Chelsea Wheeler (6)

Finally, I had an incredible week with my Meatless Monday’s campaign. For breakfast I had an egg on an English muffin with a piece of American cheese. It is one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast especially now that I am running more because it contains both carbohydrates and protein which I need after a long run.   I was able to make some veggie chili on Sunday which then held over to Monday so that I had something delicious to eat for lunch. I made it with corn, three different types of beans, and tomatoes. Next time I would add some sort of potato to put a starch into the chili. I also cooked up some brown rice to eat the chili over so that I could eat it again for another day. For dinner I made spinach lasagna rolls which were absolutely delicious. I make these with cheese, spinach, tomato basil sauce, and lasagna noodles. These are absolutely amazing, and I even had enough to share with my boyfriend, who was extremely excited.

            Overall, my experience with this campaign varied from week to week, but I do think that it got better as the weeks went on. In the beginning of this experience, I was more annoyed of it more than anything else. I am extremely busy on Mondays with class and work that I rarely have time to think about what I am going to eat. This fact causes me to grab whatever leftovers are in the fridge to take along with me, and these leftovers usually contain something with meat in it from something I cooked over the weekend. Because I had to think more about what I was eating, it was not easy for me to grab food, and some days I actually found myself not eating as much as I should have because I didn’t have anything other than meat to eat in the fridge, so my food would consist of whatever else I happened to find.

            As the weeks went on, I finally realized that in order to make this whole thing work, I needed to plan it out better in advance. Over the weekends, I forced myself to cook at least one meatless meal so that I would have it to bring with me on Mondays. I also learned to take the time that I did have in the mornings before class to prepare what I could for the day without rushing around trying to throw a meatless meal together. Both of these changes actually did end up working well for me as I was able to eat meatless as well as eat better on Mondays where are before I wasn’t eating well at all when trying to eat meatless.

            Though it was good to force myself to try new things and to go meatless on Mondays, I am not sure it’s something that I am going to stick with in the future. It was way too much of a hassle for me to keep track of what I was eating in terms of if it had meat or not, and I know that my body needs a significant amount of protein right now during my training so I need to be eating meat. After completing this campaign for six weeks, I understand that there are other sources of protein that I could cook, but it is extremely expensive and time consuming for me to cook these and prepare them all of the time.

            One thing that I really did learn during these past six weeks was how much vegetarians must go through in order to make the switch to being meatless. It was hard enough for me to do for one day during the week consciously, that I cannot even imagine how difficult it would be for them. I do not think that I could ever do this every day of my life, but I have a better respect for and understanding of the people who do it now that I have tried for a few weeks.