My Confusing Food Journey: From Meat Eater to Vegan to Vegetarian to Pescatarian to Flexitarian

I have a confession to make: I had bacon today. What?!! Not bacon! I know what some of you are thinking. "But aren't you supposed to be vegetarian, Dani?" I mean I am, sort of, I guess, but not really. And maybe some of you are aware that pregnant ladies are technically not supposed to eat any food products that are possibly carriers of listeria, but I just couldn't resist today. Because bacon. And because a wise woman once told me "if your body is telling you that you want to eat something, your body probably needs it, so eat it." Words to live by. And possibly get fat by. Because pregnancy.

After Michaela was born in November of 2012, I had free time on my hands to watch way too many vegan educational films on Netflix while at home by myself nursing her. I learned a lot about the horrors of meat factory farms and the joys of what a plant based diet can provide for your body. Also around the same time I was researching ways for my Dad to quickly recover from the heart surgery he had that year, which lead to hundreds of articles regarding a plant based diet and heart healthiness. I also went and had my own heart checked out, since my Dad's condition was not diet related, but possibly genetic. The results of my tests were good, but the cardiologist that I saw also raved about her vegan lifestyle.  When I was done all the documentary watching, internet surfing and doctors visits, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be miserable vegan. It just seemed like all signs pointed to vegan and it wasn't too tricky for me. It actually made a lot of sense for quite a while.

I think the slippery slope to bacon started when my daughter, husband and I traveled to New Jersey for a summer vacation in July of 2013. We were down the shore, as they say, and I was a brand new vegan at the time. One day a group of our friends came to visit us at our shore house and they brought delicious Italian Stromboli with them. If I remember correctly, there was a broccoli cheese loaf and a pepperoni cheese loaf. I gave in. I ate cheese that day. I felt so guilty because I had been doing so good with not eating dairy and remaining vegan since March of that year, but what was done was done. Soon after that I was at a diner eating the vegan pork roll. I told my family "you never saw this and we will never speak of this again".  And so we went back to Cali and I went back to eating a vegan diet, but ever so slowly, I decided to add back in cheese. It was just cheese. What's the big deal? And it felt damn good. Frankly, I have no idea how I lasted as a vegan for as long as I did. My love affair with cheese was just too good to abandon entirely.

Before I knew it I was calling myself vegetarian because of all the cheese and eggs I was now consuming.  I really did stick with the vegetarian lifestyle from that point until about five months ago when I started to add in fish (and the occasional pork roll when in NJ). Which is only like once a year - the pork roll - relax, people! Anyway, if you are keeping count, I was able to sustain a mostly vegetarian lifestyle for about a year and a half.  Some people used to joke that I wouldn't last more than thirty days eating plant based and it brings me great joy to know they were wrong, but in some ways it makes me sad that I have slowly caved over time.

So today I had bacon and on Easter Sunday I had filet mignon. God, I feel so dirty writing this. But seriously, you guys, it's not my fault. I never used to believe in pregnancy cravings, unless you count those times I guilted Jimmy into going to pick up fruit ice cream from the grocery store when we were out of it when I was pregnant with Chaela. But that is neither here nor there. My point is, I really used to think cravings were not a real thing until this current pregnancy when I started craving meat. Not chicken, not pork, but red meat. So very weird for me because I really don't like red meat. In fact, if I had to list for you what I ate most of before going vegan, it was definitely chicken. So I've had maybe four to five burgers during this pregnancy, the filet on Easter and then bacon today. And I'm sure my husband can name other things I've ate that weren't necessarily plant based, but I'm only willing to admit so much today.

I just happened to be browsing the internet today because I was feeling frustrated about what kind of eater I am because saying semi-vegetarian sounds lame. As it turns out there is a word for how I eat now! "Flexitarian" they call it.  It perfectly describes my situation as those who eat mostly plant based with occasional inclusion of meat products. Pretty neato, right? And here I thought I would have to feel weird and awkward about this whole thing forever. So will I be gobbling down chicken noodle soup when I'm sick in the near future? Probably not. I'll probably still stick with my vegetable broths and snotty plant based ways of eating. But if every once in a while if I am out and feel like some meat on the fly, I'm gonna do it. I feel so much better now that I've gotten this off my chest.