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My boyfriend, Erik, has been vegetarian for about 4-5 years now. His reasoning is pretty simple: animals don’t deserve to be killed for our consumption and technology has come a long way so that human life can sustain itself without needing to eat meat. If he had the choice to go vegan at restaurants or with his recipes, he’d go vegan.
For me, it was a little different.
Recently for the past 2 years or so, especially since Erik and I started dating, I’ve just been eating less meat. I love sharing my food and I have this weird quirk in which I never like to finish that very last bite. Very weird. Anyway, whenever I eat out or cook meals with Erik, I tend to go vegetarian with him. BUT, foods with meat are very much a huge part of my Taiwanese culture. Lu rou fan (minced pork with rice), pork chop, beef noodle soup, Taiwanese sausage, all the dim sum dishes, you name it! My parents were skeptical when they learned Erik was vegetarian. And my mom took a blow when I informed her I was converting.
So why did I decide to go vegetarian?
The first week of going vegetarian was the hardest only because I had no idea how to start filling my body with veggie food so that I wasn’t hungry all the time. It totally reminded me about when I tried Whole30 last year (blog post about that here). The hunger wasn’t too bad this time round and I had Erik’s full support. It’s totally possible for people to lose weight/fat by going vegetarian, given that they are still eating in a calorie deficit. Vegetables, especially non-starchy ones, can fill up your stomach by sheer volume and are less caloric than meat. I still consume dairy (that ice cream, cheese and froyo life) and eggs.
But what about protein? I was most worried about that aspect, since I knew I needed a certain number of grams of protein to lose fat. But to simply live and function, your body doesn’t need hundreds of grams of protein. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) can be calculated by multiplying your weight by 0.36. That puts me at around 45 grams of protein per day. So it’s totally possible for everyone to go vegetarian (and even vegan) without worrying about how much protein their bodies need. To learn more about that, here‘s an article from Harvard Health Publishing.
Last I checked, I lost about 4 pounds in a month and a half of going vegetarian. My workouts remained pretty consistent, and I could definitely be losing more weight/fat if I weren’t eating so many potatoes and easy carbs! If you have any more questions about what it’s like to go vegetarian or if you have any concerns, drop me a message or comment below! ????????????????
xx Sam
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