My worst enemy that month? A half-eaten taco. To be completely honest, I was only going to try and be a vegetarian for a week. I didn’t think I could tear myself away from chicken nuggets for any longer than that. But a week went by and I was doing so well that I thought, Hey, I could definitely do this for an entire month, no problem, and that was when the real challenge began. Let’s just say that most of my dreams during that month included beef tacos and hamburgers.
My mom is a pescetarian, meaning the only meat she eats is fish and shellfish, so I was already eating mostly meat-free meals before this challenge started. But I decided to go full-vegetarian and starting declining the shrimp she offered to add to my pasta and the tilapia she served alongside vegetables. She gave me a lot of great advice on how to adjust to my new diet, but I didn’t really take anything she said too seriously. She told me that she ate a cup of walnuts every morning to make up for the protein she didn’t get from meat. Also, she added lentils to her pasta, since they’re high in protein as well. Admittedly, I thought I knew how to be a great vegetarian without anyone’s help; all I had to do was cut meat out of my life, right? Wrong.
Do you know what happens when you don’t compensate for the protein you’ve cut out of your diet? You mess with how your entire body functions. I had been eating nothing but carbs and vegetables for two weeks straight when I started feeling tired all the time. I had a headache I just couldn’t shake and wasn’t concentrating as well as I used to. I told my mom what was happening and she said that I probably had anemia. It made total sense: I wasn’t getting enough iron in my diet since I wasn’t eating any protein. I felt like the dumbest person alive for not realizing this would happen to me.
I realized that I didn’t really like lentils or walnuts or anything else my mom recommended I should eat and realized—I was utterly screwed (pun intended). My biggest downfall was a Moe’s beef taco that I saw my sister eating a few days before my month as a vegetarian was coming to a close. “Hey Alena, I’m not gonna finish this…do you want it?” My sister asked me as she slowly wrapped up her taco.
“You know I can’t eat that ‘cause of my whole vegetarian challenge.” My eyes followed her taco and I was basically acting like a dog watching a bone (not my proudest moment).
“Alright, well I guess I’ll have to throw it out then,” she said and the carnivore in me snapped. I snatched her taco and devoured it. I ate the whole dang thing. I reveled in every crumble of beef that fell onto the plate and I have never been more embarrassed of anything in my entire life. I didn’t keep this month-long promise because I couldn’t hold myself back from a taco which probably contained like 60% beef and random meat fillers.
I learned something really important that month though: lentils are your friend and Moe’s tacos are definitely not. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep eating them though. Maybe I’ll just try and incorporate a few healthy and vegetarian-friendly foods into my diet.