May Challenge: Lose 10 pounds

This month's challenge: To Be A Vegetarian


For three years I lived in a small mining village in northeast England. The town center had a pub, and "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker" only the candlestick maker was the booking agent (betting shop). The florist not only offered flowers but also fresh fruit and was known as the green grocer. The butcher shop was between the green grocer and the betting shop.

I loved to walk and shop (mostly window shopping as we were on a student budget), but I was not prepared for the day I walked into the butcher shop. First the smell was choking. It didn't stink, but was an unidentifiable stench. I gagged as I walked in. I looked in the refrigerated case. I had never seen meat so red. I looked to my left and emerging from a small doorway was the butcher clad in stereotypical white from neck to ankle with red everywhere in between. I couldn't buy anything. I walked out.

After that I couldn't eat meat for a while. Every time I would pick up a piece of chicken all I could notice was that I was eating something on a bone. I was eating an animal. I had never had that realization before. It made me nauseous.

For a few months I was a vegetarian by choice. Then the day came when I had to have fish. (After all who can resist fish and chips in England!) My aversion to red meat lingered a little longer.

I stopped buying groceries from the town center and started taking the bus to Sainsbury's for all of my shopping. It was a much more civilized experience, and one that I was more accustomed to. It was a grocery store with a bakery and a meat department. The meat department wasn't scary. All the steaks looked neatly packaged and pinkish. The ground beef was plastic wrapped perfection. The only strange smells came from overzealous perfume spraying shoppers.

Over time I began to crave meat again. The small neatly packaged offerings in the meat department grew harder to resist and one day I bought a package of ground beef to add to spaghetti sauce. It was hidden, mixed in, undetectable really. Besides, the meat was already there. Somebody had to buy it.

And so ended my vegetarian lifestyle then only to be resurrected years later. I lived inI realized that part of the reason I was drawn to the hot yoga challenge was the fact that I wanted to lose weight. According to the scale, I lost (drum roll, please) a total of 4 pounds last month. That's okay, but I want to lose a lot more. So, this month's challenge: lose 10 pounds in 30 days.

If you are following along with my little experiment, here is the official "warning": Before you begin any exercise or diet program, consult your doctor. This website is not intended to give medical or psychological advice. Okay, so there you go.