Changes

This year has been chock-full of changes in my life! I'm now a non-smoker; I quit smoking in February. I was kind of a "closet smoker". I smoked for about 10 years... which is insane to think about, but what's done is done. The important thing is that I no longer smoke!

I officially quit eating meat yesterday. I almost feel silly saying that I'm a vegetarian, since it's so new. My husband is quick to point out that I was "really bad about being a meat-eater". I have always felt slightly guilty about eating meat, could not tolerate to listen to my husband talk about what animal we were having for supper, and absolutely despised raw meat. I have only handled raw meat a handful of times, because it made me nauseous. I think spaghetti tastes better if it's just a veggie sauce - no meat. I rarely ate red meat because I didn't really care for the taste. The only meats I regularly consumed were chicken and turkey, and sometimes pork and fish. I was really weird about making sure the meat was "done". I'm sure Jason (my husband) won't miss me asking (at every meal where there was meat), "Are you sure this is done?"

Anyway. I watched slaughter house footage and that did it for me. I cried... a lot. I was sick to my stomach. I'm a huge animal lover and it really made me think about what I eat. I realized that all my life, I didn't really care what I ate, as long as it sounded good and it filled me up. I had to face the fact that I am not a conscious eater. I didn't think about what was on my plate and where it came from - I just ate. Since I didn't really enjoy eating meat that much in the first place, the easy conclusion was to stop eating meat.

I put myself on a 30 day vegan challenge to start out my new lifestyle as a vegetarian. This sounds drastic, but since I was being conscious about what I eat, I realized that I'm pretty much addicted to cheese. I rarely ate eggs, and I only had (skim) milk on my cereal in the mornings because I don't like the way milk tastes, but I love me some cheese. I have since modified my challenge, because Easter is at the end of this month, and Jason and I will be going to visit our families. Both of our families gather around food, and I don't want to alienate myself or make anyone uncomfortable. I'm going to eat vegan until Easter, and vegetarian on Easter. I don't know what I'm going to do after that. I'm going to be vegetarian still, but I may eat cheese and milk occasionally. Oh, and I'm not giving up honey. I buy my honey locally, and I jokingly told my husband, "I know where my honey comes from, and besides, I'm allergic to bees, so screw them!" :)