Eating Faces and Sappy Clichés

Hello! Thank you for visiting Meat the Adventurous Vegetarian. Here you will read about the chronicles of the least likely of people to stop eating meat. Not only will I quit cold turkey, but also warm turkey, steak, chicken, fish, and glorious bacon. Now before you think I am a saint of some sort, I will go ahead and admit that I will eat eggs, milk, cheese, other dairy, and the like. According to Vida Compassion, I will be a lacto-ovo vegetarian. Weak-sauce right? A real challenge will be giving up all remnants of animal products and consuming an entirely plant based diet.  I will explain why I will not do that, but first, a little bit about myself.

            My name is Vikrum Jain, a freshman biology major at Santa Clara University. Unlike most freshmen, I did something I will not regret 10 years down the line. I walked on to the Division 1 varsity basketball team. Now, again, before you view me as a miracle worker, I was a practice player all year. My job description entailed learning the other team’s plays on the fly, running those plays with the other practice players, doing anything the coach asks, and essentially being a body bag. No, I didn’t get a jersey or sit on the bench. You could say I was a glorified manager. This may seem less than ideal for an aspiring athlete such as myself, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, as I got better by playing against larger, stronger collegiate athletes. While I have a competitive height at 6’8, I was outmatched weight wise, giving up 30, 40, 50, and as much as 80 pounds on a daily basis.  

Obviously, I needed to gain weight to level the playing field. This is where my diet comes in. I began to eat ravenously, consuming copious amounts of food largely consisting of meat. I often ate 4 or 5 large meals throughout the day excluding snacks. Before you think I fattened off of pizza and ice cream, the plan was for me to gain lean muscle mass. This involves a balanced diet high in protein, carbohydrates, and calories and a weight lifting regime that adds size in all the right places. Progress was (and still is) slow, but I am gaining weight and getting stronger to prepare for next year at a healthy rate that will be sustainable.

            Now to the eggs and milk. To gain lean mass, one needs protein. Eggs and milk products such as cheese and yogurt are excellent sources of muscle-building amino acids, and dropping them will be very detrimental to my athletic goals. The question pops up: why not replace those chicken and dairy products with soy to go full vegan? Well, isoflavones, or chemicals found in soybeans responsible for yellow pigmentation, are structurally similar to the female sex hormone estrogen. They bind to the estrogen receptors, and under certain conditions induce weak estrogen like effects. In high concentrations, they help post-menopausal woman achieve necessary estrogen levels (Messina and Wood 2). Last time I checked, I am not a post-menopausal woman and never will be (hopefully). I am certainly not saying I will neglect soy completely during my vegetarian adventures, but I wont consume a high amount of it. This is why I need to keep eggs and milk protein in my diet; I do not want to rely heavily on soy as it may have adverse effects on a growing 18 year old.

            After that fat spiel, you are probably wondering why I am doing this anyway. Why go vegetarian even though I might turn into a woman (not actually though). It all started when I learned about the horrid conditions industry-grown animals had to face and how that negatively affected their meat products, I began to think eating meat was not the best thing to do. After I thought of how reliant on meat I am, I figured giving up meat might be too extreme of a move. When I was presented with this project, I embraced the idea that I could take a risk and really challenge myself with this new set of dietary restrictions. The physical goals I would like to achieve are being more energetic and having a lower body fat percentage. Environmentally speaking, forgoing meat will reduce my carbon footprint, and morally speaking, going vegetarian means I will not eat anything with a face. To summarize, going vegetarian for two weeks will hopefully be a testament to my will power, and help prove to myself that anything is possible if I work at it.

            Aside from eating faces and sappy clichés, I will further inform you on the gravity of this challenge. The best way to do this is to show you a two-week log of what I normally eat. Although this food log was from almost 6 months ago, it is still valid, as my diet hasn’t changed much since. Only my eating schedule is different because I do not have practice from 12 – 3pm. I still have workouts but they are not as time consuming. This two week sample size is large enough to show a variety of foods in my diet but small enough for you to actually read and not skim over. I know you guys will skim over it regardless but its worth a shot. Might as well write what I ate for Tuesday, April 23, so you guys don’t have to look over two whole weeks of data.

            I started my day with and apple, a protein shake after I lifted weights, and shortly after I ate a three-egg omelet with vegetables and tofu. Yes, I ingested tofu. Did I feel particularly feminine? Not quite. Two hours later, I decided it was time for lunch. I polished off beef lasagna with a side salad and garlic bread. After an hour and 45 minutes of mind numbing chemistry, I decided it was time to eat again. I gobbled a turkey and apple sandwich (surprisingly delicious) and eight pieces of California roll sushi. After a refreshing nap and some work on this post, I got hungry again. Notice a trend? I eat a shit ton. For dinner, I eagerly finished a breaded chicken caprese with mozzarella and pesto sauce. Who says Benson food sucks?

            As you can see, meat is a huge part of my life and I will sure miss it over a two-week period. That’s 20160 whole minutes without eating animals.  I am excited, though, to take on this challenge. Who knows, I might even give up meat for the rest of my life. But not really though. That is most definitely not going to happen. I would say that is the last possible thing that could happen. At this point, I think I have a higher chance of winning the lottery even though I didn’t buy any tickets.

So far in this blog there have been a lot of corny jokes and bad puns. You might think, where are the meat and potatoes? Well, in the next few posts, there wont be any meat, but a lot of potatoes.