The Art of Zen Living

“Be careful about changing your beliefs, because if you do, your beliefs will change you…”

My 2 weeks as a vegetarian are drawing to a close.  Or perhaps I should say that my two week commitment to being a vegetarian is drawing to a close.  I’ve seen a big difference in how I feel, my energy level and I’ve dropped 3 pounds without meaning to.  I’m guessing that’s due to the type of “whole food” vegetarianism I’m trying being naturally low in fats.  A side benefit is that almost all of the fat I do eat now are “good” fats - the omega fats, mono fats etc. etc.

My forehead is also much flatter.  I spend a lot of time slapping it and saying things like “Oh, RIGHT - pizza has cheese on it!” or “Hmmm.  Alfredo has cream in it…”.  This isn’t a problem, it just shows that I’m very new at this whole vegetarian thing.  Today I wanted to ramble on a bit, in no real order, about how I feel about this experiment, and it’s impact on my life.

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I’m up a little late tonight, it’s been a bit of a crazy weekend - hurry up and wait, mostly.  Tomorrow morning, I start my vegetarian diet.  Earlier this weekend I made a batch of the Best! Black! Bean! Chili! Ever!, so I have it ready to go for the week.  If I could only give you only one tip about making any sort of drastic change in your diet, it’s this: have food ready so that you do not have to think about it.  It’s the thinking and choosing that destroys 99.9937264% (this number was made up completely out of thin air, but it has the ring of truthiness* to it) of diets.

Tonight I made a week’s worth of breakfasts - Barley Harvest Cereal.  Barley is one of the first grains ever domesticated by humans.  In ancient Egypt, it was used to make beer and bread.  For many Egyptians, that was their entire diet.  Today, barely is largely forgotten as a food - we use it mainly for beer and as animal feed.  It’s low fat, and has an extremely low glycemic index, which means it has very little effect on your blood sugar.  The result?  You stay full longer, and have more energy longer.  The other ingredients in this mixture were also chosen for their relatively low glycemic index - it ends up being a reasonable amount of calories, low fat, high fibre way to start the day.  Sitting down with a bowl of it also makes me feel somehow connected to those ancient ancestors, and to the earth.

Like bread, it doesn’t take long to put the pieces together, but you do have to come back to it a few times over the course of about 90 minutes.  I think it’s well worth it.  This is the second time I’ve made it, although it’s the first time I’ve followed the actual recipe.  The last time I made it with pecans, dried strawberries and bananas.  It’s a very flexible recipe that adapts well to a variety of flavors.  I think I’m going to try cranberries and almonds next!

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“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist

I love meat.  I really do - as in “What?  If I can eat the entire 5 pound Porterhouse it’s free?  Bring me TWO of ‘em, medium rare!”  So no one is more surprized than I am that I’m even thinking about this, let alone dipping my toe into the waters.  Here lately, it seems like I’m eating less and less meat, partly because I’m enjoying trying out new bean recipes and lentils and other healthy alternatives, but also partly because my beliefs have started to shift.  It doesn’t take much research to find out that the animals we rely on for meat are treated really badly, and go through a tremendous amount of suffering.  I’d heard about it before - we all have, really.  Hearing about it and seeing the pictures, or the video, are very different things.  When the video of workers using a forklift to torment and torture the “downer” cows came to light earlier this year, it became very difficult for me to continue to ignore what goes on in our nation’s meat factories (let’s face it, these animals aren’t raised on farms anymore).  Between eating less meat and not wanting to support big agri-business, I’ve decided to try and live as a vegetarian for 2 weeks, and see how it effects my health, happiness and lifestyle. This isn’t the only option out there. You can have your meat and support sustainable non-industrial farming, too. If I don’t like the vegetarian life, that’s my fallback plan.

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“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh

“Multitasking” is a buzzword we’re all familiar with - it (theoretically) means the ability to do several things at once. What it usually means is the ability to have several things going on at once, none of which get done as well as they should, and some of them get left half finished and forgotten.

What most people I come across seem to lack completely these days is the ability to single task. As a society, we’re always ready to answer the phone, respond to an e-mail or IM, listen to the radio or have the TV on while we do other things. As Yoda would say “Never our minds on where we are, on what we are doing!”. He’d be right.

My challenge for the week (feel free to try this with me) is to take at least one task a day - be it brushing my teeth, baking a loaf of bread, doing the dishes, washing the car or cooking dinner - and concentrate on only that task. The idea is to do that one task slowly, deliberately, in a focused manner and to do it completely - I’ll turn off my phone, mute the computer speakers, turn off the monitor, whatever I need to do to not be distracted, and I won’t allow anything to interrupt me until my task is complete.

The idea is to connect with the “now”, at least for a time, and use these tasks as a sort of meditation in mindfulness. I’ll post here in a month and let you know how it went, and what my impressions are.  If you try this, even once, I’d love to hear your impressions in the comments!