My ex once asked me, “If we’re vegetarian, why aren’t we thinner?” I laughed at that!

Just because you’re a vegetarian, doesn’t mean you’re automatically thinner. I told him, well, the only thing we don’t eat is the animal, we still eat milk products, I am ovo-lacto [I won’t eat animal flesh, but I will eat dairy and egg products], not vegan. I will admit that vegans tend to be a bit thinner, but it doesn’t matter, it’s how you eat what you eat, not what you eat. Look at the guy who lost 27 pounds on the Twinkie diet…http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html.

I have been a vegetarian since I was just about 14 years old. When my family lived in Israel for the summer between middle school and high school, I wasn’t crazy about the way the meat was cured, so I ate tuna fish, hummous, falafel and fruits and veggies. When we got back I thought I’d give vegetarianism a try, some friends of the family are vegans and I thought they were cool, I lasted about 6 hours… we had sausage pizza for dinner, who could blame me?

Then a few weeks later, I decided to try again, so I gave up red meat, 6 months later, chicken. I continued to eat fish and found out years later, that I was actually a pescatarian, who knew? Then about 5 years ago, I gave up fish altogether and although I will eat it once in a while, I am not back on the fish full time. I was at a party, looked at a shrimp, which I LOVED and said, I’m never eating that again, and I have eaten shrimp twice since then and I wasn’t feeling the warm fuzzies after that.

My mom was fantastic when I decided to give up meat, knowing my dad and sister would not participate in the fish or veggies, she would sometimes make something for just her and I and something else for them or sometimes just something for me. She was awesome and such an amazing cook, she loved to experiment and was always looking for new and inventive things for me to eat and she really loved it too. For example… vegetarian chopped liver, I’m jewish, I think it’s in my bloodstream, so that was very cool! I don’t know if she ever hoped that I would grow out of it, but I never did.

I enjoy my lifestyle, it works for me, it’s not for everyone and I wish sometimes that being a vegetarian would make you instantly skinny, but it doesn’t, some of the vegetarian prepared dishes are WAY fattening, so I have to work on myself the old fashioned way.

But I will tell you that I am not like a lot of vegetarians, my outlook is that the animal is already dead, it is going to be eaten, I just don’t have to be the one to eat it. I will cook it, I used to work in a gourmet deli and I would have to touch the raw chicken to put on the rotisserie, doesn’t bother me. I also don’t have a problem with hunting, as long as you’re going to use the entire animal, go for it, otherwise we have an overpopulation of animals running around and then eating each other out of food and dying, so give mother nature a hand. [I once was mortified when I hit a rabbit than ran out in the middle of the road, but on the way back, I saw a fox eating it, circle of life and all].

I love meeting people who are new to vegetarianism, they ask lots of questions and I love to share my knowledge, but it’s better that they do it for the right reasons, not just to lose weight and not to do it because they think its fashionable and then wear it as a badge, that is way annoying. Done with my soap box.

I’m not crazy about it when people make fun of me for not eating meat, I don’t make fun of you for eating it… and I really don’t like it when people assume that if there is meat in the dish, that I will just pick the meat out, it doesn’t work that way. I have gotten used to people not remembering that I don’t eat meat, so I often bring my own food places, like a veggie burger you can stick in the microwave, doesn’t bother me at all, I’m resourceful!

And in response to the question, if you don’t eat meat, why eat things that are shaped or made to taste like it. The answer, well mine anyway, is that I enjoy the idea of a burger or maybe even chicken nuggets, I just don’t enjoy the idea of eating the actual animal.

I used to have a poster on my wall that said “Does your food have a face?” I also said I would never eat anything I’d have as a pet. People always ask me if I’m a vegetarian for health reasons or political; well, in response… It started off as a trail, just to see if I could do it, then it became a moral and conscious decision and now… I’ve been a vegetarian for almost TWENTY SIX years [now you know how old I am, do the math, I’m not doing it for you!] and now… it’s just my life, I don’t know how to be any other way and I’m ok with that and I hope you can be too!