Trying to become vegetarian

Okay, about two weeks of hardly eating meat have passed. Once I told myself that it does not have to be 100% vegan, but also vegetarian, and occasionally even meat (when there are no other tasty options), it actually was not that hard. In the end I ate chicken soup once, and sushi maybe 3 times during this time. I also switched to soya milk completely and with no pain (the vanila one is super tasty, not sure if that healthy though:P).

But now, to the point.. I guess I should start watching what I eat, not to make my body lack some basic nutritional elements, right.. like.. protein? :P

Disclaimer: all pictures are from an awesome Polish page called Ile Waży (http://www.ilewazy.pl/). It tells you how much each product weighs and its nutritional value, together with a photograph of how much it actually is :)

Protein

So, how much protein do I need per day?

According to here, it should be "0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight", which means 47g for me. That is 325g per week. How much do I eat now?

Soya milk - let's say, I drink maybe 2 glasses of that per week. That, according to Google, is:

16g soya milk

Then, I also eat oatmeal with it, which in my case is maybe.. 100 gram of oatmeal, 4g of flax seeds and 4 gram of quinoa seeds per portion.. which is 13g + 0,8g + 0,8g = 14,6g per portion, so per week it will be:

29,2g oats

Getting close to daily intake, but I'm actually calculating the weekly one :D

Pasta, I must eat pasta at least 2 times a week, or maybe even 3 times. Accroding to this amazing Polish website, a portion of cooked pasta could be sth like 1,5 * 10,6g = 15,9g, which would be 3 * 15,9g per week, which is

47,7g pasta

If there is pasta, there should be rice. Also 3 times per week, that is 3 * 4,2g, that is:

12,4g rice

Great, what do I eat on other days. I guess half a pizza could happen at least once. Accodring to here, that could be sth like 65,7g / 2 = 32,85g.

32,85g pizza

Bread, maybe 5 slices per week. Again, looking it up, that will be 2,5g * 5 = 12,5g.

12,5g bread

Chocolate :D let's say one chocolate per week

6,6g chocolate

Sushi :) once per week, the regular size is 8 pieces, 8 * 2g = 16g

16g sushi

Sour cream, because whenever I eat out they must be adding it to anything that has a sauce like consistency.. so that maybe 6 spoons per week? this is 6 * 0,6g = 3,6g.

3,6g sour cream

Falafel, that would be, according to Google 13g, so:

13g falafel

Eggs, 2 per week, that is 2 * 6,3g = 12,6g

12,6g eggs

I did not know that there is such huge difference between pasta and rice regarding protein. Salads, beer and similar stuff I don't count of course :) In sum this is 202,4g. 325g - 202,4g = 122,55g is missing.

Let's see what would happen if I added meat on every day:

Chicken, 3 days: 17,5g * 3 = 52,5g
Pork, 3 days: 19,5g * 3 = 58,5g
Ham 3 days, 2 slices: 6 * 2,4g = 14,4g
And I should remove the falafel, as then I would rather eat chicken kebab, that is -13g.

Allgother that would be 112,4g. Pretty close to 122,55g, so it makes sense!

That means I am currently missing between 112 and 122,55 gram of meat per week. Let's make it 117g, to make it easier. That is about 17 gram of protein per day is missing, out of 47g.

Protein replacements

This blog seems to have neat overview of which protein types are neccessary in the body and frequently missed in vegetarian diet :) So, after removing the weird stuff and spinach (because they write everywhere how useless it is, containing self inhibiting ingredients), it seems like:

Egg white is source of all of the important proteins. Apart from eggs: sesame flour, sunflower seeds and kidney beans contain most of the important proteins, one protein is contained only in tofu or cottage cheese (out of the ones I found and consider available), one in sesame flour only, one only in kidney beans. Also asparagus and mozarella contain some random stuff.

I guess I could replace flour with sesame flour.. whatever it would mean. Sunflower seeds - that is easy, just put it in a salad (or eat alone:D), kidney beans - it is easy to add it to cooked lunch once in a while, I will have to find out how to prepare tofu (or start ordering it in a restaurant), and consider eating more eggs. Even though the poor chicken.. Okay, so:

100g of sunflower seed per week, hopefully I will find a pack that contains 100g or 200g. That is 24,4g.

24,4g sunflower seeds

Kidney beans, in this page the serving size is 256g, I guess it is ok, and that has 13g of protein:

13g kidney beans

Cottage cheese - let's start with eating one package per week, that is 22g.

22g cottage cheese

Eggs - let's add 1 egg per week, so now 3 eggs per week - that is an extra 6,3g:

6,3g extra egg

Extra egg sounds quite funny :P Sesame flour, I will buy it, and do something with it.. I don't know, let's say a glass.. I can eat pancakes each weekend.. oh that has a lot of protein!

71,9g sesame flour

I guess that would be it. Now I have extra 137,6g, I guess that is enough. Or more than enough. I guess I will not manage with the sesame flour every weekend, so every second weekend could be also fine (and more affordable:P) :)

Other macro micro somethings

I guess also other stuff than protein is missing in vegetarian diet. Let's just use this first Google search result page, it seems to be talking about the right stuff. Soo, that is:

1. Iron - okay, makes sense. They say I should not drink tea or coffee (great), and not eat spinach, nothing more useful. But here they have some list, good I will cook lentils, I like them :)
2. Zinc - eat soybeans, cashews, and sunflower seeds, wash stuff before eating (oh good that they pointed that out :P) - am already adding a lot of sunflower, I guess I could add some nuts to my oatmeal mix.
3. Calcium - since I would like to stop milk and milk product in some future, that could be tough. They say I could also eat "soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium-fortified foods". Again, adding almonds to my oatmeal and snack mix.
4. Vitamin B-12 - well there's basically 2 things to do: buy supplement from pharmacy, and look for anything with B-12 on it while shopping. Got it :)

To sum up, what I need from there is: some pills with B-12 and iron, almonds, cashew nuts, lentils, and yoghurt (can be soy yoghurt).

Summary

So, it was not that hard :) I will try to go with the plan and in another few weeks I will try to research how much of each ingredient do I actually need. For now it is more important to include them in the diet, and get used to them. I think this way will be easier.

Some words of wisdom by me

Don't be what other people expect you to be, confront them with who you are.

Recently I understood that I do not need to wait for anyone to start living the life I want to have. Just like I do not need to wait until I retire until I start travelling and enjoy my life. It's just an illusion that at some point in life I would meet some special person who would allow me to be myself and do what I want to do. First of all, almost no one ever meets such fitting person, second of all, I do not need such person to start living. Maybe now, soon at the age of 30, is the right time to actually start?

Another thing is, why have I been stopping myself from being myself until now? In many things most of the people I find so different from me and at the same time so alike (similar to reach other), that in some strange way I assumed that everyone is forcing themselves to be who they are - and I  tried to do the same. But, the heck, why? I still don't know how many people are actually forcing themselves and how many just are who they are, but that's not relevant, what is relevant is that I don't have to be like the most of the people. Understanding the meaning of these trivial words gives me so much power, so much inner motivation, and so much of the feeling of happiness.

The best way to lose weight

For me the best way turned out to be: don't try to lose weight. Try to live healthy. And build awareness of your own body.

Cigarettes

As they give me hope. To feel the rush after inhaling for a few times. To be surprised that suddenly I see the world differently that I have a while ago. Is it false hope? Maybe hope is hope and this should count. I'm collecting every tiny bit of it.

The global impact of the past

What if my past determines the way I am, shapes the world that I see. And what if this "past" consists not only of the story of my life, but also the stories of the ones of my ancestors. All the conflicting thoughts that run through my head, the little hints of how it could easily feel different than it feels right now. Where do I know it from? Why do I have so much grief in me?

I'm not claiming that I'm connected magically with the people that lived here before me. But those people interacted with people who were my grandgrandparents, my grandgrandparents raised my grandparents, and my grandparents raised my parents, who in turn raised me. The world is wider than the frame of our words. What if memories and attitudes can also be passed, just like genes are? What if there's tremendously much more to it than people suspect nowadays?

For example, the war, it happened not that much time ago. My grandparents had traumatic experiences there. It's even hard for me to imagine what it could feel like, how hopeless nights they've been through. Yet still I am able to feel what may be an impact of this. The way I react inside to people passing me on the street, the way it feels when someone accuses me of something I'm not guilty of, the way I can't tolerate injustice, is it really coming only from social adaptation of human kind, or my cultural background? There are things deep in the back of my head which I can't explain by referring to the culture, my own history, also I cannot say that it's common things for everyone. But when my mom told me about the history of my grandparents, the ones I vaguely remember from when I was a child, then these things start making sense.

If I am right, then it's extremely important to know where you come from. To know the "context" of yourself. The modern culture of  separation of the individual is then bringing only bad. It's pushing us backwards on the evolution path..

or.. maybe it's just pushing us to a D-tour? With all the technological advancement we lost one factor of evolution which is geographical location. Maybe we are just adapting to the changed conditions. One thing is sure, they're not easy the times we live in.

Everything comes at its price

People's behaviors and thoughts are so much determined by the environment in which they are living, by the country they have been born in and in which they live, by the opinions of their friends and people staying in the close surroundings to them. By what they see in television and in the Internet. In the end a happy life does not differ much from a life of an animal - call it a hamster. Following the impulses, following the stereotypes, the schematic behaviors, people repeating what they have heard from other people, getting used to one place, doing what the others around are doing, not spending time on stressing out, on trying to change something, on thinking too much. Following the scenario.

I decided I do not want to live a hamster life. Even though everything comes at its price.