The sitcom image of a family dinner usually involves a defiant child being told that if they don’t eat their vegetables, they won’t get dessert. What the sitcom fails to show is how sometimes these kids grow up, have a mid-20s life crisis, and decide to give up eating meat. The biggest challenge I will face on this entire journey is learning to eat (and enjoy) vegetables. I have always been a picky eater, so this challenge isn’t unique to me. Struggling to find something on a menu that I can eat and actually enjoy is.So far, I find that garden burgers are actually pretty good (barbecue sauce helps). I have discovered that corn on the cob is amazing off of the grill.

For most of last week, I craved fried food almost constantly, assuming that the grease and the crunch must somehow remind me of my carnivore days. I have started drinking V8 juice – just until I get to where I can consume a wider variety of healthy foods. I have been attempting to get a sufficient amount of protein in my diet, but am still struggling with that. With the exception of the bean patties, I do not love beans, one of the more obvious and easily available sources. I did, however, discover that I enjoy Silk “milk” made out of soy.

This week, I started keeping a food diary. If you Google “benefits of a food diary” over 300,000 entries pop up. While chances are high that more than half are grossly unrelated, several legitimate websites pop up. The concept is simple: if you see everything you are eating in a day, written out, there is a good chance that you won’t like what you see. You may even be compelled to change it. I already find myself tempted to order this or that, and stopping myself, knowing that I really don’t want to see it written down. I can only hope that in a few more weeks, my food diary will read less like a Noah’s Ark of food, and more like, well, a healthy vegetarian diet should. It is all a work in progress, but I have to say I feel like I am progressing.

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