Why I decided to go Vegetarian

A few years ago I learnt about mindful eating, the act of entirely paying attention to what you’re eating. The smell, the taste, the texture and the feelings which arise in your body as you eat, the feeling as it is chewed and eventually swallowed, the appreciation your body gives when eating beautiful food. Paying full attention to each and every bite, making meal times an enjoyable meditation, I recommend trying this to anyone!

One day, I was home alone and thought I’d take advantage of the quiet by making a beautiful meal and mindfully enjoying it. To be honest, it was that long ago that I can’t even remember exactly what was on my plate. What I do remember is that I had meat and when I attempted to mindfully eat it, it felt wrong. I had no idea why, there were no thoughts associated with the feeling, in fact, I was very confused. At the time I wasn’t ready to completely trust my instincts and I didn’t think I could give up meat.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I was talking with others about higher and lower vibrations, we are living in lower vibrations when in feelings of negativity and fear and higher vibrations when in feelings of positivity and love. I meditate, practice gratitude and positivity to raise my vibration regularly. We realized when animals are slaughtered they are in fear before hand, thus meat is still carrying a low fear vibration when we eat it. I had spent a couple of years suppressing the feeling that I didn’t want to eat meat any more because I had been pro-meat eating and had no idea how to cook without it!

Through the realization about the fear of the animals when slaughtered as well as the very ill treatment of them because of such high demands, it hit me that the biggest problem about eating meat is that we all eat way too much of it, raising the demand which in turn causes people to breed more animals and squash more of them into a cage. This is when my partner and I decided to go vegetarian, to simply lower the demand, even a little, plus to not put those low vibrations into our body.

We call ourselves “semi-vegetarian” to others as we will eat meat if someone has cooked us a meal. The point is to eat less meat to lower demands, so if an animal has already been killed and cooked then throwing it in the bin would be disrespectful to that animal who has given its life.

It’s been approximately a year since the decision and we haven’t looked back since. The adaption to cooking was easier than I thought and now, I can’t cook meat! I recently was given meat and when I tried to cook it, it turned out terrible. Since going vegetarian I was more aware of nutrients, the first few months were hard while my body adjusted, I felt exhausted most of the time. I implemented more fruit and vegetables into our meals and added lentils. A year later I am now able to throw together meals just as before and I’m loving it. My body has completely adjusted and I feel great!

Recently I made Chickpea Patties for dinner, I put them into a whole meal bun with the spinach, cheese, onion, tomato and beetroot. I served them with a little barbecue sauce and they were delicious!

Namaste

Belinda