How’s the vegetarianism going?

Will she ever be satisfied…satisfied…satisfied?

Back in January I attempted to be vegetarian and you can see how it went here (a mixed bag). But the whole point of that video experiment was to create ways for me to reduce the amount of meat I’m eating long term. I won’t be cold turkey-ing meat or animal products. But I am trying to eat less than I was because the climate crisis basically.

I ended January honestly pretty miserable when it came to food. Generally feeling unsatisfied with a lot of the vegetarian things I was eating and getting anxious and frustrated about eating out. But oh boy have things changed! Yay!

Another 2 months under my belt (and this time not planning on making a whole video about the process) and I have relaxed massively - but I also haven’t gone back to my old-meat-three-meals-a-day habits!

January showed me where my strengths and weaknesses lay and so now I feel much better equipped going forwards. For the most part I will eat meat out - in pubs, restaurants or when quickly needing to grab a meal on the go. However, if I’m feeling up for it I will try and find a veggie option but the whole point here is to not put pressure on myself to do so, as eating out is definitely one of my weak points that causes me the most anxiety with food, especially around my requirements with my stoma. I am so much more relaxed about food out and about now than I was in Jan and that is a relief!

So most of the vegetarianism is at home. Funnily enough, my husband Dan finds it easier to eat veggie out than at home so we are having to compromise and still eat some meat at home. But we’re finding new recipes, we’ve actually stopped using any meal prep boxes (e.g. Hello Fresh/Gousto) like we have for YEARS and have a whole new system for meals, recipes, food shopping (it’s in its infancy and I don’t feel ready to share yet until I have more information about how it’s working for us) and I’m feeling really positive.

In terms of the DATA, at the end of Jan I made a Notion template to track how many meat meals I ate per month with the aim of keeping it down to one third of all meals. Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers to compare to my previous more meaty ways but in February 36/84 meals had meat in them so just over a third (I was on holiday and it was my birthday in Feb though), and then in March 29/93 meals were meat so massive improvement! And I’m not feeling sad and unsatisfied like I was at the end of January so I really feel like I’m starting to get into my groove with this.

As we know, the world doesn’t need every single person to become a vegan to make a positive impact on the climate. We just need everyone to eat less meat and animal products so I’m trying to do my bit!

Got any favourite vegetarian recipes that aren’t mushroom or aubergine forward? Please share in the comments!

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📞 I am knee deep in market research calls - I’ve been doing a business course and one of the things to come out of it was that I needed more information about my “ideal customer” - their challenges, pain points, hopes and dreams etc etc. And so I’ve been having many a call with different content creators about how they feel about their work, life and businesses. It’s been so interesting! Definitely confirming a lot of my assumptions but still really interesting to hear some specific things and differences between what different creators care about. I’m still cracking on with them - I’ve given myself until the Easter hols (love an externally imposed break on my work to help give myself some structure) and then I will be using the information from the calls to hopefully create some products/services that will genuinely help content creators! I know not everyone who reads this newsletter is a content creator or even particularly cares about the business of it all but I hope it is still interesting hearing some of the behind the scenes of building a freelance business.

Current Faves 🛸 Murderbot*! After months of waiting I finally got Network Effect (Murderbot book #5) from my library, only to put off starting reading it until I only had 5 days to finish it before I had to return it and I couldn’t renew it because someone already had it on hold. So I did nothing else in my free time other than READ. And omg this is exactly what I needed because post-reading the British Book Awards books I had found myself in a bit of a reading slump and speeding through a book that was a safe read for me (I knew I would at least love the writing/characters) was just what I needed. Excellent, love you Murderbot.

🛏️ Finally finished our bedroom! And the video of the whole process! Also, thank you to the people who commented about the chair being too low for the desk - I already knew this but wasn’t ready to admit it to myself but you were right and we bought an actual office chair for the bedroom and my back and wrists thank you 🩷 consider the influencer influenced… 😂 (I’ll see myself out)

(lol @ the stella can, cba taking another photo it’s funny)

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We are currently reading Pink-Pilled: Women and the Far Right by Lois Shearing* for the Doing It Book Club over on my Patreon. The date of our book chat is 24th April! Please join us to chat all about the book and what you thought of it!

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