Pickles

As of last night, around 5pm I've cut out meat from my diet.  I've been planning this since around last night at 4:59pm or so. It all started yesterday morning when Cassie and I were out to breakfast.  She convinced me to try a piece of egg, a food item I haven't had for about 15 years.  It's a slight phobia of cracking open the unfertilized birthplace of an animal.  I'm well aware egg is in pretty much everything, and that doesn't bother me.  I just don't want to look at it. It was at dinner where I was looking at sauce options at spaghetti works and Cassie recommended I try the one without meat and I figured... why not.  Not only will I eat this without meat, I'm going to eat everything else without meat too.  Instead I can attempt to put things into my diet that I wouldn't normally eat.  So I made my order, and the waitress asked "Would you like a meatball with that?"  Bitch. So it began, a spur of the moment decision impacting things I do every day.

I don't plan on doing this forever, but I see it as an experiment.  Can I start eating things I wouldn't normally eat because I've cut out the standards?  Will I feel better?  Will I lose weight?

Lunchtime comes today and I have to make a decision on what I'm to eat.  So I go to a local sandwich place by the office and for the first time in my life utter the words "veggie sub".  I even looked around to make sure nobody could hear me first.

He takes out some bread and layers with tomatoes.  I don't like tomatoes.  He looks at me and says "what else do you want on it?"  I look around and complete the sandwich with american cheese, onions, lettuce, oil and vinegar and finally pickles.  I brought it back to my desk and took a bite without even looking at it first.  First impression... i really like those pickles.

After work today i'm going to whole foods and see what I can try and hack together as far as grocery shopping.  I see veggie pizzas, noodles, pasta and bags of salad in my future.  Things I still don't have to figure out how to cook... but just things I already like that won't have meat in it.  I'm not trying to eat healthy... i'm just removing my default and still going to eat like crap.

I recalled the story to Cassie last night on how I started drinking only diet pop.  I stopped drinking regular pop for a whole year first and only drank water.  Once you lose your comparison then settling for something not as good is easy.  So I don't think you'll see me eating tofu anytime soon, but I'll stick to things that I'm already familiar with and in time i'll try eating things i'm not.  By that time I won't know any better?

Being this is an experiment I don't see it lasting more than a couple months unless my life dramatically changes for the better because of it.  I have no idea with slaughtering animals and then ripping the flesh off their tasty bones so i'm sure i'll be eating meat soon enough.  Besides Christmas is coming.. so that's a given.