1 week meat free

FEELING sluggish, the numbers on the scale climbing, I realised a few weeks ago that I had to take action to get my body back. I needed to lose some weight — goal 15 pounds — but exercise alone wasn’t cutting it. In fact I felt bloated, tired, irritable and annoyed all the time, and I decided to make a change.

I love meat — beef, pork, chicken — especially pork, which I suspect was the culprit behind me feeling tired all the time. I couldn’t pass up a good pork chop, so would I survive?

For week one, I decided to cut meat from my diet completely, and see if it made a difference. Here’s my journey.

Weight check:

Height: 5’6”

Starting weight: 145 pounds

Ending weight: 143 pounds

Goal weight: 130 pounds

Day 1

I planned lunch and dinner, since I don’t usually have much for breakfast. For breakfast I had a cup of tea and a banana, then proceeded at lunch time to my office cafeteria to see what was on offer. That day I chose chicken soup without the meat. For dinner, I opened a can of chick peas I’d had in my cupboard, and did a coconut curry chick peas meal, with a side of jasmine rice, and a salad. That filled me up quite fine.

Day 2

I’d stopped at the supermarket the day before to stock up on some vegetarian options, so that was in my dinner plans. For lunch I brought pasta to work, served with just marinara sauce. I had that with a bottle of coconut water.

Dinner was an experiment – I wanted to try jerked mushrooms with brown rice. I prepped the mushrooms as I would chicken, and sautéed them with onions, adding some jerk sauce. This was pretty good, served with the brown rice and some fried ripe plantains and a slice of avocado pear to take the edge off.

Note that breakfast, like the day before, was just a cup of tea and a fruit — a Jimbilin. I snack throughout the day, when I’m peckish, on trail mix or raisins.

Day 3

Lunch today was sweet and sour tofu from the canteen — I couldn’t believe it wasn’t meat! I didn’t take rice today, but instead got a couple pieces of pumpkin and sweet potato.

Dinner was spaghetti and veggie meatballs. I found the meatballs quite dense, and difficult to cook, and just a couple filled me up. Prepared like regular meatballs and spaghetti, you can’t really tell the difference in taste.

Breakfast was a cereal bar, and coffee.

Day 4

By day four I was craving real meat, but I didn’t bow to the pressure. Pork and beans was on the lunch menu at work and I almost cried, but just got rice and peas with some pork gravy, and a generous helping of raw vegetables. That helped a lot, as I didn’t miss the meat at all, in retrospect.

Dinner today was interesting — cauliflower delight. I prepped the cauliflower florets like I would chicken wings, soaking them in egg wash and then coating with a flower and cornflakes batter, frying lightly, then it was into the oven for 15 minutes, doused in barbeque sauce. For the second time in a week, I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating meat. That was served with brown rice, and was absolutely delicious.

Breakfast, by the way, was a boiled egg and a slice of toasted brown bread.

Day 5

Two more days to go, and I’m thinking that I could get used to this.

Breakfast was another egg — scrambled this time — with brown bread, and coffee. Lunch would be leftovers from my cauliflower success story, and dinner — some veggie strips I’d bought at the store.

This one wasn’t so good — I sautéed the veggie strips with a vegetable stir fry mix, but it made me nauseous after eating, so I threw out the rest.

Day 6

Still slightly nauseous from the veggie strips struggle the night before, breakfast was just coffee and an orange. Lunch was soup from the canteen — red peas meatless soup — but I got a healthy serving of ground provisions and dumplings. Dinner today would be another stir-fry with just vegetables this time.

Day 7

The last day of my diet was bittersweet — I didn’t want to stop the diet, but I also wanted to try something new. Breakfast today was a cup of tea, toast and butter. Lunch was some pasta shells with butter, and dinner, a veggie burger.

The burger was quite good, and I topped it with a fried egg and some coleslaw and sweet potato fries.

I weighed myself the morning of day eight, and I noticed a two-pound difference on the scale. I had done no exercise the entire week, so imagine how remarkable my loss would have been, had I incorporated exercise too!

Next project: cutting out white rice, flour and white bread for a week.

Debbi Spence, a mother of two with a community natural juicing business, is currently studying for a master’s degree in Nutrition & Dietetics.