"Vegetarian" is an old Indian word meaning "I don't hunt so good."

So I’m sitting in the break room gnawing on a really good piece of marinated chicken breast from last night’s dinner and I am overhearing a conversation that a coworker is having on the phone. She’s demanding that the person on the other line “hide the vegetarian pizza somewhere…like the freezer.” Apparently she’s afraid her dinner will be all gone by the time she gets home. Two thoughts that go thru my head are: 1) I bet she’s real pleased to see me ripping apart my lunch in the carnivoristic manner that I am (yes, I know that’s not a word…get off my back) and 2) Do I really want to go back to being a vegetarian once I’ve gotten down to my goal weight? I mean I’d like to do the right thing and stop eating the animals of this world. It just isn’t normal in my mind. But, I did find it hard at times not to eat critters when I did the vegetarian thing for a whole year. I like fish and fishy foods. I like marinated things. I totally like breakfast burritos with eggs and cheese. I was raised in Wisconsin where brats are a their own food group! But it was so hard to explain to everyone all the time what I could and could not eat. It was hard to scour the menus at restaurants for vegetarian items. I hated having to have my own food and constantly worrying that everyone else was going to want some so I'd be left with nothing (free pizzas at the office were the worst....why does the cheese pizza look so much more tempting to everyone instead of the double meat pizza?) It was hard to walk past a really good backyard BBQ and have my mouth not water in envy (and I hate BBQ flavored things!)
But after reading The Pig Who Sang to the Moon by Jeffery Masson, I was reminded of the emotions of animals. I know that they feel and think and love and grieve. I know that I shouldn’t be eating something that has emotions and a family and a life. It ain’t right. I’m torn over what to do. I am doing the low-carb thing right now and have researched whether it’s possible to be a vegetarian at the same time. It’s next to impossible unless I want to become really, really good friends with salad. I can’t have a salad for every frickin’ meal. I can’t always tolerate this diet…imagining a life of salad is not something I wanna do. I miss beans and rice and French bread. I don’t think any of those things are “bad” for me, especially in moderation. I don’t think that low-carb diets are the best thing in this world. I am denying myself some important foods. But I guess it’s okay as long as I can fit into the lower sized pants and I can feel better about myself. I will have to just see what happens when I get down to my goal weight. Maybe my body can handle more carbs and I can switch to low fat vegetarian items instead. Or maybe I can throw the whole diet mentality out the window because I will have learned moderation and have a much more active metabolism. We’ll just have to wait and see.