Some Thoughts On Eating Meat Again

Published August 11, 2021 in Diet and Fitness - 2 mins to read

I’ve been eating meat again for about a month now, after a couple of years of being a “bad” vegetarian. I’ve also been eating a lot more red meat than probably at any time in the last 5+ years, if not ever. Now I feel fully back in the world of the omnivorous, I have a few thoughts;

I don’t feel any guilt about eating meat. Any beneficial effects on the planet my attempts at vegetarianism may have had felt so far out of sight that they meant nothing, and patting myself on the back for them was feeling more and more like thinly-veiled narcissism than anything meaningful.
It’s so much easier to get enough protein in my diet now. I know that there are plenty of ways to get protein in on any kind of plant-based diet, but for me, they required a lot more thought, whereas now meat is back on the menu, I’m hitting my protein target pretty much every day, without really having to think about it too much.
It’s a lot more satiating - I am definitely fuller for longer than I was previously, which has plenty of benefits.
It’s great to be able to go out for a meal with people and not feel like I’m putting them out by us having to choose a restaurant with good vegetarian options.
It’s made me crave carbs less. Perhaps it’s just because the novelty hasn’t worn off yet, but I’ve had a lot of accidentally-keto meals consisting of just meat and veggies and really enjoyed them. I’ve had to deliberately eat extra carbs on some days in order to have enough to fuel running.
I’ve really enjoyed cooking it. I’m not a very good cook, and had a very limited range of easy, vegetarian meals, but I have found it a lot easier to motivate myself to cook meat. Meals like spaghetti bolognaise are super easy, relatively inexpensive and incredibly macro-friendly, and it feels good to have significantly expanded my staple dishes.

So far so good, clearly I have very little to say against eating meat. It will also be interesting to see what kind of time I get when I run the Big Half in a couple of weeks, and if it is a PB, perhaps the new diet could be a part of it.