Eating Meat and Going Vegetarian

I’ve been on a semi-vegetarian diet for almost a month now. It’s not exactly vegetarian, but more of a “pescatarian” diet — as in, you cut out meat but still eat eggs and fish. I started this mostly as an experiment to see how my health and athletic performance will be affected.

At first I was a bit nervous that my strength would go down, but that has not happened. I haven’t felt any different compared to last month. It looks like this diet does not have as big of an effect as I thought. But even if switching to this diet doesn’t bring dramatic change to my body, it’s still worth going vegetarian if only for environmental reasons.

My Relationship with Meat

It’s important to note that I have never been a big meat eater. I only eat meat very occasionally.

The biggest reason is that I have a psychological aversion to meat. It can even get physical at times — for certain types of meat, as soon as I get a taste on my tongue I throw up immediately ? It almost feels like a bad allergy.

My grandmother says that when I was a kid, feeding me was a pain. She would try to feed me meat, and I would reject and cry out loud. She would try grinding the meat or making those soft meatballs to make it easier for me, but none of these methods really worked. As long as it tastes like “meat”, I immediately get a reaction.

I can totally see how having a picky child like that would be a nightmare for parents! You’re cooking something that the entire family eat, but this one kid demands a special diet. Not fun at all.

The weird thing is that if it was just “raw meat” — like boiled chicken or jellied pork (thịt đông), I would vomit right away. But if it was heavily seasoned or marinated meat — such as the BBQ pork in bún chả or beef jerky (thịt bò khô), I’d eat the meat without any issues.

Later on, I was told that my struggle with meat stems from one incident in which my mum force fed me a massive piece of chicken. It got stuck in my throat and induced a suffocation and vomit reaction. It was traumatising enough that from then on, I started to associate the taste of meat with the sensation of vomitting.

I guess it’s similar to how if you have a traumatic experience with drowning when you were a kid, you will develop a fear of water. That’s how meat became my nemesis from an early age. Throughout my entire life I’ve always purposely stayed away from meat if possible, because well, I don’t want to throw up.

Going Vegetarian As An Athlete

At the same time, I’ve always been aware of the benefits of vegetarianism. I know meat has massively detrimental impacts on the environment, and that meat might be the cause of certain health issues. There’s also the ethical aspect of industrial meat farming. But I’ve never really had a big enough incentive to begin vegetarianism.

Until one day last month, a friend recommended me to watch the documentary The Game Changers on Netflix. The film follows many world-class athletes who thrive on a vegetarian, and some even a vegan, diet.

I watched the film. It’s really eye-opening and convincing, while also hyperbolic and cringey at times. But all things considered, seeing how many athletes can succeed with having zero meat in their diet, I was convinced that this might be worth a try. The most salient point brought up in the film is that plant-based food helps fight inflammation much better than meat, and reducing inflammation is a key factor in recovery for athletes.

The timing was also perfect — I was coming off my victory as an amateur arm wrestling champion, and I was getting extremely serious about this sport. I really wanted to push my limits and become a nationally competitive athlete.

So I decided to embark on a vegetarianism — or more precisely, pescatarianism — journey for at least a couple of months, while still maintaining my rigorous training regimen.

The Past Month So Far

It’s been four weeks. I’ve cut all meat out of my diet. No more pork, beef, or chicken. Very occasionally, like once a month, I will be eating out and having a portion of maybe pork. But overall for the vast majority of what I eat, there’s no meat.

I still eat eggs and fish. I don’t want to make too dramatic a change yet. And plus eggs are way too nutritious anyway; it’s hard to justify cutting them out completely.

One important thing to consider is that I don’t go grocery shopping or prepare my meals at all. The majority of vegetarians, and especially of those athletes featured in the documentary, put a ton of effort into their diet. They include a diversity of plant-based food: nuts, beans, fruits, vegetables, grains, and many even prepare a week’s worth of food in advance. This much food prepping is extremely complicated and time-consuming (at least for me).

There is no way I can invest so much into eating like that. I try to keep eating as convenient and simple as possible — I eat out 99% of the time, at odd hours, in cheap eateries. I don’t even count calories. It’s just not practical for me to plan and follow such an elaborate diet.

And so I’ve been sticking to either cơm bình dân (cheap Vietnamese buffet) where I can select a variety of plant-based food; fish noodles (bún cá); or if it’s really late at night I’ll go for a bowl of sticky rice with nuts (xôi lạc) with 4 eggs. Those 3 staples have basically been my diet for the past month. No pork, beef, or chicken.

The results so far have been good, but nothing dramatic. My strength has certainly been going up, but I’d credit that more to my training than my diet. My mood and feelings have mostly been stable as before. A small detail is that my face acne has been slowly going away, but I’m not sure if it’s entirely attributable to the diet.

Still, the good news is that there have been no detrimental effects so far. The common conception is that vegetarians are weaker, but that has not been the case for me. My strength gains have been very steady, and I haven’t felt more lethargic or weaker at all.

What’s Next

I don’t think it’s too surprising — the lack of noticeable change, that is — since I’ve never been a big meat eater anyway.

I will continue with this experiment for the next couple of months. If the strength trajectory continues on its way up, and my overall health experiences no adverse change, then I will stick to this diet in the foreseeable future. And also, if I do manage to become a vegetarian and an arm wrestling champion, this will open many people’s eyes for sure, since a lot of people think of arm wrestling as the epitome of brute strength and masculinity, and weakling veggie-eaters have no place in it!

As a final note, a lot of vegetarians do it for ethical reasons. I can understand this, but it’s not my primary concern. It’s better and more practical to think of going green in terms of alleviating environmental impacts, as it is obvious that meat is a much bigger contributor to global warming than plant foods or even eggs or seafood.