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Articles and Information
Leading By Example
by Katie Luebcke
"Is that just from not eating meat?" That was the question my aunt asked me at our family reunion over Mother's Day weekend, and I took a moment to consider my answer. Over the course of a year, I had lost about forty-five pounds, and for approximately half of that time, I had not consumed meat. I became a vegetarian (lacto-ovo, that is) to better my health, and continued on to veganism for a combination of health and ethical reasons. Currently, I'm wearing the soles out of the last pair of leather shoes I ever intend to own.
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I come from a family that loves to eat. To tease my (Catholic) father, my mother and I would say, "When they get together, Catholics drink and Protestants eat." Each year at Thanksgiving and Christmas, an enormous turkey holds the place of honor among the other dishes, complimented by ham and occasionally chicken; at Easter, there is an even larger serving of dead pig. Various other meats round off the meal along with eggs and "vegetable" side dishes that are filled with meat, are fried, or both. As a family that derives many traditions from the south, we love our meat, we love our potatoes, and we love them both fried.
I doubt it would surprise anyone that much that our family has weight problems. I weighed a hundred pounds in fourth grade, and continued to be overweight until my freshman year of college. That year, on November 4th, I decided to no longer consume meat, a decision I made exclusively for my health. As the new year rolled around, I resolved to lose the weight I had been carrying around for years, and I am proud to say I have done so, through a combination of healthier eating and exercise.
So when my aunt asked me if my weight loss was exclusively attributable to my vegetarianism, I knew that the answer I was going to give her was not the one she wanted to hear.
"Not entirely," I said. "I'm eating more fruits and vegetables than before, and I'm exercising more as well."
While exercise is a time-honored route to weight loss, most anyone who has traversed a bookstore in the past few years knows that many fruits and vegetables, along with grains of any kind, are now the enemy, despite the fact that you can base a long term diet on these foods. Meat of any kind, milk, cheese, and eggs are now the way to shed those unwanted pounds. Several members of my mother's family have been or are on low-carbohydrate diets of one kind or another: Atkins, Sugar Busters, South Beach, etc. I will agree with them on one premise: refined carbohydrates are something to do without for the most part, though I confess to love an occasional piece of white bread.
Between Mother's Day and the next time I really had the opportunity to sit down and eat with my aunt (about a month later), I had dropped another five pounds through a combination of adopting a completely vegan diet and more vigorous exercise. I never really ate eggs as a main portion of a meal, and cheese was never truly a thing I loved. I had already acclimated my taste buds to soy milk, so I only truly had to eliminate butter and eggs when I cooked and learn to read food labels very well. But as much as it was for my health concerns, I had also begun to be horrified by the manner in which animals are treated in order to obtain the goods that we consider ours to use by right. I felt I could no longer be a part of that cruelty. So on May 10th, I eliminated eggs and dairy, and began the transition to avoiding other animal derived products.
At our next meeting, five of the women in my mother's family were having dinner at an Italian restaurant. While my mother, two aunts, and grandmother ordered large or meat-based entrees, I ordered a half-portion of pasta, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes tossed in olive oil, and a house salad with neither bacon nor dressing, both selections without cheese; a meal to make Atkins fanatics cringe. I declined the bread served to our table because I knew it probably contained eggs, butter, or an egg wash, and I didn’t feel like badgering the waitress to confirm my suspicion.
"You don't need to lose any more weight," my aunt admonished me. "Your face already looks chiseled, and if you lose much more, you'll begin to look gaunt." I know for a fact that my aunt is still following a low carbohydrate diet, the antithesis of the traditional vegan diet, but I held my tongue. Carefully planned, a high protein, low carbohydrate diet need not be too unhealthy, and I suppose she is eating better than she was when she was on the diet earlier. For a time, she consumed almost no carbohydrates. I was just pleased to see her eating something green other than celery.
Small talk ensued, and soon our main meals arrived; my aunt had ordered a breaded chicken salad. Halfway through her dinner, and somewhere in the midst of the table-wide argument concerning the development of the nation-state, borders, and immigration, she lamented, "I shouldn't have eaten that bread." Still, I kept my silence. She had just commented to me that I no longer needed to lose weight, and I was eating what her diet tells her she cannot. I wonder why this disconnect has not occurred to her. But I know she doesn't want to hear what I have to say. All I could tell her is that to truly become healthy, the best thing she can do is give up what our family has eaten for years, and to take up a serious exercise regiment. She doesn't want to hear that, and I don't think she ever will.
By now, I have begun to realize that all I can do is be an example to my family, and I do believe that I have a family that desperately needs an example. My mother is convinced that if I do not consume foods fortified with calcium, rather than naturally rich in calcium, I will develop a deficiency. She does not appreciate the argument of "where do the cows get their calcium if not from greens?" Many members of my family subscribe to the low carbohydrate hysteria; one of my cousins is convinced that I am thoroughly depriving myself by not eating animal products, and another of my cousins is now suffering from the consequences of anorexia, which I think my mother might have worried for a time my vegetarianism was hiding. I am healthier than I have ever been in my life, and I do not intend to change simply to become like my family once more. Though I may not bring them to an animal-free diet, I hope I can lead them to the realization that all the foods that were bad for us ten years ago are still bad for us now, that eating badly will always be detrimental to our health, and that, while the turkey served at Thanksgiving might be appetizing (to them), it will never be as nutritious as the jalapeno corn or tossed salad sitting beside it. And, God willing, that tofu can be made more appealing than that dead bird in its pan.
Katie Luebcke is an aspiring writer living in Ohio. She is studying history in college and enjoys writing, reading, creating messes in the kitchen, and watching really good movies.
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