Vegetarian?

[Teonanacapilli]

Is anyone else here vegetarian? I am, but with a catch; I will only eat meat if I kill the animal myself.

I made the (very easy) change recently and some people laughed and asked "did you watch a video?". I hadn't at the time, but watched one tonight and now my reply would probably be violent. "Yeah I did, and maybe you should watch a fucking video too!" Watch something like this: http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp if you haven't yet, it's kind of important.

Definitely willing to do some primitive dental work on anyone who criticizes my reasons after watching that :axe:

 

[IJesusChrist]

I eat meat when I don't buy it. AKA if someone serves it to me, I eat it. Mostly in the fact I just don't want to bring up vegetarianism... I know I should be like "I'm a vegetarian and so should you!" but, I'm too shy? modest? something...

I do eat fish though.

But my primary diet (seriously 80-90% of it):
Spaghetti
Mixed veggies (frozen)
Granola / vegetable protein / oats

 

[Echoes]

My diet is mostly vegetarian, but I'm not too serious about it. I usually eat chicken or fish once a week...

 

[trick]

i think im going to have to be arrogant and steer clear of that video.

ive seen one of those and it screwed me all up as far as what to eat......

took ages to not think about it during a steak.
i like meat and around my mouth.. sorry. :?

 

[ophiuchus]

im coming to find out that i dont care as much for dark heavy meats like steak and such. it's not that i dont enjoy that taste, quite the contrary. i find that if i eat any kind of meat like that; the time that it takes to break down in my stomach so that i dont feel like a lead weight anymore is waaaay too long for my purposes/needs. i've gained an addiction to various nuts and use that as a "replacement". i snack on them throughout the day instead of packing all my calories on in one huge go as is with a steak or even ham or chicken. chickens good though if i want a substantial meal. fish is amazing. protein from veggies is good too; the veggies fill more of your stomache without keeping you full for hours and hours. i work out several times a day most days, so my body doesn't benefit from heavy meals/meats much any more unless it's a rest day. complex carbohydrates(whole grains), nuts, veggies, and fish when i can afford. spinach is becoming a staple. long and/or whole grain rices are good to cook in advance too, makes for more meal possibilities than just oatmeal and granola all day.

 

[IJesusChrist]

^steak

yeah, I haven't had dark meat, hamburger or steak in so long, maybe close to a year. My dad brought me out to a steak house a couple weeks ago and I had a HUGE steak.

It tasted good..? But I didn't like it? It was an odd sensation, it seemed foreign to me, almost. And dear god did I feel weird after that. I felt slow for atleast 4 hours, as if my energy had just disapeared and I had gained 10 pounds. Needless to say though, I really looked forward to a steak the next day - my body had revamped up to processing meats... I refused it though. Had some spinach and eggs instead.

 

[Teonanacapilli]

Yeah, it's amazing how you can take a fast or optimize your diet and try eating those garbage foods you used to love, then notice how they make you feel lethargic and generally sucky. You can observe what foods take a long time to fully digest (mouth to anus) and which make you feel sick, and then you will understand why not to eat it.

Where I work, there is always free doughnuts and greasy-sugary baked goods in the coffee room. Today was the first day since I got serious about vegetarian and healthy eating when I felt hardly any temptation at all to take a bite. Association helps, to use your reasoning rather than the ape impulses and decide if it's a good choice or not.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Yeah exactly! Especially the association part, like smokers, it is exponentially harder to quit bad food (smoking) with a bunch of bad food lovers (smokers).

My friends make fun of me being a vegetarian, they think I'm a hippocrit because I eat fish once in a while... The point of vegetarianism, in my opinion, also has to do with generally being healthy, not only the fair treatment of animals. Eating healthy is cumulative, every healthy bite you take is a healthy bite your body will physically remember forever, and the opposite goes for bad food.

 

[ophiuchus]

^
i totally agree. 5 years i smoked. 2 & 1/2 was me trying to quit... almost all of my friends smoked at the time. most still do, but i have overcome the cravings somehow heheh. now i can't even sit comfortably around secondhand... although when a good one is first lit up, that smell... omg.

once i started eating healthy (and training) consistently about 6 months ago, it was like a mental shift in the way i look at shitty foods and things like smoking. i dont even desire them anymore. well sugar is another story, im still trying to break that addiction, but have been relatively sucessful so far with things like fresh and dried fruits. fuck you starbucks!

 

[IJesusChrist]

I don't know what it is about sugar man, I think I may be one of those people that really may regret giving it up. There are times I'll be sitting at the couch and I fucking NEED a fruit roll up or some skittles. I don't know how much of it is addiction, and how much of it is actually me needing some sugar in my body - I seem to be VERY sensitive to it;

Too much sugar - I feel like shit, I fall asleep, I wake up and still feel like shit not good.
Too little sugar - Oi. I feel deflated, or somehow empty, physically.

I have more problems with too much sugar though :?

 

[ophiuchus]

agreed. i believe it actually IS necessary in very small amounts concerning nutrition tables/graphs and stuff. i feel i dehydrate quicker without some kind of oily or sugary substance, or i feel physically dry or something, like i NEED a little something something every now and then to grease the gears, especially with a more vegetable oriented diet. yeah it's a weird kind of empty.

 

[Teonanacapilli]

It definitely is NOT necessary, just addiction, environmental pressure, memories... there's lots of possible causes. Think about humans when we were apes in the jungle. We ate what we could find; nuts, fruits and vegetables. Tools came along and we started killing other animals for food, now the tools are more complex and we are killing ourselves with food...

That "jungle diet" is what I'm working towards. With our transport capabilities today, there is NO reason why we need to kill a living animal to get what we need, besides the obvious and ever-present; human weakness.

 

[IJesusChrist]

Don't have time now but look up a real diet.

The amount of meat we need to eat a day is smaller than the size of your palm. The amount of grains is like a soft ball. Everything else (until you feel satisfied) is suppose to be fruits and vegetables.

Milk and dairy - about the size of your thumb per day.

That is the most we can digest - physically digest. After that it is just wasted and actually degrades your digestive system.

Cool fact: during long term droughts/famine/great depression people lived alot longer, because they eat alot less.

You age by using your digestive tract.

 

[ophiuchus]

Don't have time now but look up a real diet.

The amount of meat we need to eat a day is smaller than the size of your palm. The amount of grains is like a soft ball. Everything else (until you feel satisfied) is suppose to be fruits and vegetables.

Milk and dairy - about the size of your thumb per day.

That is the most we can digest - physically digest. After that it is just wasted and actually degrades your digestive system.

Cool fact: during long term droughts/famine/great depression people lived alot longer, because they eat alot less.

You age by using your digestive tract.

nana, ijc pointed out what i meant. i dont think that people "need" SUGAR in their diet per se. but i do recognize the need for some form of dairy- oily and fatty substance, albeit in small amounts. the thing is, and you are right here, that people don't need to go out of their way to get these oils, the food they eat(in america anyways) is pretty well saturated in fat and shit for the most part. these things can easily be had from a regular balanced diet without going out of ones way to buy sugary things.

unfortunately i didn't have alot of time for this post. be back later...

 

[Danielise]

It seems that it's very common for people to go vegetarian as a direct result of tripping. I've experimented with pescitarianism, vegetarianism, veganism, and raw veganism over the past 4 years. I have 2 friends that went from omnivores to vegans immediately after tripping and soon raw vegan and another friend that immediately went to vegetarianism. Something just clicks in the mind and eating meat or even animal products altogether no longer makes sense. I personally feel that vegetarianism is the ideal diet from the research I've done and just my personal experience.

Sugar. It's really not all that difficult to give up if you replace it with a good amount of fruits. High-sugar fruits work very nicely, such as dates, mangos, figs, mmm. Still complex carbs and you keep your energy levels up. IJesusChrist, try some dates when you're feeling lethargic and empty. They're delicious, dense, and super sweet. When I was 12, I stopped eating junk food altogether, something that sounded ridiculous to my peers. I stopped eating all sweets, no exceptions. After about 2 weeks, I was losing the cravings for junk food and within a month, they were pretty much completely gone. I replaced the junk food with a shit load of fruit (lol sort of punny). Like with meat, the idea of eating a candy bar seems foreign to me, ha. I am not super strict with it now; I do indulge in healthy junk food like raw vegan strawberry shortcake yum. Alright this is getting off topic...

Anyway. Vegetarianism. It's cool.

 

[BrainEater]

omg the video is scary. it pains each time when i see that such people live on our world..
i heard sometimes it's really unhealthy to eat meat, for obvious reasons, if you think about where the meat might come from. ("unhappy", sick, drugged and tortured animals)
also the obsession of western culture for mass meat consumption is unhealthy for our planet in these days.
as far as i know the production of meat-food-energy contrary to plant-food-energy needs about 10 times the energy and therefore resources. the trends we see in the meat industry regarding animal cruelty clearly indicate a serious lack of respect for our own origins, ancestry, family background and home. (nature)
it seems to me some people are becoming monsters..

 

[Teonanacapilli]

Well we've put a price on a life, not only that, but on a sentient, emotionally complex life like piggy or cow. This is one of many reasons why humans in the developed world have a diseased soul. Most if not nearly all people take no conscious thought when they casually grab that cellophane-wrapped flesh, representing an animal life, off the shelf for dinner.

Danielise, what you said about tripping bringing about these changes, it's true. Entheogenic experience is so thought-provoking, easily influencing paradigm shifts like this. When you see the universal connectedness, it's hard for you to keep living in the dark. After the trip we must be wakeful, mindful and careful.

That shit in the video is called a holocaust.

 

[waygie]

who cares about animals? thats the way life is...i'm pretty sure lion's don't get permission from the zebra when they eat them

 

[Teonanacapilli]

who cares about animals? thats the way life is...i'm pretty sure lion's don't get permission from the zebra when they eat them

I hope you're joking. Did you watch the video?

 

[waygie]

What makes you think animals deserve to live?