choosing to go vegetarian: the deciding factor

I've been sharing the story of my decision to go vegetarian on Mondays for the last three weeks. This one happened to land on April Fool's Day, but I promise, it's no joke!

If you need to catch up, I began with a prequel, and followed up with a major influencing factor.

At the end of last week's post, I mentioned that becoming an Arbonne Independent Consultant prompted me to pay more attention to factors that represent the company's lifestyle.

So...onto the "last straw" of sorts...the factor that prompted me to actually act.

It began with a few likes on facebook: vegetarian, vegan, and rawforbeauty. I figured I could get some updates on my feed to see what this lifestyle looked like every day and maybe find some recipes that I would be brave enough to try.

What I really found was an intelligent community of misunderstood people (mostly) who simply wanted to improve their overall quality of life. It shows that they also want the same for others. The pages often highlight discussion board threads which I would read if my interest was piqued enough.

I don't even remember the thread I was reading when I saw this:

Not everybody who sees this will agree with the video. Or me. You may think it is silly, or invalid, or many other things. That is OK. When I saw it, I saw an argument that made sense to me personally. Like most people, I had heard the argument for animal welfare and a better economy in relation to vegetarianism.

Both of those and many other are valid personal reasons. They were enough to interest me, but not enough to sway me. This video communicated in a way that got through to my way of thinking.

You see, I work with dogs. I believe without a doubt that dogs are omnivores who are meant to have meat in their diet. I also am a bunny owner. When I did my research before adopting my first bunny, I learned that bunnies are vegetarian. I took that information at face value. No politics, no conspiracies. It is what it is.

One day, my meat-fearing bunny was hungrier than usual and snatched a piece of pepperoni out of my hand. Ate the whole thing. I panicked. Upon quick internet research, I found out that essentially, while a rabbit can eat meat, it really shouldn't. Their bodies are processed to digest plants and not meat, thus over time, the meat will cause more and more damage to their system if they continue to eat it. Knowing that, why would I ever intentionally feed my bunny meat?

Do you see where I'm going here? I share that anecdote often when people ask me "why." Essentially, I can and have eaten meat in my life, but with the knowledge that perhaps my body isn't ideal for processing it, why would I?

Shortly after seeing this, I tried my first vegetarian recipe, Black Bean Veggie Burgers. My father in law saw the post and recommended I watch Forks Over Knives (I highly recommend this if you haven't seen it!). This further validated my thought process.

Initially, I thought that I would try a recipe here and there to get my footing. I didn't want to go hardcore all at once and fail. Well, I haven't eaten meat since I made those burgers over two months ago!

The reality is that the pieces were in place for me to make this decision for some time. What was blocking me was my own mind convincing myself that it would be hard and I wouldn't succeed. Any argument in the world, no matter how valid, will never be enough until your mind is in a place where it is ready.

Thank you all for following along and for all of your encouraging comments. I have enjoyed all the positive feedback that has come as a result of this. Please feel free to ask any questions or even leave feedback about additional information you would like to see me post!



Thanks to Coastal Charm and Prowess and Pearls for sharing my story!