Going No Meat

Yesterday began Lent and with a bold declaration I told my wife that I was going no meat and no soda/pop for 40 days, she deftly replied, "You can't just go all willy nilly with no plan, your going to get sick." With my Kindle in hand, she hadn't seen me since Christmas diving into books like Scott Jurek's Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey into Ultramarathon Greatness  nor watching Food Inc, Forks Overs Knives, and Vegucated .

As an runner, one of my weakest links has always been my diet. I have swung the pendulum both ways from being healthy and conscious of my eating to gimme that extra slice or two of pizza because I just ran 20 miles. I have always been aware that the better I ate, the better I felt, but have just never made it a priority. Can't change the past, so time to aim my focus forward.Even with meeting several fellow runners who were vegan, I never have stuck to making any meaningful change.

Perhaps it has been the perfect storm of my increased yoga practice and delving into the books and movies that my interested has been renewed and given my purpose to my eating over the last month. My yoga practice has given me a better awareness of my body as it slowly works to unwind itself. While I have been in no ways perfect, one of the highlights that I learned from Jurek's book was that his transition to veganism was a slow one. In order to make a systemic change that will last, you need to incremently make changes in order for them to take effect. Henceforth, I decided during this period of Lent due to my religous practice to give up meat and soda/pop.

Forgoing soda/pop for me should be an easy one. I am not one much for the bubbly concotion, but I am not gonna lie that a Coke or a Root Beer doesn't satisfy the palatte every once in awhile. Going no meat though should prove to be a challenge. On average, I would say that I have meat 3-5 times a week at lunch or dinner and in various forms. I know from my initial reasearch that we do not need as much protein as we believe and that you can get in many forms via a whole food or plant based diet.

Putting it out there for public record should also help to strengthen my resolve and accountability. Saying it only to yourself makes it far easier to quit when no one knows your really making any changes. So here we go. One day down so far and 39 to go.