A pescetarian is a person who is a vegetarian who also eats fish. I became a pescetarian in May of 2015 to January of 2016. I chose to be a pescetarian to hopefully have a healthy lifestyle going into college. I have never been more wrong in my life. Becoming a pescetarian basically ruined my life.

When I first started being a pescetarian, I was at home. It was easy for me to run to the store, pick up a meal, or cook something in my kitchen. As soon as I started college, I was almost stripped away of that privilege. As a freshman, it was too expensive to have a car on campus to drive to the nearest supermarket or fast food place, and getting a hold of a kitchen was rare. I felt powerless.

Finding food on campus was a struggle in itself. Of course, you have many dining halls and food trucks to choose from, but there is only so many options you can eat. I started off with tuna sandwiches; it was one of my only savory protein options I was offered at my college that I could eat. After a while I got tired of tuna and tried to get veggie burgers. The veggie burgers in my school were grain patties. Meaning there were no vegetables in the patty. There was just oats and some seasoning. I then tried switching between pasta, egg sandwiches and takeout.

Going out with friends was the easiest part in my opinion. We would walk into town and buy whatever food we passed. Every restaurant had something we didn’t have on campus that I wasn’t sick of eating. I became that person who always told their friends, “I see a few things that catch my eye, but I can’t eat much because I’m a pescetarian.” They all supported me and tried to help me through my struggles. I never scolded them about my feelings toward meat. We have our own opinions and I respect such.

Over the course of one semester I spent over $200 on take-out, over $100 on food trucks, over $100 on snacks and gained almost 10 pounds. All of this was because the pescetarian meals weren’t as filling as I would have hoped and I ended up eating more carbohydrates and snacks than I ate in high school. Thus I had all this extra stored energy that I wasn’t using leading to me gaining weight. I also had a food plan and when I ordered take out, it was just me leaving meals untouched. Before my first semester in college ended, I decided it was time for me to return to my normal diet.

I tried to eat a turkey sandwich for lunch to try to start my new diet, but when I finished the sandwich I was completely full and I ended up with a terrible stomach ache. I didn’t feel hungry until the next day. I heard that if you are a vegetarian or a pescetarian for a long period of time, your stomach gets used to breaking down lighter foods like vegetables, fruit and fish. But when your stomach tries to break down meat like beef or poultry, it takes more time and effort to digest. This limited me to about two meals a day for the next month or so.

A little over a month passed and I was back to my normal eating habits. However, I still had the extra 10 pounds I gained from being a pescetarian. I went to the gym every day in an attempt to get myself back into shape. I managed to lose six pounds in a month with heavy exercising and trying not to put too much take-out in my body. Today, I can say I regret becoming a pescetarian.