![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sitting with some discomfort....
Mar. 13th, 2014 01:14 pmNo, I don't suffer from piles, other than the mounds of paperwork on my desk.
If you've been following me for a while, you're aware of my changes and shift is weight and body size, and as likely to know about my celiac disease. I was talking with James last night as I drove home. We were talking about conscious eating. Really savoring and experiencing our food. I had posted earlier that evening on an LJ group focusing on people kn the process of large weight loss about this very subject. I had ended that post with my comment about saying grace silently before eating. Every time. Especially when eating alone. The act serves both to say thank you to that which sustains and nurtures me both physically and spiritually, and makes me more conscious of the sacrifice involved for whatever is sitting on my plate in sustaining me.
I spent 8 years as a vegetarian from my late teens to my mid 20's. I stopped as I finished medical school and just didn't have the time to cook and balance veggie sources of protein any longer. James had spent four years as one, from his later 20's thru his early 30's. He'd started eating meat again when working as a hospital based transcriptionist, out of self defense. What their cafeteria did to poor defenseless vegetables should have been classified as criminal. At least the meats were edible.
The conversation turned to his parents' farm upbringings in the rural south and his comment on the shear number of fowl his mother had dispatched in her life. My paternal grandfather had been a shochat (one who does the ritual Kosher killings of animals) throughout the height of the Great Depression. I hit me then, that I don't think I could bring myself to actually dispatch another mammal for food, and on the heels of that thought came the question is it right for me to continue to eat meat, if I would not be willing to take that creature's life? By providing a market for that creature's flesh, am I not personally responsible for that creature's death? Even though the creature had been bred to be food and would never have drawn breath in the first place, were there no market for its meat is not a justification here. Certainly the quality of life much, if not most of our livestock face in American factory farming doesn't make their lives one of great quality to begin with.
It has for a very long time troubled me when cleaning out my fridge, the amount of things that have spoiled due to my inattention. Throwing away meat in particular bothers me, as it's just so wasteful of resources used in producing the foodstuff and makes the animal's demise even more pointless.
However, am I ready to make the leap and become a vegetarian again, especially now that I've identified what a problem gluten is for me? Do I have the time and energy? Will changing to a vegetarian plan be too high in carbs to continue my weight loss as it has been? Even if I can manage all that for myself, what about my husband who a} does not know how to cook, b) is not particularly fond of veggies and c) doesn't really care for the handful of grains, I actually can eat?
So here I sit with my discomfort and more questions than I yet have answers.
If you've been following me for a while, you're aware of my changes and shift is weight and body size, and as likely to know about my celiac disease. I was talking with James last night as I drove home. We were talking about conscious eating. Really savoring and experiencing our food. I had posted earlier that evening on an LJ group focusing on people kn the process of large weight loss about this very subject. I had ended that post with my comment about saying grace silently before eating. Every time. Especially when eating alone. The act serves both to say thank you to that which sustains and nurtures me both physically and spiritually, and makes me more conscious of the sacrifice involved for whatever is sitting on my plate in sustaining me.
I spent 8 years as a vegetarian from my late teens to my mid 20's. I stopped as I finished medical school and just didn't have the time to cook and balance veggie sources of protein any longer. James had spent four years as one, from his later 20's thru his early 30's. He'd started eating meat again when working as a hospital based transcriptionist, out of self defense. What their cafeteria did to poor defenseless vegetables should have been classified as criminal. At least the meats were edible.
The conversation turned to his parents' farm upbringings in the rural south and his comment on the shear number of fowl his mother had dispatched in her life. My paternal grandfather had been a shochat (one who does the ritual Kosher killings of animals) throughout the height of the Great Depression. I hit me then, that I don't think I could bring myself to actually dispatch another mammal for food, and on the heels of that thought came the question is it right for me to continue to eat meat, if I would not be willing to take that creature's life? By providing a market for that creature's flesh, am I not personally responsible for that creature's death? Even though the creature had been bred to be food and would never have drawn breath in the first place, were there no market for its meat is not a justification here. Certainly the quality of life much, if not most of our livestock face in American factory farming doesn't make their lives one of great quality to begin with.
It has for a very long time troubled me when cleaning out my fridge, the amount of things that have spoiled due to my inattention. Throwing away meat in particular bothers me, as it's just so wasteful of resources used in producing the foodstuff and makes the animal's demise even more pointless.
However, am I ready to make the leap and become a vegetarian again, especially now that I've identified what a problem gluten is for me? Do I have the time and energy? Will changing to a vegetarian plan be too high in carbs to continue my weight loss as it has been? Even if I can manage all that for myself, what about my husband who a} does not know how to cook, b) is not particularly fond of veggies and c) doesn't really care for the handful of grains, I actually can eat?
So here I sit with my discomfort and more questions than I yet have answers.
