Musings on Vegetarianism

For the past four weeks I've been dipping my toes into vegetarianism by cutting all meat out of my diet except for seafood. That means that about 50% of my days are fully meat-free and the other half feature fish and other crustaceans. I'm not entirely sure if I will end up going full vegetarian or remaining pescetarian (or abandoning the whole project), but at the very least it's a nice exercise in becoming more thoughtful about eating.

A few things that have been on my mind:

• I've been very concerned with keeping my protein intake high. The potential to slip into a carbohydrate-only diet seems precarious. For that reason I've been focused on prioritizing the following foods: eggs, cottage cheese, salmon, tilapia, tuna, beans, and quinoa. But even quinoa scares me a little bit because despite relatively high levels of fiber and protein, it's still a grain.
• Eating socially has been far less frustrating than I expected. At restaurants I just scan down the menu and skip anything featuring beef, chicken, pork, or lamb. Fish dishes, salads, and soups have been key. And very few people have commented on my change in consumption.
• Physically, I feel.... not a whole lot different. It's not like a magic switch flipped and all of the sudden I got a lot healthier. Alcohol, lack of exercise, and poor diet choices still interrupt my fitness progress. However the one major improvement is that I'm far less prone to stuff myself on meat and become too lethargic to exercise or do anything else. This has helped me keep up with my running which has contributed to a slight decrease in body fat (and given me more energy overall.)
• To add to that last point: when you're taking several approaches to improve your health, it's really difficult to parse which efforts are yielding positive returns and which are useless. Since I'm eating (slightly) better, running more, and sleeping more all at once, I can't tell which strategy is most effective. At the end of the day I feel better (I'm optimizing the total system) despite not optimizing any one variable. [Further reading: here and here.]
• Next up on my reading list are The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life And Our World and Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.