Eat Your Vegetables
Somewhere along the line, I decided that I wanted to try going vegetarian. You know, because I wasn’t doing enough this year.
My doctor has grown pretty used to my weird questions regarding mammograms and breast cancer in general. She was totally on board when I told her I was going to run 12 marathons this year (that is, once I promised not to let my ego get the best of me and take each one slow and steady.) And to my surprise, she actually supported this idea, too.
I was in for a mammogram last week and told the technician (rather proudly) that I was now a vegetarian (even though I’ve really only been meatless for about 2 months.) She just looked at me sideways and asked why I would ever want to give up meat. Breaking the news to my parents was even harder. They’ll need some time to process my new lifestyle, obviously. My dad had just acquired a new smoker for his BBQ.
I’ve been reading A LOT about healthy diets and how the body reacts to what you put in it. Without even trying, I was eating a 90% plant based diet kinda by accident. And I really like the way I felt, even throughout all the marathon training. So I decided to make a more conscientious effort. So far so good. My doc’s biggest concern was protein and iron – I’ve always had to take iron supplements so that’s nothing new and most of my protein has been coming from dairy (and now tofu, much to Mark’s chagrin.)
My research told me that going veggie would probably make me healthier overall, but any cancer-related risk factors avoided by the change of diet were pretty marginal. Read: it might not matter. Women who generally avoid red meat have a lower risk of breast cancer, compared with those who include it in their daily diet, but it’s not yet clear whether the problem with meat is the carcinogens that form as it is cooked or the effect of meat-eating on the hormones in a woman’s body.
I’m not condoning vegetarianism for everyone; I’m just saying that it’s working for me. I feel really good and I’m having fun with food prep. I feel like I have a bit more control over my body. Plus, my new spiralizer is like the adult version of the Play-doh hair factory.
Winning.
