4th of July!

Happy 4^th of July everyone! Or as I see it, ‘let’s eat really unhealthy food and drink a lot in celebration of our country’. I am sure in my younger years I had a turkey burger or two to celebrate and more than enough beer to intoxicate a horse but truly times have changed and so have I.  I came to realize 2 years ago that meat was just not a sustainable thing to consume. It was mostly about what I’d read that is truly in our food and in our nation’s meat. I couldn’t handle it; it had to stop for me. A couple of weeks before July 4^th 2010 I stopped eating meat. I never felt better! I was skinnier, happier and excited for my new journey as a vegetarian! Apparently I had never ate that much meat to begin with, a fact I would realize later when people asked me, ‘don’t I miss it?’ well no I don’t because I really didn’t have that much of it to begin with, some grilled chicken here or there but nothing crazy. I had always been weight conscious and knew that eating ‘heavy’ meats would cause me to gain weight, something I did NOT want to do. The amount of times I have had a cow burger I could most likely count on one hand, it just wasn’t for me. I will never forget the 4^th of July BBQ I went to at my boyfriend’s family’s house, a beautiful pool and buckets of meat. There were of course other things but I was proud of my choice and excited for the next step, learning more about meatless recipes!

Anyway this blog is mostly to commemorate my choice to go vegetarian, to stop eating the animals I loved. At first it never was about the animal cruelty or the environment; I started purely for selfish reasons, to be skinny! In fact Skinny Bitch was the book that finally pushed me over the edge into vegetarianism, and for good reason! It is a fantastic, skinny (hehe) book that outlines what’s really in the food we eat every day! I had read it a couple years before this and thought, ‘f this, I still want my splenda and chicken, who cares about this stuff! The government endorses it, it can’t be that bad’. Oh how silly a thought process that was! However, the second time around reading my Skinny Bitch book I realized what I needed to do, give up meat. As I said it was a pretty easy thing for me to do, every once and awhile I’d notice it but nothing I didn’t combat with, ‘I’m skinnier, happier and saving myself and the animals!’ People did not understand my choice and many still don’t (to be vegan). For me this is hard, something I struggle with every day when there is SO MUCH evidence out there as to why America needs to cut its meat consumption. Even the UN suggested meatless Mondays would prevent a whole host of global warming problems! But let’s not get political right now, I hate confrontation and people will come to their own choices in their own time, just like I did. No vegan or vegetarian was breathing down my neck about my choices and I try SO HARD not to do that to others. So in the spirit of freedom, which we do have quite a bit of in this country, enjoy your 4^th of July! (maybe meat free?! J)