I recently finished reading The China Study and decided to become pescetarian for the month of September. If you know me at all, this is an extremely difficult challenge for me because I sure love my meat. The book recommends being a pure vegan but I don’t think I can give up seafood and meat in one sitting. I’m doing a modified version in which I will eat no animal protein (not counting fish - that’s an argument for another day). I will not be eating any meat (beef, chicken, lamb, pork, buffalo, or whatever floats your boat) and I will not be taking in any animal related substance such as eggs, dairy, cheese, yogurt, etc.. I’m not going to be super picky and cut out anything that contains eggs as many vegetarian entrees contain eggs but I will try to avoid eating it if it includes a large portion of the items I’m avoiding.
The China Study
Brief facts about “The China Study” (If you haven’t realized yet, I love to bullet point items):
- The China Study is named after a study based in China in which people from all different regions have completely different health
- Meat and milk are the real carcinogens and cause of high cholesterol which leads to heart problems, obesity, diabetes, etc..
- The least actives Chinese take in more calories daily compared to normal active Americans and still have less health problems and weigh less
- Those in China who eat the least amount of processed vegetables, fruit and grains, have the fewest affluence-related health problems
- To sum up, a vegetable and whole food diet without meat will lead to better health. It’s more complicated than this but you’ll have to read the book to find out
- One, I just want to challenge myself. Sometimes you don’t know what you can accomplish until you try. Giving up meat is one of the hardest things I can think of so I just did it.
- Two, after this month is up, I want to try and incorporate more vegetables and whole foods into my diet. A majority of my current meals are composed of meat and I would like to see that cut back and replaced with vegetables and whole foods.
- Three, I like to see how systems work. I like to see how one thing causes the effect of another. I believe most results can be traced back to the cause. Thus, I would like to see if putting healthier food into my body will lead to a better result (ie. weight, energy, etc). I originally wanted to keep track of my vital stats such as weight, cholesterol, etc but it wouldn’t be accurate since I’ve been trying to train for my half marathon next week. (By the way, I signed up for the half-marathon a few months back because I always wanted to do one and just decided to do it.)
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This post was written by Jay on September 4, 2009
