From Carnivorous to Conscious Eating: a Practical, Personal Journey
Here is a special guest contribution from a past Sueño de Vida guest, Jake Novick. A self-described meat-lover, Jake has made an inspiring transition to a primarily plant-based diet. He relates his story here in an encouraging way to illustrate how a plant-based diet is an accessible and enjoyable way of eating with many physical and mental health benefits. This is a great read for anyone thinking to make a change.
When I read the description for the yoga retreat I was going to attend, and it explained that everything would be 100% vegan, I cringed a bit. That day in 2017, camping in Utah, I had eaten eggs, cheese, bacon, turkey, and sausage. I’d considered the merits of a plant-based diet many times before: I’d watched some of the documentaries, and read some of the books, and had a partner who had been vegetarian for many years. But, the gap between “thinking” and “doing” was still large in my mind. My partner of many years had been eating plant-based for over a decade, and I’d mostly poked fun at the odd substitutes, the delicious meals she was missing out on. But now, two weeks away from embarking on a month long yoga retreat in Mexico, it felt like the right time to experiment.
Going “cold tofu” for four weeks was available to me because someone else was doing the cooking. That was a big advantage for me – I love food, but not so much cooking at the time. So, if someone was going to prepare all of my food for me, and it would be delicious, I didn’t care what it was. During the retreat, I honestly didn’t think much about the meat I wasn’t having. I learned very quickly that there were so many foods to include in my diet that I hadn’t considered, and so much of the taste and joy of food was in the freshness of the ingredients, good seasoning / sauces, and the people you are eating it with. That said, a month later, the first thing I ate after the retreat ended was a wood-fired pepperoni pizza with a group of friends as we celebrated Thanksgiving on the beach. That was one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had, and the level of awareness / consciousness / mindfulness I had around eating that animal-based food was higher than it had ever been.
And this is what it came down to for me – awareness and conscious choices.
The weeks after the retreat ended, I was continuing to travel in México, a cuisine often heavily associated with meat. I had been feeling really great during and since the retreat, but it was impossible to pinpoint what was the cause of that feeling – was it the daily yoga? the level of relaxation? the plant-based diet? the sufficient sleep? So, in the spirit of the adventure that I was beginning, I decided to start by experimenting and evaluating. What would it be like to eat meat only 3x per week? A week later, I realized that was pretty easy and I didn’t find myself missing it really. What about 2x per week? Same thing, not too difficult. I approached it from this sense of curiosity that I think helped quite a bit. As with any habit I’ve tried to create or ditch, trying to be militant about it wasn’t going to work. I certainly wasn’t perfect, but the general progress felt good in and of itself, and made me want to keep going. Had I attempted to cut out all meat right then, I don’t think I would have gotten very far.
What I noticed in this initial phase was how I was looking differently at restaurant menus. Being in México, a place with cheap and delicious food, I was lucky enough to not have to cook much. So eating out a lot, I began to recognize that in the past I would disregard maybe half the menu, which didn’t include meat. It was really always a question of “what meat will I be having with this meal?” rather than “will I be having meat with this meal?”. This small shift in perspective, in awareness, really cemented the progress I had made. Again, it wasn’t perfect, I definitely had a few tacos al pastor, but to me that was way more of a conscious choice than it had ever been, and more delicious than I can remember because of that level of awareness.
Another piece of the puzzle for me was keeping track of what I was eating. Again, this wasn’t done in a very strict way, but more in the vein of curiosity. How often was I eating meat now? When I did decide to eat meat, who was it with? Where was I? How did it taste? I started keeping a note on my phone of my “Meat Journal”, and those little bits of progress continued to build and build. I didn’t ever restrain myself from having a meal I really wanted, but the knowledge that I was keeping track did bring me back to what was most important for me, which was making conscious choices and raising my awareness around food. The small weekly successes turned into a full month without meat. Overall, within a few months of starting, I had reduced my meat intake from 2-3x per day to about 1x per week. While this doesn’t sound “perfect,” it is more than a 90% reduction, which I was pretty impressed with.
Nearly three years later, I still keep this journal and can see a history of delicious meals, a new habit formed, and another one broken.
The impetus behind reducing your meat consumption could be any of the many good reasons – ethics, health, spirituality, sustainability, cost, etc. The hardest part for me was getting started. If only someone had shown me / forced me to see how easily I could change, I would have done so years ago. For me, it came down to recognizing my ability to make choices, and approach eating with a heightened level of awareness and consciousness. I spent the last few months in Asheville, NC and decided to indulge in some pork ribs a few weeks ago. They were delicious. But those meals have become much more the exception to the rule, rather than the norm.
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At Sueño de Vida we work in a meaningful way to heal land ravaged by deforestation. How meaningful? According to a recent UN Foresight Brief on climate change,
--It is of the utmost importance to stop deforestation and to increase reforestation efforts around the world. Agricultural practices should focus on soil building, year-round soil cover with plants and the use of agroforestry methods.
That is exactly what we do here at SdV. You can help by helping us do what we do every day: plant forests that nurture soil, people, and community.