As anyone who's ever had the pleasure of dining out with us knows quite well, we are lovers of meat. Dried meat. Stewed meat. BBQ’d meat. Raw meat. Braised meat. Cured meat. Yum. that being said, we have never been completely ignorant to the fact that it is probably not the healthiest part of the food pyramid you may remember from health class.
One eve a little over a year ago while watching the tellie we ended up flipping onto a documentary called Forks Over Knives. The whole point of the documentary was, as the name suggested, to prove that food requiring a knife to cut leaves something to be desired in terms of healthfulness compared to those that don’t.
As evidence, it centered around a massive study performed in China, and the findings do a wonderful job of suggesting that diets containing meat lead to much higher rates of cancer. More info on the China study can be found here. We decided we should do “Meatless Mondays” to cut back a bit. So when the new year arrived we resolved to give it a go.
As you might imagine, this was a big deal to us. I, for example, don't really consider a meal a meal unless it has protein (read - meat). It’s taken me quite some time to acknowledge that it’s ok to have a meatless meal and still be satisfied.
Speaking of feeling satisfied, my resolution from the previous year was to slow my eating. Slowing down translates to eating less because you give your brain a chance to feel full (or something). To accomplish this, the plan was to not put any more food in my mouth until I finished what was already in there. I can’t say that I’m always able to think about it and do it, but I try. Hopefully it will some day become something I do without thinking about. Hopefully.
It’s now been almost a full year, and we’ve managed to get through meatless Mondays relatively unscathed. For our next Monday post, Maribel will highlight some of our favorite meatless meals that we’ve discovered (and conveniently leave out the failures for your benefit). We are now looking forward to our next challenge, which will be layered on top of meatless Mondays. We are determined to add one fish meal per week to our diets (preferably wild caught, so we don’t turn into human thermometers - (ya know - cuz of the mercury)).
While I don't think anything will ever take the place of meat in my diet, I've adjusted and accepted that meat isn't always necessary and that a meal can be satisfying even if there's no meat in it.
The goal here's not only to lose weight, but to get healthy so we can live to be 150 years old and be around for flying cars. They just seem so cool.
Dec 15, 2013
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Healthy Living,
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New Years Resolutions,
Posts by Ethan
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5 Comments »
Nice job!