{"id":6429,"date":"2010-09-22T12:30:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T19:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=6429"},"modified":"2010-09-22T12:30:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T19:30:44","slug":"why-wednesday-why-i-sucked-at-being-a-vegetarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=6429","title":{"rendered":"Why Wednesday – Why I Sucked at Being a Vegetarian"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you’re a regular reader of my site, you see that I eat a lot of meat: chicken, turkey, bacon, turkey burgers, and even STEAK! But what you may not know is that I was a vegetarian for about 12 years.<\/p>\n

Yep–it’s true. I went from being a vegetarian to a full-fledged meat eater.<\/p>\n

Why? In short, I started working out and running<\/a>. There were a lot of reasons I didn’t eat meat. But I found I wanted to suddenly. Running was the culprit for my sudden craving for steak. I went from never eating meat to drooling over a thick, juicy steak–medium rare at that!<\/p>\n

What the heck?<\/p>\n

In short, I sucked at being a vegetarian. I think it was part of the equation that became my weight gain.<\/p>\n

Poor Eating Habits + Bad Vegetarianism + Junk Food Obsessions + No Exercise = Obesity. <\/span>At least for me.<\/p>\n

This post is not to discourage anyone from being a vegetarian and I am not trying to down play the benefits of vegetarianism. I’m just speaking of my own experience.<\/p>\n

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The biggest reason I sucked at being a vegetarian is:<\/p>\n

I did not substitute my lack of protein with another kind of protein.<\/strong> I just didn’t eat protein. Stupid–I know. But I didn’t know anything different. I ate a lot of processed food. A typical dinner could very easily be a box of “Pasta Helper” of some sort and a salad (I was a vegetarian after all!). That’s not exactly a healthy meal–even with some veggies on the plate.<\/p>\n

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I would eat those MorningStar packaged foods which were protein but still not healthy.<\/p>\n

I was always tired.<\/strong> I don’t attribute this entirely to not eating meat because I had a lot of other health problems as an obese woman. But I know now that not eating meat played a big part in it. I was always tired. I was also very anemic. I had to take iron supplements just to get some energy.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of positives for being a vegetarian–IF you do it right. I did not. My cholesterol was skyrocketing even being a vegetarian.<\/p>\n

I did not learn the proper nutrition requirements my body needed if I stopped eating meat. I just stopped eating meat.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A common misconception is that vegetarians are skinny–or that they will lose weight immediately for not eating meat. That did not happen to me. In fact, my weight increased enormously.<\/p>\n

One of the things you can eat to add protein to your diet is nuts. Guess what? Nuts are super fattening. While a serving of almonds may be packed with tons of protein (6 grams) they are also really high in calories and fat.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Not only that, it turns out that I prefer my nuts to either be loaded with sugar (honey roasted) or really salty. Neither are a good option for healthy living. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Eating out was a challenge. <\/strong>I didn’t want to eat meat but didn’t really know how to order a vegetarian meal. I just assumed being a vegetarian was ordering a salad. Then I’d also order some fried food (mozzarella sticks for example) to go with it. Eating out was a challenge depending on what kind of restaurant I went to. I think I’d have better luck NOW as a vegetarian because Portland has a huge Vegetarian\/Vegan community here. The Vegan restaurant options are pretty vast.<\/p>\n

A Strange Happening<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve had to take a break from running. 6-8 weeks probably. I’ve noticed not running has changed my hunger in a few ways. \u00a0First, I’m not as hungry as I used to be. Second, I don’t crave steak like I used to. Or any meat actually. I eat it for the protein but I don’t CRAVE it like I did when I was running. I’m curious to see if that changes when I can run again.<\/p>\n

QUESTION: If you are a vegetarian, do you do it “right”? How do you get your protein?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re a regular reader of my site, you see that I eat a lot of meat: chicken, turkey, bacon, turkey burgers, and even STEAK! But what you may not know is that I was a vegetarian for about 12 years. Yep–it’s true. I went from being a vegetarian to a full-fledged meat eater. Why? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[55,66,75,104,106,154,167,171,1243,193,201,214,224,259,280,1389],"tags":[1526,1527,8694,1528,1137,1525,1390],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6429"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}