Why I started eating meat again

How I’m listening to my body after being a pescatarian for 7 years

For those who have known me for a while, you probably remember that for a good portion of my adult life, I was a pescatarian.  After graduating college and starting my first corporate job, I had a few coworkers who ate vegetarian/pescatarian, and raved about the health benefits of eliminating meat consumption.  At the time I was very picky about meat and refused to cook it myself, so I declared myself a pescatarian and stopped eating meat.  This was also during a time when there were tons of documentaries centered around plant-based diets and “exposing” the meat industry, so I felt validated in my decision.  Whether I was influenced by my peers or the media, in my mind I was doing the best thing I could for my health.

A year or so into my pescatarian journey I was diagnosed with Sjogrens Syndrome, an autoimmune condition where your moisture producing glands attack themselves, resulting in dry eyes and dry mouth.  Since I wasn’t feeling overly impacted at that time, I ignored my diagnosis and kept living life as usual, still happy with my pescatarian lifestyle. 

Over the next few years, my autoimmune symptoms started to become more noticeable.  I remember some days being so fatigued, I would make an espresso in the afternoon just to get through a 2pm meeting, I would feel inflamed and bloated even though I was working out 5-6 days a week and breaking out frequently in rashes.  Something wasn’t adding up, so I decided to see a Naturopath to get to the root cause, rather than masking my symptoms with steroid creams and prescriptions.

After my initial session it was clear that all these symptoms were a result of high inflammation markers from my autoimmune condition, and my doctor recommended I try the Autoimmune Paleo Diet (also known as the AIP diet).  Similar to the Paleo Diet, inflammatory foods (wheat, dairy, alcohol, nightshades, etc.) are eliminated for thirty days, and then slowly reintroduced back into your diet one at a time.  The diet focuses on plants and animal proteins, so for someone who wasn’t eating meat, I was very limited with what I could eat for those thirty days and eating felt very restrictive.  After I completed the diet, I did see a reduction in the number of rashes and flares that I was experiencing; however, I had lost about 10 pounds and was feeling depleted.  My anxiety was high (it didn’t help that this was also March 2020) and I still wasn’t feeling like myself. 

Documenting my first In-N-Out cheeseburger after 7 years,

The AIP diet also left me with food fear around certain food groups; I was so nervous reintroducing a food that I eliminated would trigger a flare.  I was desperate to find more answers using a holistic approach of diet and lifestyle which led me to enroll at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s health coaching program. 

I was becoming more in tune with what my body needed through my health coaching training, and that’s when my body started to crave red meat. I started out with grass fed ground beef and eventually added organic ground turkey; these textures seemed to be the most palatable for my meat reintroduction.  Almost immediately I felt like my body was saying “thank you!” for giving it meat since I had gone so many years without it.  Although I wasn’t anemic, I could tell my body was missing the iron from red meat.   

Since reintroducing meat, my energy levels are better, and I feel more like myself.   Not to mention I started incorporating strength training and have built more lean muscle which is a nice bonus!  If I can help it and I’m cooking at home, I always opt for grass fed or organic as conventional meats are highly processed with antibiotics and hormones that can increase inflammation. 

I’m not the same 23 year old that decided to go pescatarian, and I’m better off on the other side because my health struggles taught me so much.  With that said, who knows how I’ll be eating 3 or 5 years from now; I’ve found a good balance with eating intuitively and listening to what my body needs at this stage in my health journey.  My biggest takeaway from this experience is to listen intuitively to my body and look at health from a holistic, whole-body perspective rather than just a diet. 

Diet is so bio-individual and what works well for me, might not work well for you.  If you have any questions or are curious about different ways to support your health, reach out or drop a comment below <3.