It was the summer of 2016, and after watching Forks Over Knives, a critically acclaimed documentary about veganism, I decided from that day onward, I would never touch meat or cheese again. Unfortunately, that didn’t end up happening, which I quickly realized the next day as I ate some baked chicken. From then onward, I tried seemingly everything to try and eliminate meat from my diet. At first, I tried vegetarianism, which flopped the moment I pulled up to an In N Out. Then, I moved on to pescatarnism, a diet in which fish is the only meat you consume, and this failed miserably as well. And then finally, I heard about weekday vegetarianism.
In December of 2016, I ranted to my aunt about my difficulties giving up meat. She paused for a second, and asked, “Have you ever heard of weekday vegetarianism”? She pulled up a video by Graham Hill and I was intrigued by its simplicity, yet at its core, brilliancy. Hill explained that when you are a weekday vegetarian, you dont eat meat during the week, but on the weekend, you can have some if you like. Beginning 2017, I’ve kept this routine going, and haven’t thought about stopping.
So now you know why I did it, but why should you? The first reason is it is an easier way to become a full time vegetarian. Many people who jump straight into vegetarianism struggle with cravings for meat, and being a weekday vegetarian allows your body time to adjust to not eating meat. Second, you will be greatly helping the environment. Worldwide, our carbon dioxide emissionsions have skyrocketed to dangerous levels, with seemingly no solution as people adamantly refuse to change their lifestyles. People whose diets included high consumption of meat at an average of 3.5 ounces per day resulted in 15.8 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. If you give up meat, you greatly reduce your carbon footprint,which in turn helps to save the environment. Finally, eating less meat leads to increased energy,reduced diabetes risk, and for some, weight loss. If bettering the environment wasn’t enough to convince you to give weekday vegetarianism a second look, then improved health should definently pique your interest.
Weekday vegetarianism might not be for everyone, but for me it proved to be an excellent option because I quite simply wasn’t ready to commit to never eating meat again. Because I’ve done weekday vegetarnism first, it’s helped me realize that I do plan to go fully vegetarian (soon!) I highly encourage all of you to try it at least once, because you never know, it just might change your eating habits forever.
