A month of eating meat

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

It's a month since I gave up being vegetarian, and I feel so much better! From constant pins and needles, to only sometimes but still every day took a couple of days, and then from about a week in, I've had nothing like that. My legs hurting so much I cried myself to sleep went straight I started eating meat; within a day, my legs didn't hurt. My sleep pattern has gone from 2 nights of 5 hour and 1 of 8 to mostly 8 hours sleep a night, and I'm associatedly less exhausted, dizzy etc.

Apparently - and this is something I didn't really internalise at the time - most vegetarians don't have constant pins and needles/numbness. I'tsn ot just that I'm a wuss, it really was unhealthy.

I even managed to have a day or two of no meat without sliding back, so I'm hopeful that I'll be OK to go back to how I was before (although even before I ever went vegetarian, when I ate meat most days, I was starting to choose vegetarian by default when eating out etc, and I have three vegetarian partners, so it's easier to make family meals mostly veggies).

Comments

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

It sounds as though you had a bad B12 deficiency. I had one too, and it is easily fixed by having injections every three months or so from my GP. Might be worth considering as an alternative to eating meat?

And since you're still getting pins and needles anyway, it might be worth going to the doctor even if you choose to keep eating meat. When I was first diagnosed, I got several injections over the course of a week, which topped up my levels and made symptoms go away very quickly.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought it was B12 and was on supplements, and trying to up my intake from non-meat sources. I even started eating shellfish and offal once a week or so, but that wasn't enough.

I know the GPs I know are very unsympathetic towards patients who go veg*n or on strict diets and then have health problems and don't just reverse the change, so I am more reluctant than normal to ask for that sort of help; after a week of eating meat, the symptoms had all gone, so I'm inclined to just stay eating meat.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Sadly, oral supplements don't really do much for B12 deficiencies.

Ugh to the GPs you know. I was worried when I got diagnosed with coeliac disease and then with B12 deficiency that I'd come under pressure to give up being vegetarian, but all my GPs were 100% supportive. And remained supportive when I told them I was cutting down on other animal products for ethical reasons.

Obviously I'm coming from the perspective that farming bacon causes substantially more suffering than farming halloumi, and that matters. So "eat bacon rather than halloumi" doesn't feel like a great cure to me.

(But on the other hand, farming beef probably causes less suffering than farming eggs, so if you're also talking about having steak rather than an omlette for dinner [unless you eat eggs from backyard chickens or something] that's probably positive all round.)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ooh. There is a thing called pernicious anaemia where you can't absorb vitamin B12 properly so only a fraction of what you eat gets in. It's a thing that just happens to people. My grandmother had it. Supplements might have been too compact for much of the contents of the tablet to get absorbed. It is worth getting tested...they do one blood test and tell you a couple of weeks after, I had it done because it's a little bit genetic.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It's an anaemia because B12 is then needed to absorb iron or something, I think.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. That might be what I have, but actually I'm OK with 'eat bacon instead of halloumi for breakdast' as a cure.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd always wondered why oral supplements don't work (um ... though obviously not enough to Google it). That makes sense.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'm really really glad it's got better.

most vegetarians don't have constant pins and needles/numbness. I'tsn ot just that I'm a wuss, it really was unhealthy.

I often feel like that about things I find difficult, that I must just be bad, forgetting when it's actually much harder. I'm sorry we didn't manage to get it across earlier, but yes, regardless of why, it was clearly effectively impossible for you to be healthy (and I don't think being vege but constantly ill is a good tradeoff).

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Thanks love. Your good opinion is important to me xx

[aiwendel.livejournal.com]

It does sound like you had a deficiency and it would be interesting to know if that was resolvable. Since getting pregnant I've been craving meat (and marmite!) and succumbing to it as it's easier than finding out whatever it is I've been lacking. I do wonder if I could get back to a properly balanced vegetarian or low meat diet though so if you do find out alternatives that help you I'm interested to know about them. I suspect I tended to do a meat free diet rather than an active vegetarian one with enough meat replacement things in.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Ooh, congratulations! And lots of people find that they crave meat and then are fine again when they're not pumping blood for two. So you might be fine.

I think that's exactly it, I was eating too much meatless rather than embracing the good vegetarian food; I struggled lots to get enough calories, for example, and didn't always manage.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, as someone you don't know from Adam, I was veggie for 15 years before getting pregnant, wherupon I found that *for me* I needed to add meat into my diet for the next approx 4-5 years during which I was either pregnant, breastfeeding or both (bf and 2nd pregnancy overlapped.) Baby 2 breastfed til he was 5, but after a couple of years I figured his intake/my output wasn't significant enough to continue to cause me issues, so I cut meat out again, and have been veggie again for the last 5 years. The pregnancy/bf period felt like a discrete period when my body's needs just were different, and then when that wasn't the case any more it was not a problem to return to the previous status quo. I might even have done it sooner, but I have ME which added a complicating factor in terms of energy levels etc. I hope this random anecdata from a stranger is of some help/comfort/interest to you, and I hope everything goes brilliantly for you :-)

[badriya.livejournal.com]

It is possible to be a healthy vegan as daughter and baby are fine and grandson was for 9 years, but he's just veggie now. I think as vegan you do need to take a great deal of care to get all the nutrients. Although some people might need some things more than others and so it didn't work for you.