Hello, Meat!

Pregnant Christine and Non-meat Eating Christine could not exist together in one body. I caved into meat (specifically bacon) around week six into the baby growing process.

What started out as a 4 week experiment turned into a 128 day lifestyle challenge. And it was going great.

Until the "morning" sickness hit.

During week four I was feeling great, tempting fate, and believing that superior baby-carrying genes from my mother (a woman who should teach classes on being a Midwestern super mom) made me impervious to morning sickness. In fact, I didn't totally believe in morning sickness. I started to think it was some crazy rumor that women perpetuated for access to unlimited spousal sympathy and ungodly amounts of ice cream. But oh, how I was mistaken.

Before getting knocked up my meal favorites were always beans, green things and eggs. Matt was out of town so I went to the grocery store and stocked up on all my favorites. YUMMY! About two days after buying it all, my hormones lurched into overdrive and even opening the fridge made me gag. LITERALLY. The smell of leafy greens is, at this point in my life, the worst smell in the world. I had bags of lettuce, celery, spinach, spinach dip and spinach wraps. Opening the fridge released it all into the kitchen and made me want to barf. And lets not talk about the beans and eggs. My throat closes up at the thought of it all.

It all went into the trash, untouched. There was no time to feel guilty over throwing out all that fresh, perfectly fine food. It. Needed. To. Go.

In the meantime, I couldn't stop thinking about fried chicken. None of this was looking good for the non-meaty challenge. For a week all I ate was some combination of cheese and carbs.

Mac and cheese
Cheese bread
Cheese quesadilla
Cheese pizza

Meat needed to come back. I neeeeeeeeeded it. I completely understand that it is possible for ladies to have wonderful, healthy pregnancies on vegetarian diets. But I'm not one of those ladies. I needed bacon, chicken and hotdogs. And now that I'm eating it again I feel like I'm having an easier time balancing my meals. Not having those gag-inducing items at the center of my plate makes it easier to stomach them. I still have a major issue with leafy green things but I'm finding other vegetables that I can stand.

I still think that animal production is bad the the environment and bad for our health. I still think the way meat is processed is alarming and disgusting. I feel bad about eating it, but I'm eating it. You can judge accordingly.