How to stop (or cut down on) eating meat.
I’m not going to preach why you should stop or cut down on eating meat. A web search can give you some reasons, whether environmental or animal welfare or whatever. And I’m guessing if you’re here, you might already have some motivations.
The point of this post is to discuss how I stopped eating meat (or at least, how I cut it down. I still eat meat a few times a year, more on this later).
Because, if I can do it, anyone can. Seriously.
Background
When I tell my old veggie friends who I haven’t seen in years (that I used to make fun of and tease for not eating meat), that I don’t eat meat anymore, they don’t believe me.
Until a few years ago, I was what is known as a ‘hardcore carnivore’. I ate pretty much nothing but meat, and I ate a lot of it.
I was the guy who went to a Mexican restaurant, ordered two mixed grill fajitas, picked out the meat and left all the onions and peppers and other things which I still don’t know the names of. I was the guy who ordered a double whopper mega burger with all the extra bacon and meat toppings, and pulled out (with disgust) the lettuce, tomato, gherkin and other pollutants in my otherwise delicious tower of meat.
I was the guy who bought a whole leg of Jamon Iberico de Bellota from Madrid and proudly carried it on my shoulder across the city and on the plane back to London, to devour over upcoming months.
If that’s not ‘hardcore carnivore’ enough, I proposed to my then-girlfriend-now-wife at one of the fine steak-houses of East London - over a prime, tender 35-day aged 1.2Kg porterhouse steak. I didn’t have an engagement ring, instead I carved a ring out of the juicy tenderloin, more valuable in my opinion than any diamond.
I come from a meat-loving culture. But I not only loved the taste of meat. In a weird — perhaps slightly sick way — I loved the idea of eating meat. I enjoyed thinking about the fact that this used to be a live animal. And that in eating it, I was now absorbing its molecules into my body, and transferring its energy into mine. And I mean that in the least spiritual, new-age way possible. I mean it literally, in eating the animal I was taking its energy so that I could live. I was taking in packets of highly ordered organic matter, so that I could keep my own entropy low, and postpone — just a little bit — my inevitable decay.
So I wasn't just a meat-lover who tried not to think of where meat came from. I was a meat-lover who loved the idea of eating animals.
The Journey
For whatever reasons, about four or five years ago I just flipped a switch in my brain, and decided to stop — or at least cut down on — eating meat. And it was so much simpler than I thought it would be.
There was a very simple guideline I followed at the start:
- If a dish could be prepared without meat, i.e. meat wasn't the essence of the dish, then choose a non-meat option.
E.g. pizzas, pasta, casseroles, fajitas, sandwiches etc. you name it. Just don’t throw meat in there. Eating out or in, was very simple. Cheese & tomato sandwich instead of ham & cheese; Veggie feast pizza instead of meat feast etc. If you aren’t very creative in the kitchen, meat substitutes (like quorn etc) can help to begin with because you can still apply any recipes you know. E.g. veggie bangers & mash, spaghetti bolognese etc. (You can easily phase out these substitutes after a while). People might complain that it’s boring, or doesn’t taste the same etc. And of course it doesn’t, but my reply is IT’S IN YOUR MIND. If you really want to stop / reduce eating meat, then this is not a problem. You just have to reprogram your brain. And if you really want to stop / reduce eating meat, this is actually very simple.
But there’s a quite a few things that meat substitutes just cannot replace. Like Jamon Iberico de Bellota, or 35-day aged porterhouse steak, or bacon, or <insert your favourite meat dishes here>. So I happily carried on eating those. If I was having pizza, pasta, fajitas etc I would opt for veggie options, but occasionally I’d have steak or bacon etc. And this system worked really well.
But I wanted to be able to quantify how much I was reducing my meat intake. So after a while I introduced a new guideline:
2. Eat meat only once a week.
This made it even simpler. I would always choose a veggie option throughout the week, and then one day have my steak or kebab or whatever. This is still only a guideline of course. Sometimes I’d be very strict and not have meat more than once a week, and other times (e.g. going to a friends wedding in Rome) I’d go completely crazy and eat meat all day every day.
But after such brief stints of meaty decadence I would always come back to my once a week routine. I did this for a few years. But then I realised that sometimes I would forget to eat meat. i.e. weeks would pass and I hadn’t had any meat. So I decided to formalise this and changed my guideline to
3. Eat meat once a fortnight.
After a few months I realised I could easily go for a month without eating meat, so I formalised this as
4. Eat meat once a month.
After a few months I realised I could just
5. Stop eating meat altogether (or very rarely)
The Psychology
I still do occasionally eat meat. The main reason is if I go abroad and the options are really difficult or boring (e.g. after a few days of eating nothing but dough balls in Madagascar, with two more weeks to go, I decided to just eat whatever I could find). On the other hand, on some trips I find it very easy to become vegan (e.g. California).
Another reason I sometimes eat meat, is that I still really miss it. This happens about once or twice a year. But the reality is, I don’t actually miss the meat, I miss the dish. In fact I miss the memory of the dish.
What has happened a few times is this: I really miss my favourite dishes, so I decide to eat meat and go to my favourite Turkish place in Dalston, and order my two most favourite dishes of all time.
I expect the experience to be orgasmic — because these two dishes used to be amongst my greatest pleasures in life. And the first two or three bites are indeed pretty good. I can almost feel the endorphin or seratonin or whatever it is flooding into my brain. But after just a few minutes, it’s no longer orgasmic, but just meh. In fact a bit disappointing, rather underwhelming — and compared to the ‘cost’, definitely not worth eating an animal.
I think it’s the memory of those dishes that I crave, more so than the actual taste.
(In fact now said Turkish restaurant has started doing vegetarian manti — the dish on the left — which has made me extremely happy of course, and I actually find it tastier than the meaty version. Of course if I ever do visit Kayseri — home of manti — or Adana — home of the kebab on the right — I will most definitely try the meaty versions).
One other thing was was difficult at the start (but only lasted a few months) — was the psychology of eating non-meat. Like I said, I was the guy who ate only meat. Everything else — onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, other stuff which I still don’t know the names of — I saw as just decoration, and I chucked away. I very clearly remember the first time that I had a veggie stir-fry, I looked at my dish in dismay as I didn’t see food, just fluffy placeholders. I ate two massive bowls, and was still starving. But of course I wasn’t actually starving, I was completely stuffed, but it hadn’t felt like I’d eaten anything. I thought I was still starving. This of course is purely psychological and requires a bit of reprogramming of the brain. Luckily the brain is very reprogrammable. It did take a bit of time, but I did eventually realise that that stuff was in fact food and edible. In fact quite good for you. Now I even find it delicious. In fact dinner time is approaching as I write this, and my mouth is watering at the thought of grilled vegetables (WTF HAS HAPPENED TO ME?!?!?!?)
In short, if you’re thinking about cutting down on meat, but find it difficult, let me tell you, if I can do it, anybody can. Setting yourself a difficult goal like ‘becoming full veggie’ in one go might not be the best way to do it. Like anything in life, set yourself reasonable goals that you are likely to achieve — like reducing meat intake to once a week, once a fortnight etc. — and take it one step at a time. It’s simpler than you think, you just have to want to do it, and I’m sure you can find good reasons to want to.
