What Happens When This Vegetarian Eats Meat

I’ve written about my relationship with vegetarianism before, and not a lot has changed. At that time I wrote that, I followed a vegetarian diet about 90 percent of the time—I’m probably above 99 percent at this point. But I still go out for sushi occasionally. I still eat a piece of bacon now and again.

When this vegetarian eats meat in those small amounts—a piece of bacon, a little sushi—I don’t feel any different in my body. I’m not always proud of eating it, especially the bacon, but I’m working on that.

However, there have been two instances in the last 13 years or so when I’ve been “mostly vegetarian” and ended up eating more than just a little bit of meat, and those times are memorable—because they’re physically painful.

This Is What Happens to Me on the Rare Occasion I Eat Meat

What happens when a vegetarian eats meat? I don’t know how it goes for anyone else, but this is what happens to me:

I get sick for three days.

For three days, my stomach aches. Not continually; instead, the pain comes in waves of cramps high in my abdomen. Every few minutes, another wave. Three days of it. It’s miserable.

A Vegetarian Eats Meat: 13 Years Ago, and Two Weeks Ago

The first time this happened, it was right after my first yoga teacher training program. That was a month of a vegetarian diet, at that time the longest I’d ever gone in my life without eating meat. I enjoyed it, I didn’t miss meat, but I didn’t think twice about eating it again when I sat down at my family’s table upon returning home.

Being cattle ranchers, they served meat. I ate it. And I was sick for three days.

That encouraged me to ease back into eating meat, as I wasn’t at the time really ready to be a vegetarian. Within a few years, though, meat stopped appealing to me. Even before doing that first yoga teacher training, I had lost my interest in sitting down to a big piece of steak or chicken. Most of my meat eating was in casseroles, sandwiches, and other mixed bites I didn’t have to cut up.

By the time I was 28 or so, I was back to vegetarianism, strictly for awhile. Then I eased my restrictions to allow for sushi and random bites of bacon or whatever.

And that’s where I’ve been for years.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. It happened sort of by accident:

• My brother made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Since I allow myself the occasional piece of bacon, and I hadn’t had any in awhile, I had a piece.
• Then I was at my mother’s for lunch. She made lasagna, which contained hamburger. Out of respect for my mother’s effort, and the fact that I was super hungry after running four miles, I ate the lasagna.
• That night, my brother made fish for dinner. I eat fish sometimes! So I ate it! It was a busy day; I’d sort of forgotten about the bacon and the lasagna.

Until the next morning, when I realized I’d feel that awful for the next three days.

And I did.

Which isn’t all bad, especially now that it’s over. It reminds me of one of the reasons why I skip the meat, aside from the fact that I really don’t enjoy it, anyway. It’s a reminder to pay more attention, and inch a little closer to 100 percent, real-life vegetarian.

I still am an eat-and-let-eat kind of person. Eat in a way that supports your health, whatever that is for you.

But if you are a vegetarian, or a want-to-be vegetarian, or a sort of sometimes vegetarian, I’m curious if you feel a difference when you’re eating meat vs. when you don’t. If you ever eat meat after weeks or months without it, do you feel unwell like I do?