Meat-eater!
God, how did this happen? I used to be a pesco-ovo-sometimes lacto vegetarian and now…
I’m eating Korean BBQ like there’s no tomorrow!
I guess I always intuitively knew that when I got pregnant my ideas about diet and what my body needs would change. I’ve tried being vegan, was hoping to make most of my vegetarian diet (keeping wild-caught fish in because of the benefits to my hereditary high cholesterol) raw this year, but that all has changed.
This topic comes up with some of my friends who were vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) and then become pregnant. What does a person do?
I have to say I have a few friends/acquaintances who remained on a strict vegetarian diet throughout their whole pregnancy. This is really admirable. But a lot of them are like me — there is just something inside of me that needs meat. So much so that it’s very rare that I’ll get that “my god, I’m eating meat” feeling. In fact, yesterday at lunch was the first time I’ve had that feeling in a while. This quickly went away after Doug and I decided to go to Korean BBQ last night.
At first it wasn’t easy going back to meat. I really try to still keep as much of my protein based on eggs, beans, nuts and grains. But, with gestational diabetes that’s been hard because of the carb load beans, nuts and grains tend to have.
I think a few of my friends felt guilty at first eating meat. I know I felt strange, but not really guilty. Just less healthy. I initially gave up meat for health reasons 9 years ago (high fat content, BGH, method of killing). I don’t necessarily feel badly for going back to meat in term of eating an animal, it’s more in terms of what other things I’m putting into my body and the heaviness it makes me feel after a meal.
But, such is life. I think that there are definitely times when some of us need to revisit our diets and take an open view of what we need to eat but to do so with greater awareness. Honestly I would rather not have the craving for a huge hamburger, but when I do, I know that it’s not an everyday thing and that my first priority is to listen to my body and see what it (and of course, kiddo) truly needs. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of nice leafy green veggies with some nuts and avocado, but other times it’s a big hamburger loaded with dijon mustard.
