This blog post is a pretty personal account of my own journey with vegetarianism.    Two years ago I decided to become a vegetarian. My motives were both health and ethical.  I felt that a plant based diet was going to be better for my body and also I did not want to be cruel to animals.  Farm factories are horrible both for the animals and for the environment. I remember that I saw a documentary on Netflix called Cowspiracy and it really impacted me.  I made a decision and told my family. That was it for me and meat.

I am not going to say it was an easy transition. It was hard to give up meat because there were many meat based meals that I always enjoyed, especially chicken and steak.  However, I stuck to my guns and tried my best.  After about 6 months, I started to get used to eating only plant based foods.  I stopped craving meat. I never got disgusted with other people eating meat but I did feel better not eating it myself. The problem was, however, that even though I felt mentally and ethically better not eating meat, I began to feel very tired much of the time.  It became harder for me to do my usual 8 hours of school followed by 4 or 5 hours of dance practice.  I felt exhausted.  Some days I couldn't even get out of bed to go to school.  I wasn't sure what was the matter and I tried to muscle my way through it.

Fortunately, my mother decided to take me to the doctor for a blood test.  It was then that I found out that I had anemia.  My iron levels were very low.  We asked a nutritionist to come to the house to help guide me to a more iron rich vegetarian diet. She gave me all sorts of recipes and ideas, but the preparation of all of those dishes was too much work for me and my mother also didn't have time to do special meals for me all the time.  I had to take iron supplements and eventually I did start to feel better.  After a couple of months, I felt almost normal, but I didn't want to keep taking the supplements for the rest of my life and i still had not enough time to focus on the iron rich diet.

Eventually I had to make the tough decision to start adding occasional meat back into my diet.  I noticed that the animal protein really agreed with me but if I had too many meat meals on top of my very active schedule, I didn't feel as good.  So there was a very delicate balance to be maintained.  I am still working on this balance and I feel like when I get a bit older and more in control of my schedule - or maybe even during this next gap year - I will be able to focus on eating more in alignment with how I want to live my life.

Works Cited:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20351360#:~:text=Anemia%20is%20a%20condition%20in,range%20from%20mild%20to%20severe.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/healthy-iron-rich-foods

https://www.everydayhealth.com/anemia/anemia-basics.aspx