Inspired by David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet”¹, I decided to significantly remove meat from my diet for the entire month of February 2021. Below are the details of this experience.
A bit about my usual eating habits:
- For as long as I can remember, I’ve eaten meat in the majority of my meals. In fact, I wouldn’t consider a meal to be fulfilling unless it had at least some meat as a main dish. I’m a huge fan of burgers, barbecue meats, and almost any meat dish with rice.
- It was only in early 2020 that I began eating salad with any regularity (I’ve been doing ~2 salads a week during the pandemic) and even then I’ve been adding some meat (mostly pieces of crispy chicken) to it.
This month of being vegetarian was a significant change from my habits, but I was excited to try it out.
Some additional notes:
- In my attempt to be vegetarian, I was not as strict on avoiding foods that may have eggs. I tried my best to not eat egg directly, but if there’s a bread recipe that recommended using an egg then I used an egg. This means for a month, I probably consumed roughly 6–10 eggs still. I believe my normal monthly egg consumption is somewhere between 20–25 eggs.
- During the pandemic I got into the habit of having oatmeal with bananas for breakfast almost every morning and I am somehow not sick of it. It’s just oatmeal + milk (1 or 2%, or almond) + half a banana, nothing else.
Common questions:
- Did I feel any different?
On the negative sides: I honestly felt weaker at times because I didn’t feel replenished by the meals I was having. This could have been mostly mental though because I’m pretty sure I got most of the nutrients from beans & tofu that I otherwise would get from meat. I also felt more depressed because I usually look forward to a lot of my meals. However, a fair amount of my vegetarian meals lacked in taste. I did what I could to make good tasting vegetarian dishes, but I don’t think I could have brought it to the same level as my meat-based dishes.
On the positive sides: I felt “lighter” & “cleaner” & overall more healthy. I felt like my body was able to process the food much more efficiently and not have to work as much to digest things. I kept up my usual workout routine (3–4 times, 40–60 minute per week), and I felt a bit more spry during the workouts. Specifically on the “cleaner” portion, I would sometimes feel like I would need to clear my throat for the hour or so after meat-heavy meals. This type of congested feeling practically never happened during my vegetarian month.
- Was I hungry a lot of the time?
I was hungrier than usual, yes. I snacked a lot and that consisted of baked goods, cookies, chips, fruit snacks, chocolate snacks and a few other things. I think in total I probably ate the same amount of calories as I usually do, just more spaced out throughout the day and probably consisting of more carbs/bread than usual.
- Did I lose weight?
My weight was unchanged from the night of January 31st to the morning of March 1st. I didn’t really pay much attention to calorie counts or weight fluctuations throughout the month so it was good to see that I didn’t lose or gain too much weight.
What are my takeaways and what will I do going forward?
- Tying this all back to the original motivation: I liked that I was able to eat less meat which would help combat climate change². I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this for a significant period of time especially since I had meat in most of meals on a daily basis for as long as I can remember.
- Before doing this month of reduced-meat diet, I thought to myself: If I could do this in February and be OK with it, then I could do it again in May, August, and November which would come out to 33.3% of the entire year being close to vegetarian. After doing this month, I think a more steady approach would be to instead do 2 times out of every week where I eat vegetarian only. This would result in 28.6% of the entire year being close to vegetarian. At some point I could do 3 times out of every week which would be 42.9% of the entire year being close to vegetarian.
- In general, reducing the amount of meat in my diet also seemed to be less expensive than my normal diet. I didn’t focus on doing a cost analysis, but meat items are usually near the top of the most expensive items on my grocery list. An added benefit to reducing my meat consumption would be that I would save more money in the long run.
- As I grow older, I do want to be more conscious & careful of what I eat. My metabolism has slowed from what it was a decade ago, so eating less meat should be healthier for me in the long term.
Overall, I encourage folks who have usually eaten meat for almost all of their meals to give some vegetarian/reduced-meat diet a try, whether it’s for some frequency of days, a week or a month. It was a fun experience for me, and I learned some things about myself as well as how I can adapt my eating habits going forward.
Photos of some of my meals:
