My Vegetarian Journey

To explain, I have to take you back to childhood. A time where I fought with my parents about eating food I didn’t like - foods that made me nauseas - and do so until today.

For example, the taste of milk on its own was and still is awful, the texture of crayfish too chewy, meat in curry nauseating and fish too slimy. Chicken was my favourite out of all the meats, followed by braai meat. Pumpkin tasted like fake butternut, pears tasted like soft red apples and cooked carrots were not vibing.

Albeit I’ve grown to love a lot of things, the ones I’ve listed still exist for me.  You might be thinking I was a difficult child? Well, you’re 100% right. I was, and made my stance known every time I was forced to have the meat from the curry or the cooked carrot side dish! I probably still am difficult :D.  Gosh, I never thought my food life would change in this way. Yet, the series of events that led me to a vegetarian lifestyle proved otherwise.

In my early twenties I had very dry skin, along with tummy issues (bloating, aches etc.). I was always trying various foods and skin care in the hope that it would all get better. I remember using coconut oil for cooking to be “healthier”. My mom suggested I try a food sensitivity test. The doctor who ran the tests indicated the foods I should avoid/reduce. On the list was coconut, chicken, chickpeas, and a few others. At the time, cutting the coconut was easy and I noticed my stomach react differently without it. Reducing the chicken was not as easy because my constant thought was “what would I eat”? All my meals revolved around it. So, I cut the coconut and kept the chicken.

I was 26 when I started intuitively eating. This meant eating when I was hungry and not just because it was lunch time. I started paying attention to how my body felt after eating food and how the foods I was eating made my skin feel. Growing up I had tried multiple diets which all obviously never sustained but led me to having a profound interest in the types of diets out there and how they work in the body. I was still very unhappy with my skin and my diet and started reading up on the blood type diet. The study still needs further scientific research but the essence of it is that your blood type can indicate the types of foods you need. My blood type showed that chicken, again, was something I should reduce. And again, I didn’t pay much attention to it. I couldn’t help but notice though how my body felt after eating chicken (whether it was free range or not) which was bloating and uncomfortable. After a few months I was noticing the trend and again kept thinking, if I stop eating chicken, what will I eat?

In August that year, I came home after working the late afternoon shift. I saw a chicken meal ready for me and just knew if I ate this, I would be sick. Well, you know what happens when you don’t listen to your intuition!? So yes, I got sick and threw everything up. It could have been many factors contributing to the events that night, but I just knew it was the chicken. And then I stopped having it.

I went two months not eating chicken while still knowing I could get my protein from meat/fish. In October that year, I was at a restaurant eating a steak and I just felt weird. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but it felt like I had this opportunity to stop eating foods I never much liked anyway. After thinking about it carefully, I made the decision to stop eating meat and fish too. My years of figuring out my own eating path finally appeared, and I got to lean into my instincts.

I noticed after time my bloating reduced and my skin wasn’t as dry anymore which came as a huge surprise. I don’t think or know if there is a scientific correlation, but I haven’t had a dry face since (touch wood!). The biggest challenge at the time was figuring out what to eat.

It wasn’t easy in the beginning. I spent almost 6 months to a year with a very small appetite. My diet ended up being mostly carbs (potato, plain pasta, toast) which I loved, but didn’t leave me feeling nourished. There weren’t much tasty recipes out there for vegetarians.

One day though, I saw this recipe and it had paneer in it and it felt like a light bulb moment. I started exploring with meals. I went back to curries. I was trying different foods and cooking them in my own way. My go to easy meal became lentil bolognese and spaghetti. I was also stuck on the store bought “chicken style” chickpea nuggets and burgers. (I later went on to learn how to make these myself and developed a lovely recipe for burgers.)

Food journey aside, I found out the hard way that there are vitamins and minerals you can only get from or are best absorbed from meat. I was 28 (about a year and a half without meat) and visited the doctor because I was going through depression. (I’ll go through my detailed depression story in another blog). We ended up doing a blood test, and she saw my iron levels were depleted. Depression is a symptom of low iron. After going for the iron infusion, I learnt that I needed to work harder at my vitamin B12 and iron levels. Since vitamin B12 can only be found in animal meat, I started a supplement. For iron, I supplemented but also incorporated methods to increase iron absorption from the foods I was eating. The supplements were easy, the food wasn’t. I had no guide, and the recipes out there were complicated, expensive, and included ingredients I could hardly pronounce. Work also took so much of my time, so my evenings were filled with quick easy air-fried meals.

Fast-forward to today. My passion for recipe development has increased, I intuitively eat and have completed a nutrition diploma. I’ve also created an eBook with recipes for 5 full days for anyone looking to try a vegetarian lifestyle or just find inspiration in their cooking (something I wish I had when I first started out).

I hope you know that my story isn’t to try and convince you to cut meat out. But I do hope it encourages you to lean into your intuition and trust your mind, body, and soul when it comes to food.

If you’re wondering if I’ll ever go back to eating meat - a huge part of me won’t because of how animals have formed part of the corporate business chain. I did try veganism once, but I really struggled without cheese and dairy free things. My body did not like that!

Well, that’s my vegetarian journey! There’s so much more I could speak about, such as the impact this change had on my family, events, eating out, dealing with comments from people etc. so I’ll save that for another post!

I’ll leave you with a friendly reminder: Food is our ally, and healthy looks different on everyone :)