't serve any other purpose. We might as well eat them." While logical to the point of annoyance, I might have also been somewhat of a heartless kid. I suppose I told myself growing up that some animals were meant to be pets, some were pests, and some were food. Though, when I really think about that now, it seems strange. If we're going to eat meat, why not eat any meat? And if we balk at the idea of eating a certain type of meat, what have we told ourselves to convince ourselves that eating one meat rather than another is okay? It's an interesting question and one I've not completely answered.

Question No. 2: Is this for health reasons? Um, I guess. But not for the reasons you might think. There's a lot of research going around about red meat, good fat, bad fat, blah blah blah. In college, I was a psychology major. The first lesson about psychology is that it is not a "hard" science, meaning that there are no "laws of psychology" like there are in physics or chemistry. Nothing is quite written in stone. So, the most important skill I took away from my psychology degree was how to decipher research. Now I can't read anything about new research without asking all the annoying questions a scientist would. Does the data actually say anything about the variables? Is there any correlation? Is the sample size large enough? What if there's a third, unknown, variable? What are the results not telling us? For that reason, I tend to disregard nutritional studies. Not because they are "soft" science, but because they are often reported based on the headline rather than what the data actually shows. So, as far as the health effects of vegetarianism go, I can't rely on all the typical reasons people think they should give up meat. No, for me it is something else. I recognize that health and nutrition are unique to every person. You have to experiment with different foods to find the right balance for you. My finance refers to it as, "If the Aliens Came and Put Us All in a Zoo, What Would They Feed Us?" For me, not eating meat just works for my body.

This experiment began mid-May. Over Memorial Day Weekend, my finance and I did eat meat (hamburgers, hot dogs, maybe I bag of pepperoni pizza rolls). And last Friday I had sushi. But, other than that we have been sticking to our guns on this one. Here's our findings thus far:

(1) Losing weight. When we stick to mostly veggies and fruit and not wheat-based carbohydrates, we lose even more weight.

(2) Better sleep. Our thought is that veggies are easier to digest and we are not having to work so hard to digest meat while sleeping.

(3) More energy. See (2) above.

(4) It is not as hard as we thought. We both love Asian food and all Asian cuisine is more than happy to make your food without meat. We indulge in pizza with mushrooms and olives. Plus, with the warmer weather, fruits and veggies are perfectly in season and delicious. We're ready for this!

(5) We will clean up our diet once we transition. A lot of people who take up vegetarianism initially go the route we are: eating pizza, pasta, etc. We understand that this is the transition stage and we plan on moving out of it as soon as we are weaned off meat. One step at a time!

Well, I suppose I should get back to work. Because, honestly, I cannot bill for this.