The Month of Living Pescetarianly

At the beginning of the month, I embarked on an adventure: I decided to give up all meat and poultry for one month.

I had a couple of reasons for doing this. The most important reason was that I've been trying to be healthier since my mom died, and I thought that a mostly vegetarian diet would be healthy. But honestly, the idea only occurred to me after reading some literature about how meat is not particularly good for the environment.

So I decided to try it out.

The results have been mixed. Ultimately, I didn't lose any weight, and I may have gained a pound or two. I don't feel any healthier, and in fact, before I started taking an iron supplement, my anemia was so bad that, for a couple of days, I was barely functioning.

My conclusions:

1. I have no problem giving up poultry. I did not crave it at all during the entire month. I can't say the same thing about red meat.
2. I really like fish, and, despite eating it all month, I have yet to get bored of it. There are a lot of varieties and a lot of options on how to prepare it.
3. Even keeping a mostly-vegetarian diet, I don't eat enough vegetables.
4. I eat way too much cheese. It's probably my favorite food.
5. I really don't eat a lot of shellfish. I don't order it in restaurants very often, and I don't cook it in my house -- except for lobster ravioli from the Italian Store.
6. Actually, I really don't cook anything in my house. Even with watching my diet, I only cooked in the house about 8 times during the entire month.
7. Cupcakes are not a healthy dinner.

So, am I going to stay pescetarian? Probably not. The siren call of steak will, ultimately, be too hard to resist -- but I'm not rushing to eat it either. I think what that means is that I'm going to limit my meat and poultry consumption, now that I know that I don't have to eat it every day.