It’s funny – of all the ways I thought I’d end up here, this wasn’t the path I would have chosen.
Meat. Sorry, but I love the stuff. Tastes good, it’s satisfying, and when you get the right cut, breathtaking. Unfortunately, my body, she hates me, and in particular, she hates me after I’ve had meat.
You’d think this was a route I had to travel when Youngest was diagnosed with all of her food allergies, forcing us to experiment with reduced meat diets. Her allergies wouldn’t let us do vegan, but pork, beef, and vegetables were still ok, depending on preparation. Over time, we began expanding our cuisine, resorting to just separating out the cooking into different phases to avoid contamination. That works, almost, although you do find yourself occasionally feeling guilty that the kids just ate hot dogs while you are eating a freshly roasted chicken (allergen).
You’d think this was a route I had to travel after my congestive heart failure, but no, I ignored my body then, too. Sure, we reduced the amount of fatty meats we took in, but we still had meat. My ticker was still ticking, it was my lack of activity that was the real bad guy here, not (entirely) my diet.
You’d think was a route I would have traveled when I started associating cute, near cognitive animals with the meat on my plate. How can you eat Bessie? How can you eat Fufu? But no, although I felt the twinge of remorse, my stomach tended to win out.
No, it wasn’t until my latest bout with the doctors that I find myself standing (hobbling) here. This is particularly embarrassing to admit, but one of the side effects of my current pantheon of pills is being prone to gout. Like you, I’d always associated gout as not so much a disease as a condition that affected only old white men who wore stockings at some point in the 18th century, sucking game hens off the bone while drinking goblets of sweet wines. In other words, not really me.
The reality isn’t so grand, and there are only two things – despite pills – that seem to help these days. One is the consumption of cherry in high quantities. I prefer juice, though to be honest eating 30-40 cherries in a sitting works better even if it is sickening to the stomach. The other habit is a drastic reduction in meat consumption. Notice, I didn’t say I’ve given up meat all together. I want to be that strong, but I’m not. What I am is married to a wonderfully understanding person who has changed our grocery shopping habits so drastically that it actually takes effort some days to remember the last time we had meat. This isn’t the path to enlightenment that my colleagues and friends, many of who are vegetarians, would approve of, but its the path I’ve taken to get here. 
What’s helped? The grand garden experiment. It may have been started for a completely different context, but having a fresh influx of vegetables on an almost daily basis has gone a long way to helping make this transition. Sure, there’s only so much you can do with one giant squash when one pops up unexpectedly (this diet doesn’t really lend itself to spontaneity, not yet at least), but at the same time, fresh vegetables just falling into your lap can’t be ignored. I’m still a long way from what I’d call a healthy eater, but it’s a start.
Now to do something about the rest of my woes.
Related articles
- On the Viability of Going Vegetarian (wrythings.wordpress.com)
- How many times do I have to hear “eat less meat” before I become a vegetarian again? (malloryanderson.wordpress.com)
- My first year of being vegetarian (musicalapple.wordpress.com)
- Thinking of becoming Vegetarian? (essentialblogging.org)
