Return of the Vegi

If you read my last post and are wondering about the book I mentioned, you'll just have to wait a while cause I'm gonna go all bibliophile on you in the very near future. Good things come to those who wait.

So it started with cycling, then progressed to running, and finally the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. About six weeks again I started eating vegetarian again. Ahhhh, I hear some of you out there yelling. I know, I know. I used to think salad was what my dinner ate. I thought PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. I thought if God didn't want us to eat meat, she wouldn't have made it so tasty. Well, all you carnivores out there just look at it this way, there's now more meat for you.

I was a vegetarian back in the 80's for several years. I had no grand social agenda behind my thinking, I just thought that it was a better way to go. I was pretty well into it when I went on a kayak expedition in Mexico and we ate MRE's. No veggie options there so back to the paleoman diet I went.

I didn't make this. It looks like a prison food tray.

I had been gradually eating a more healthy diet as I started getting back into shape so the veggie change wasn't too traumatic. It hasn't been without some bumps on the road to slaying more defenseless plants to put on my plate. The first time I made tacos for dinner I swear the taco burger was talking to me by the end of the meal. Just a word to the wise here, lentil burger crushed up and covered in taco seasoning does not a fair substitute make.

Being a veghead is much easier nowadays with the vast selection of veggies at the local market, specialty grocers in most decent sized towns, and a wealth of vegetarian recipe websites. All that combined with a wealth of information on proper nutrition that is available just a click away helps to keep you on track.

The most important question though is how has it helped me? Given that I have a physical job on top of running and or cycling everyday proper nutrition is obviously of huge importance to me. There are several big pluses to my new diet. I now get to eat like a hobbit. You know breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, first lunch, second lunch, etc. I now seem to graze like some giant beast constantly on the prowl for a tasty morsel of vegetable matter. I've also found out that eating peppers and tomatoes like apples tends to freak out my coworkers so that's a bonus.

Again, there were a couple of important books in the whole transformation. I promise that I'll get all that bibliophile information together in a post for the near future. Really I will, I swear.

Has taco meat ever spoken to you?

Are you a grazer or a more organized eater?