14Jul

(Please have in mind that the information in this blog is based on personal experience, and I am neither a doctor, nor a certified nutritionist. I just have a high personal interest in nutrition and its impact on our health. )

Recently, an extraordinary men, Andrei Rosu, became the first Romanian to finish the ultra-triathlon Arch 2 Arc, which implies swimming across the English Channel. Apart from this amazing sports performance, the title of the article was highlighting another interesting thing about Andrei: the fact that he is also the first vegetarian to ever complete the competition. Hence, the message behind the article, was that one can do high performance sports without being a meat eater…

food-salad-healthy-vegetables-largeI became a vegetarian in 2011, and I stopped being a vegetarian in 2015. A four years journey, with lots of learning experiences about food, diet, body, health, social trends, and together with that, the feeling of belonging. You should also know that I am, and I always was, a very active person. When I decided to become a vegetarian I had recently moved away from my natal country, Romania, to Belgium, where I’ve been living ever since.

If you’ve been to Romania, you probably figured out that we are not very vegetarian friendly :), and that’s not because we don’t love vegetables, but our cultural heritage is more prone to eating meat. I remember my aunt still trying to convince at every Christmas, to eat “sarmale” 🙂 (Cabbage meat-rolls). So, after 23 years of Romanian diet, I arrive to Belgium where I could have any, and I mean, literally, any diet I could think of :). Wanting to have a break from meat, I started with a 6 months challenge of not having meat, which turned out to be longer…

A series of things happened: I started lacking energy, being tired very often, I started lacking on various vitamins and nutrients, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting all this on the fact that I was not eating meat, but that, combined with the fact that I didn’t put enough effort into educating myself about getting what my body needed from a vegetarian diet, those combined, had some undesired effects.  1 year after I became vegetarian I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which is a malfunction of the thyroid gland.

In the begging of this year, a friend of mine recommended to read some of Andrea Beaman‘s work. Andrea calls herself a “thyroid expert”. After listening to some of her tutorials, she said something that none of my doctors said before:  “In order to function well, the thyroid needs animal protein”. I was definitely intrigued, and the strong vegetarian values inside me told me to keep on my vegetarian diet, not to give into eating meat again. But, I decided to give it a try, and eat meat again. It’s only been 3 months, and I’m having meat 1-2 times per week. My diet has not changed drastically, I still eat lots of veggies, even a week can pass without having any meat, but when I feel the need for it, I go and have a nice piece of meat. And by nice I mean, farm raised, preferably grass fed, because the quality of the meat we eat, also plays a major role in its health benefits.

sport-fitness-workout-resolution My journey is ongoing, I still have hypothyroidism but it’s not controlling my life, and I am sure that with the right diet and lifestyle, I will be able to reduce its effects, and maybe in time, even heal it. It’s been only a few months since I included meat in my diet again, therefore I am still identifying the effects, but I surely do more endurance sports and I am able to stay positive with my energy resources.  I believe my main learning outcome, over the last 4 and a half years, was to listen to my body, and build my own diet, that isn’t the result of social norms, but of the desire of having a healthy and happy body.

To find out the answer to the question “To be or not to be a vegetarian?” I would invite you to go through the points below:

  •  Try, test and improve. If you chose to have a vegetarian diet for 6-12 months, make sure you perform your general medical exams before and after
  • If sometime along the journey you eat meat a couple of times, that doesn’t make you less of a vegetarian, keep going 🙂
  • don’t become a vegetarian because others do it, and because it’s trendy, become one because you have a solid reason, and your body is happy with a vegetarian diet
  • Most important educate yourself about the type of food you should eat, and also what vitamins and supplements a vegetarian needs. Sometime we think the only vegetables out there are tomatoes…but, you have lots of miracle one who shouldn’t miss from a vegetarian diet

Most important of it all, is your health. Therefore, my advice is: whatever you put in your body, put it for your health.food-healthy-vegetables-potatoes

Please follow and like us:
RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Google+
https://www.uptitude.it/2015/07/14/to-be-or-not-to-be-a-vegetarian/
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Trackback URL: https://www.uptitude.it/2015/07/14/to-be-or-not-to-be-a-vegetarian/trackback/

2 Comments:

    • Marius
    • July 17, 2015
    • Reply

    The extraordinary MAN correct name is Andrei Rosu

      • Roxana Stefanescu
      • August 26, 2015
      • Reply

      Thank you for the message, Marius! We corrected the name, and I apologize for the typo.

Leave reply:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *