Parents are always telling their growing children, eat everything on your plate and drink a whole glass of milk if you want to be big and strong one day. My parents were no different.

Since the age of 15 I’ve been on the brink of six feet tall, and it’s safe to say I have successfully avoided eating meats and drinking milk for a good 13 years.
People always ask me if it’s for the rights of animals or religion. Sometimes I’ll bend the truth and say it’s for the animal, but in all seriousness I’m not that good of a person. This lifestyle choice is all credited to my older brother.

At the age of six, just two years older than me, my brother decided to give me a vivid rundown of the slaughter of the chicken in my chicken noodle soup. This gruesome play by play seemed to not affect his appetite at all. It was a normal family dinner and he was going to enjoy the meat on his plate no matter how it got there. For me this was a life-changing night.

There are many religious events in the year that bring temporary life changes for people. These seemingly minor changes sometimes have major effects.
This was the case during lent for two girls on my team. By giving up meat, their bodies seemed to show signs of major deprivation. A simple drill during practice brought them keeling over in pain, and ultimately down to their knees.

After talking to them about what they have been eating, healthy salads, plenty of nuts and beans, I realized that their diet is superb compared to my daily raid of the refrigerator, so how am I so much better off I wondered. There was one simple answer to this  dilemma, my body has taken 13 years to skillfully adapt.

My body has grown up living off of  the least healthy food I could find, besides the occasional garbanzo bean that went into my mouth instead of my dogs bowl, protein was never high on my list.

There is a healthy way to live without meat and fish, I have just taken a less traditional route. Gradually easing your body into it would be a better choice and finding alternative sources to make up for the nutrients your body is already running off of is the smart way to do it.

My body has trained itself to take what I give it and not fight back because I’m not changing. My only logical conclusion is that living a healthier lifestyle  would cause problems in my immune system. I’m not complaining.