Reflections on the Week

The experiment ended on Tuesday earlier this week. I have taken the last few days to reflect on what happened. Overall it was a fairly good week; Without random internet surfing I was able to get a mountain load of work finished, relax with meditation and come away feeling proud that I did not consume meat for an entire week. I did have my setbacks like the day I came back from my walk and decided it would be ok to surf the internet for two hours and the paper trash that I did produce from the soft pretzel purchase. But overall I would consider this week a success. It was also eye opening as well. The amount of things we purchase that have disposable plastic wrapping is shameful. Another thing that I noticed through my vegetarianism is how many meat options we have compared to vegetarian ones.

There was a request that I delve further into the training routine that I made for my friend and what kinds of foods that I decided to eat as a vegetarian. So here it goes: My friend wants to join the Marines. She has a year in order to get into shape to pass the fitness test to get in. Part of the test includes a three mile run and a pull up/bar hang test. She had started running the tree miles a day before I came along to help. Right now it is more of a general fitness plan to get her into shape: Sets of pushups, crunches and leg lifts are the majority of the workout apart from running. According to plan you would start with 10 pushups, do 30 crunches and then 15 leg lifts. Add five more to each after every week. That way you gradually build up strength. After she gets to 25 pushups it will be time to start pull ups for which I will come up with a base number when it gets closer to that transition. I also suggested that instead of a three mile run everyday, she do that every other day and run intervals on off days with at least one day completely off from running and working out for recovery. For those of you not familiar with intervals, what you do is get on a treadmill, and you set it to manual for 30 minutes in duration and then you start out at a walking pace. You walk for two minutes. At the end of the two minutes you turn up the speed to a full out sprint (as fast as you can go) for one minute. At the end of that minute you go back to a walking pace. You have a chance to work on slowing your heart rate in between sprints. It is very good training. I am able to get my heart rate to come drop from 165 (beats per minute) to 130. You repeat this process until the 30 minutes are up.

Now on to my food choices. After coming off of a tournament I was able to eat more unhealthy foods than normal. For the first time in weeks I was able to eat dessert which I found very enjoyable. The TDR pie was actually edible. Fortunately, I didn't go overboard but the possibility of eating dessert may have eased my transition to vegetarianism. Overall I maintained a healthy diet, I allowed myself to eat pizza twice during the experiment, and I also ate macaroni and cheese on Wednesday. For all my other meals, I relied heavily on the stir-fry station in TDR. A typical breakfast would consist of an omelette made with spinach and tomatoes and either a banana or an apple or some cantaloupe. Lunch and dinner would normally be stir-fried broccoli, with lettuce, carrots, corn and occasionally mushrooms (which are good sources of protein) in addition to some fruit. At night, I would also make a protein shake to compensate for any protein that I did not eat during the day (because, after all, I can only eat so many mushrooms without being sick of them).

My last day was not without temptation. My family came down to visit me on Monday, the last day of the experiment. They decided to take me out to eat after I showed them around the neighborhood. I took my little sister to Tempo Books. It's a bookstore that specializes in foreign language learning materials and foreign languages books. There, she discovered a Dr. Seuss book in French: Green Eggs and Ham or Oeufs verts au Jambon. And despite the fact she is in her early teens she insisted that I read it to her not once, but two times. Apparently she temporarily morphed into a three year old when she saw the book. After that we walked to the restaurant. They decided that it would be a good idea to go to Chef Geoff's for dinner. Why? Why a burger place on the last day of the experiment which does not allow me to eat meat. Why? Would I fall to temptation? Would watching my family eat meat and burgers in front of me be too much? I decided that I would stick with being a vegetarian. I looked at the menu and once again at least 90% of the meals contained some form of meat. I ended up eating a... (drum roll please) personal pan, mushroom pizza! It was really good. But that wasn't the only thing that was good. Looking around the table, I was happy to be there with my family and the fact that they had burgers on their plates didn't bother me. I looked at one of the burgers. It was a bistro burger, the kind that has bacon over top of the beef and melted cheese. But somehow it didn't appeal to me. I saw what many, including me, said was a delicious burger but I didn't feel tempted by it at all. This experiment was eye opening and it helped me examine my day to day life more than I had before. (And this is coming from a guy who takes long walks and ponders about things like the meaning of life while stroking his beard).

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read this and I hope you've enjoyed following my journey. Have a wonderful day!