Better than I thought

I did the math today. I can count on two hands (barely!) how many times I've failed at the vegexperiment in the 27 days I've been dong it. I don't always eat breakfast, so instead of thinking of 3 meals a day, I decided 2.5 would pretty accurately represent what I eat. I took 27 x 2.5 and got 67.5, so I rounded up to 68. Minus the ten lapses is 58 meals as a vegetarian. That's almost exactly 85% of my meals.

Now, originally I thought I preferred vegetarian meals about 80-85% of the time anyway, so this makes me think it was lower. Not that it's been a hardship, but I've been much more deliberate than usual about avoiding meat. But, it reinforces that 85% vegetarianism is possible with little effort on my part.

Honestly, the times I've eaten meat has been mostly because of other people, whether it's to not inconvenience my housemates or someone made a dish with meat or the vegetarian options were sort of obligatory rather than something a person might actually enjoy eating. I would be just fine if I did all my cooking or if restaurants offered something worth eating. I shouldn't have to settle for a salad because it's the only thing offered.

I blog every couple of months for my job (working with child care programs), and I've considered using this point as a topic: that people who have dietary preferences or restrictions should have the benefit of being able to eat appetizing food. Is that so wrong? That people enjoy what they eat? Just because someone is vegetarian or vegan or kosher or gluten-free or peanut-free or lactose intolerant or diabetic or WHATEVER doesn't mean they should have to eat bland, boring food. Honestly, the option for that person should be appetizing enough that someone else who DOESN'T have the preference or restriction would want to eat it.

Slightly off-topic, but I promise it really isn't: my New Year's Resolution is also tied with food, but I had decided to wait to start it until the vegexperiment was over...basically, February. You see, I eat quickly. This comes from conditioning myself to eat in a short amount of time in elementary school, due to the way the school structured their lunch schedule. It didn't help that after college, I taught for a year and teachers have very little time to eat as well.

My husband eats somewhat slowly. This dichotomy has been problematic in the past. Whereas I am loading up my next fork/spoon-ful as I'm chewing and still have a partial mouthful of food when I take my next bite, inversely he takes a bite, chews it thoroughly, puts his fork/spoon down, takes a drink, talks a little bit and THEN loads up his next bite. My New Year's Resolution is to try to eat slower. I think that it will not only help the situation of me waiting ten minutes after I'm done eating for Ben to finish, but will help me eat less and get more from my food.

So, my big question at this point is: do I want to bring the vegexperiment to a close in four days or do I want to keep it going, temporarily or permanently? Well, I've thought about it, and I think I can handle both the vegexperiment and the New Year's Resolution. I think that waiting was a good idea, because it gave me time to focus on vegetarianism. But, now that I've found that it's not that difficult, initiating my New Year's Resolution alongside of it should be fine. I'll reevaluate the vegexperiment at the end of February to see what its fate will be. Perhaps I'll even have a better percentage of success with it in February. We'll see. I think I've done pretty darn good already, better than I thought I had done. :)