When I was 16, I once considered changing my diet to vegetarian. It sounded like a great and healthy idea. I started off by telling my dad, who was the cook in our household,to stop giving me meat for dinner. Being a household that relied heavily on meat as the biggest part of our meals, I felt hungry all the time. The lettuce and tomato for lunch also didn’t cut it, I constantly felt hungry and underfed… so naturally, I gave up.

A few times over the years I’ve considered trying a vegetarian lifestyle again but I was always reminded of how starved I felt when I tried it in High school. About 2 years ago my friend told me that her family will no longer eat meat. Later I started doing Yoga and saw a lot of yogis eating vegan or vegetarian meals but still… I was afraid to try it because of my teenage experience.

It was only when I moved to Busan that I met a vegatarian, who doesn’t shout his beliefs at me, who told me about how he became all vegan.  His journey took over 10 years. He first started cutting out certain meats, then fish, dairy and eggs until he ate only vegan foods. This sounded like a better way towards eating vegetarian.

Cutting out a whole food group at once has never sat well with me, but doing it slowly, over time can work, especially that it now gives me time to experiment with healthy dishes to see what works best for me, instead of deciding to eat only lettuce and tomato …