When my friends and family members heard that I stopped eating meat they were shook. I’ve always been a huge meat eater so this sudden change didn’t sound like me at all. I would eat meat every single day and I would beg my parents to take me to Outback Steakhouse or to grill some carne asada on a Sunday afternoon. That's why my last meal as a meat eater was kind of a huge deal for me and to be honest, it didn't go as I expected.
The Original Plan
I haven't eaten meat in almost five years, that's like a quarter of my life! I went vegetarian for a couple years and then I decided to go vegan but when I first decided to stop eating meat I planned my last meal as a meat eater perfectly – I wanted to say goodbye to meat by eating my favorite thing ever: carne asada. That's like the Mexican version of a BBQ – a steak cooked on the grill, accompanied with tortillas, onion, sauces and sometimes even quesadillas.
Going vegetarian was one of my New Year's resolutions so I planned to eat my carne asada on New Year's Eve and then say goodbye to meat forever. That worked pretty well, I continued my meat-free diet for a couple of months until the disaster occurred – I ate meat again.
One day I came home from school and I was starving and the only thing I could find in the kitchen was some fried rice with chicken that my mom had made. I couldn't resist my hunger and take the time to cook something else, I had to eat that. I felt pretty defeated and I started eating meat again because I thought that one mistake meant that I failed completely as a vegetarian.
A couple months passed and I realized something – I was unintendedly eating vegetarian because I was so used to cooking without meat by this point so I decided to give the vegetarian thing another go. But there was a problem, I was going on vacation in a couple weeks and I wasn't well trained on finding vegetarian options in regular restaurants so I chose to eat as vegetarian as possible but without pushing myself too hard to avoid failing again.
The Last Supper
I started to notice that I felt better when I didn't eat meat and that it wasn't as hard as I thought after I did some proper research on nutrition, meal ideas, and restaurant options. I decided to start calling myself a vegetarian again because I was doing so well, but one day I went to have dinner at Capital Grille and things got messy.
I ordered a Lobster Mac n' Cheese but without the lobster, I know it sounds weird but there were not many veggie-friendly options in the menu. As I took the first bite into my dinner, I felt a piece of lobster hidden in the creamy mac n' cheese. I freaked out but I didn't wanna make a huge deal about it so I continued eating it. My logic was that if I didn't eat it it was going to go to waste anyways and I was gonna pay the same amount even if I didn't get the lobster. Obviously, if today I got any type of meat in my dish on accident, I wouldn't eat it, but I was a beginner back then and I didn't know how to react so I ate it all feeling very guilty and sick with every bite so I promised myself that I wouldn't do such thing again. Since that time, I haven't eaten any meat at all.
So there you go, my last meal as a meat eater was Lobster Mac n' Cheese – it sounds pretty fancy but it was actually a mistake. Even though it tasted good, the flavor wasn't worth it, but I don't regret it because it taught me a lesson: double check your order with the waiter. If you felt in any way inspired to leave meat out of your diet, check out this beginner's guide on how to go vegan so you can learn from my mistakes and go vegan or vegetarian the easiest way possible.