It had been 8 months, and while visions of chicken tenders danced far from my head, I was more than content with my tofu and rice. Becoming a vegetarian never seemed all that difficult to me, I just decided I would do it and stuck to it. However, we all have our trigger words, our exceptions, that one thing that no matter how hard we try to resist we must give in to. For me, it was beef lo mein. Once the phrase was uttered as a suggestion for dinner that night out, a million questions started racing through my head; but the one that kept popping up was “Why did I even become a vegetarian in the first place?” So I gave in. The greasy, salted beef was just enough to make me bargain with myself. I’d remain a meat-eater for the next two weeks until school was back in session.

What I assumed would be a blissful vacation from the constant supervision over my eating habits instead took a turn for the worse. After the first day of meat-eating, I began to experience extreme fatigue. Come 8 PM I could barely keep my head up or my eyes open–my energy seemed almost completely drained. As the first week of vegetarian cheating continued, I began to feel incredibly bloated. After eating a sandwich of deli meats or some breaded chicken I would feel uncomfortably full and lethargic, but it didn’t stop there. Then started the sickness. Around a half hour after I consumed any type of meat I would feel an uncommon and fairly intense sense of nausea. One that kept me from finishing many of my meals.

After the first week had passed, my body finally started to adjust, but not in the way I had hoped. As I left my personal dietary restrictions behind, it seemed as though my will-power to maintain a healthy moderation of fatty, unhealthy foods had flown the coop as well. Cravings for meat, grease, and salt had weaved their way back into my brain, that along with an insatiable appetite. Without anything stopping me, I would eat constantly and whatever I wanted without remorse. My new diet was destroying the healthy, more energetic, and slimmer body that vegetarianism gave to me.

I decided to cut the two weeks early and return to my meatless life. The readjustment period is still in the process, about two and a half weeks in. However, I am already starting to see changes. I am waking up earlier without any issue, my digestive health seems to agree with me, and the energy I missed so dearly has returned, along with a little weight loss.

Now, of course, this is a personal experience. There are vegetarians out there who don’t eat as clean, digestive issues that could be unrelated to one’s meat intake, and various other situations making vegetarianism a poor or ineffective solution to bettering one’s health. However, if you are a meat-eater contemplating going vegetarian or vice versa, my results are here. The choice is yours.