I like the idea of not killing animals for my meals, but can’t quite give up a good steak every once in awhile.

While this week wasn’t painful, I missed my normal meals. I liked the challenge of not eating meat, but won’t be challenging myself for longer than this week. This month I was a vegetarian. Well, I was a vegetarian for a week. I strategically chose a month that was cut short with how the school’s schedule was so I didn’t need to be a vegetarian for too long.

I was surprised though. It wasn’t that hard to completely cut out meat. Granted, I was lucky because I told my mom, and she planned vegetarian family dinners. This made it easier because I was never tempted by a good burger, chicken, or steak when I was really hungry in the evening.

Instead of meat as the main course of a meal, I had soup for dinner for five days straight. It was good, but I have definitely had enough Tomato Basil and Black Bean soup for awhile.

I also got really sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I had them almost every day, and was really tired of them by the end of the week. In the past, my mom could make me a killer grilled cheese if I went home at lunch, however my homework work kept me in the library, so I ended up packing a pb&j everyday.

I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t go vegetarian for a very long time. It wouldn’t be impossible, but I would miss meat with my meals. The thought of not being able to have some good, crispy bacon in the morning, or a juicy meatball with my spaghetti makes the idea of cutting out meat seem to much to handle.

I was a little hungrier than normal, and I think it was because I didn’t do vegetarianism “the right way”. I did not do quite enough research before my challenge started, and this left me with minimal options during the week. Vegetarians have to get a little more creative to get all the nutrients they need. Besides not being used to eating as many veggies as most vegetarians do, I also did not find alternative ways of getting my protein. Looking into it later, I realized I should have made more of an effort to eat yogurt, beans, and nuts, so that I was feeling fuller, and had the enough protein to get me through the day.

If I were to do this again, I would do more research on vegetarianism, and find out ways vegetarians deal with these issues that come up. I could ask some vegetarians that I know what their favorite meals are, or what snacks they like. If I did this long term, it would be important for me to figure out some other ways of getting all my necessary nutrients, while still enjoying what I was eating.