My Top 5 Childhood Cartoons

Cartoons from the 80s and 90s are more endearing even to adults than cartoons of other eras. I guess it’s because we didn’t have other distractions like the internet and iPads or maybe it’s that they were higher quality. It’s hard to separate your opinion from nostalgia, but I do feel that cartoons targetted at a younger audience from that period are more watchable now than their equivalents. Adventure Time and similar cartoons are probably just as targetted at adults as kids so I am not sure where they fit in, but anyway here are my Top 5 Cartoons from my childhood! I have rated them not only on how much I liked them at the time but how I can stand to watch them now.

#5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)

Great action, continuous and reasonably well-written story and a lot of likeable main characters, all well voiced, made this show memorable. It also ran for a long time and entertained you from child into teens with a fun sense of humour. I still think Shredder is one of the coolest evil villains in any franchise.

Batting a live grenade away with a nun-chuck. Yep.

It also helped that the theme song was catchy as anything. I still sing it today sometimes. Except for the part that says “We’re really hip!” Nearly everyone knows the song and ask anyone who watched it and they are likely to have a favourite TMNT character. It remains one of the best cartoon series of all time!

#4 Street Sharks (1994)

Ripster! Jab! This is another one of those cartoon series about some anthropomorphised badass creatures that seems like it was made simply to sell some sweet toys. And the toys were sweet. They were good quality and I collected a lot of them! I remember that they were expensive though and it was really difficult to get the whole set, so mostly we just tried to collect the set between the few kids in the neighbourhood who collected them. I was big in to animals, figurines and roller skating at the time and maybe that has tinted these glasses but I still get excited when I hear the theme song.

Lots of action. Good animation. Cool characters. Jawsome!

How is this not awesome?

#3 Dino-Riders (1988)

This was an absolute classic. Dinosaurs with fricken lasers on their fricken heads. That’s completely awesome even at age 25. I loved the attention to detail and all of the characters – they weren’t the generic humanoid animals of other cartoons and they weren’t robots. Even though at the time I was so into dinosaurs that I knew the different species were from much different time periods, I loved it anyway. Something else that also stands out was the voice acting, great casting and good performances, reminiscent of Transformers.

So. Awesome.

On top of that, the toys were amazing. I had the T-Rex with full armament and I played with it until it broke, years later. It was battery-powered and would walk and roar. I would really love a remake or revisit, but I should be careful as it’s likely to be ruined. They just got the mix of quality and awesome so right with this series I just wish it didn’t go extinct so soon.

#2 Rocko’s Modern Life (1993)

Horrible Aussie accent aside, the lovable but wacky characters, sick or odd sense of humour and WOW that intro song!

It was, to me, one of the pioneers of cartoons with some adult humour in them along the lines of Ren and Stimpy. It had unique characters, a unique art and animation style, and voice acting that is hard to beat even today. The quirky stories complimented the quirky sense of humour and you couldn’t help but love this little wallaby trying to make it in the big city.

#1 Beast Wars (1996)

Hands down my favourite “cartoon“, even though it was a CGI series. I used to video tape this and get very upset when I missed it – the worst was when I was recording it and trying to pause the recording during ads, but then forgetting to press record again when the ads finished. Awesome characters, amazing stories, nice pace and flow. The action and drama was intense even though the 3D animation was still young. The voices, as with all Transformer series, was exceptional.

I think Dinobot, though unfortunately named, is my favourite character in anything ever. His relationship with Rattrap was also entertaining (I call one of my pet fish Rat-trap in memory of the show!). I still own this full set on DVD, the only full set of anything I own on DVD. It went a bit downhill with the sequel series Beast Machines but it was still a passable CGI cartoon.

Honourable Mentions

• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters (1994)
• The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991)

A lot of shows that I absolutely loved, like Pokemon or Superted, missed out because it’s mind numbing to watch now. Others I recognise as great but they weren’t really a big part of my childhood because they were too old – classics like Transformers and He-Man are great and I had more figurines from those shows than anything else but I never really watched them. They weren’t on Cheez TV. Also a few honourable mentions have to go to shows like Daria and Felix The Cat that weren’t my top favourites but are still enjoyable today.

That rounds out my Top 5 childhood cartoons! Share your own favourites in the comments!

My New Blogs

Because my interests often lie in topics that could be considered polar opposites, I decided to split my blog in to a few categories. Here they are!

Visit delgaming.wordpress.com for reviews and playthroughs

TheMisterDel – The original blog where most content will be related to life in Canberra with my wife and our travels together.

DelGaming – I will be posting gameplay from my YouTube channel here as well as reviews of games, mostly older/retro or indie games.

delsport.wordpress.com will be my new sporting blog

DelSport – Here I will blog about sporting topics. I am mostly interested in any form of rugby but there might be something else on occasion. I have no one to really talk about rugby with so this is going to be broad in range, with both serious and rambling discussion.

DelFishies – Here I can post content relating to fish and aquariums. It could include species profiles, experiences, photo, video, tips or lists.

Instablog – This is my “instablog” where I will post short updates from my phone – probably 2 or 3 sentences at a time – while out and unable to do another blog. It might also contain random thoughts or ideas or even announcements.

Remember to Like and Follow the blogs that interest you so you know when new content goes up!

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 8 – Final Tips

This is the final entry in a series of blog posts in which I mean to share my experience successfully switching to a vegetarian diet in the hopes that it may help others to do so. This final discussion gives you some tips to keep on track.

Tips

There are a lot of tips out there from various resources such as online blogs or lifestyle magazines that will give you other helpful tips. While I implore you to do your own research if you feel it necessary, here are my favourite simple tips that will help you either transition to or maintain a healthy vegetarian diet.

Ongoing research. Your learning experience doesn’t stop after your first successful year of vegetarianism. To this day I continue to look up new recipes and nutrition information. There are lots of meat alternatives out there and more and more will become available. Nutrition is also a changing scene as new research unveils more rich information that will help motivate you and keep things exciting.

Grow your own vegetables. This is one of the best tips available because you will always have access to fresh, healthy vegetables and other cooking ingredients like herbs. It is a very enjoyable hobby to top it off and many vegetables that form the staple of a vegetarian diet, like zucchini and spinach, are very easy to cultivate and produce large quantities. Not only that you will get a real sense of achievement and save a lot of money and trips to the shop.

Mix in philosophies from other healthy diets. Don’t limit yourself to ideas from vegetarian sources only. A lot of other diets have tips and suggestions on how to keep at them and it can often be applied to a vegetarian diet. Even if you are not doing it for weight loss, the planning and goal systems used by a weight loss program can also apply to help you kick your meat habit.

Find new recipes. Most people can’t exist on just salads, vegetarians included, so you need to keep things interesting with at least one new meal each week. That way by the time you are in full swing of your new vegetarian lifestyle you will have a huge repertoire of dishes that you have perfected, you might even make some of your own.

Change your life.

Constantly question your decisions and motives. If you can’t kill the animal yourself, why is it OK if others do it? Constantly challenge your philosophies with new questions that you think of or research to keep yourself motivated and to give you all the ammunition you need to stave off any cravings or doubts.

Vegetarian snacks. One common area of failure are because of the pressure to eat meat for quick and easy snacks. Prepare for this and find veggie-friendly snacks that you enjoy and make sure they are on hand at all times. Snack ideas include cut up fruit, raw or roasted nuts, hummus, salsa, berries, yoghurt, cereals and of course many more. Don’t feel limited – instead see it as an opportunity to try new foods.

Dining out. Enjoying a meal with friends can be difficult when you are trying to eat vegetarian. You can often feel like you are burdening your friends by having to scrutinise every menu and limiting their available options. You may end up in places where you are limited to one or two genuine options on an entire menu. However, you can overcome this by not being afraid to ask the question and see if the chef can do something special. Also, make sure your friends know in advance and don’t be shy to remind them – they can feel just as awkward or embarrassed as you if they end up inconveniencing you.

GOOD LUCK!

Feel free to contact me here or on my twitter (in widgets) if you have any follow up questions 🙂 Or leave a comment!

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 7 – Sticking To It

In this series of blog posts I mean to share my experience successfully switching to a vegetarian diet in the hopes that it may help others to do so. Here I can help you stick to your choice now that you’ve taken the leap.

Sticking To Your Choice

So you’ve decided to make the switch to a healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle, but perhaps it’s not the first time? Perhaps there’s pressure from friends or family to eat meat? Maybe you’re struggling with the diet? Many of you are going to need something a little more than noble intentions and this is one of the most important parts of a successful transition – the follow-up. I will outline several methods that have again been useful for me or others I have known in sticking to their choices.

What better way to stay motivated than to have a huge list of reasons being a vegetarian has improved someone’s life? Here is my personal list, but I implore you to think of your own to add as you count the weeks, months and years that you keep at it.

REASONS BEING VEGETARIAN HAS IMPROVED MY LIFE
More energy in “bed”	Getting more vitamins	Meet new friends	Easier to cut out other bad foods	Perfect cholesterol levels	Sense of achievment
Less kitchen cleanup	Feel fitter	Easy to avoid fast foods	Pay more attention to diet	More money	Sleep more soundly
Feel like I have a purpose	Inspire others	Growing my own food	Feel tired less	Less sick days	Better skin
Conversation topic	A cause to care about	Found Thai and Indian food	Grew a passion for cooking	Learn more about nutrition	Feel healthier
Encourage others to eat well	More energy	Introduced to new food options	Lose weight faster	Helping the environment	Appreciate nature
Debunk common myths	I eat more varied meals	New favourite meal	I know more recipes	Feel lighter	Appreciate healthy snacks
Friends also made the switch	Support from family	Less frozen foods	Enjoying food more	Less guilty	Less packaged foods

Easy victories

Doing almost anything successfully is about taking the easy victories quickly and frequently. What I mean by this is things that take off a huge chunk of your work with little effort. If you were stacking shelves in a retail job you might start with the large items to clear a lot of room for minimal effort, as it gives you a sense of achievement seeing all that empty space your work once occupied. In switching to and maintaining a vegetarian diet your easy victories are the times when you simply modify a current recipe you know and enjoy to include a vegetarian alternative to meat. For example, you can omit the ham or bacon from your fried rice, but include a bean mix and chopped vegetarian sausages. You can have a burrito or taco using vegetarian beef mince substitute such as that made by Quorn. You can replace the meat in a stir-fry with TVP and/or a bunch of new vegetables that you’ve never tried before, such as Chinese celery, taro or lotus root.

Caving once or twice in no way prevents you from ever enjoying the benefits of a healthy vegetarian life.

You can even have a burger! One of my favourite lunchtime meals is a Quorn or otherwise vegetarian “burger” patty with all my favourite sandwich fillings on wholemeal bread. For those of us who ate poorly before the switch this really can satisfy those burger or fast food cravings. This to me feels like an easy victory as I am basically having one of my favourite meat-based meals without any of the regret associated with such a bad food item. You can forget your vitamin or protein intake for the day and just enjoy a comfort food guilt-free.

Another easy victory is when you can add extra servings of fruit, nuts or vegetables to your diet. A diet where you eat more? That’s right! By increasing the ratio of fruit and veggies to meat that you eat you are actually progressing towards your end goal of vegetarianism. Add in a couple of snacks involving your favourite fruit or a nice savoury snack and know that you’re doing your body and mind good.

Dealing with Cravings

Cravings are very normal in the first year or two of becoming a vegetarian but even if you do cave to the temptation it is OK – you haven’t failed. You are allowed to give in now and then and you can be afforded a few moments of weakness if and only if you remain stubborn and unyielding in your ultimate goal of becoming a vegetarian.  Do whatever it takes to remain staunch:

• Redouble your efforts at achieving goals
• Remind yourself of the reasons you made the choice
• Picture yourself saving an animal you admire from being eaten
• Visualise something unappealing associated with eating meat, such as animal torture
• Watch a motivating video or read a stirring article advocating vegetarianism
• Remind yourself of how far you’ve come by remembering the old you
• Convince yourself of your improvement by beating your PB for a short jog
• Temporarily turn yourself off eating entirely if you must, by grossing yourself out – look at some road-kill and imagine it on your plate!

I Ate Meat – Did I Fail?

Of course you didn’t! Many people who try to switch to vegetarianism do give in. Sometimes it can be disheartening and an overwhelming sense of disappointment or failure can shift your focus from what matters. It is never too late and you can start again where you left off. Caving once or twice in no way prevents you from ever enjoying the benefits of a healthy vegetarian life. In fact, caving can enforce your beliefs and encourage you by letting you know you’re on the right track. How? Because often people who end up “cheating” momentarily feel physically ill and guilty after eating meat they know they shouldn’t have. That is your body telling you “Don’t put this rubbish inside of me!”

Vegetarian diets can be sexy too

What if I Hate Vegetables?

This is a very serious issue for many people who want to adopt a healthy lifestyle. How can I become a vegetarian if I can’t stand to eat my veggies? Unfortunately vegetables are essential in a healthy diet as they are packet with nutrients. A lot of the time peoples impressions of vegetables are those same combinations of broccoli, potato and carrot that have been boiled to mush served as filler alongside a meat option. This is obviously going to be unappealing even for die-hard vegetarians so you have to know how to cook and use your vegetables to make the most of their unique flavours and textures. A few options to try to embrace vegetables in your diet include:

• Spicing them or masking the flavour with sauces like curry
• Mixing them in a smoothie with fruits and other vegetables you like, adding carrot with mango or orange juice
• Putting layers of zucchini, spinach and carrots in lasagne
• Adding broccoli, peas, corn or cauliflower into your pasta or macaroni
• Put tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli in an omelette
• Grill some zucchini, mushroom and capsicum (peppers) to include in Mexican foods
• Make a vegetable soup to change the flavour
• Try them raw – it can completely change the flavour and texture
• Dip your raw veggies like celery and broccoli in a dip you enjoy, like hummus or cottage cheese
• Low-fat cheese over your vegetables can make them much more palatable to fussy eaters

Come back tomorrow for the next part of the series!

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 6 – Nutrition

In this series of blog posts I mean to share my experience successfully switching to a vegetarian diet in the hopes that it may help others to do so. Learn a little about nutrition here.

Basic Nutrition

It is very possible to eat unhealthily while being vegetarian. While it is harder to do, you must still pay a lot of attention to your nutritional intake and make sure you balance your diet. Your usual recommendations of 5 serves of fruit or veggies per day is obviously too low for someone who does not eat meat, see your revised food pyramid below.

Your new food pyramid favours whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds and vegetables over dairy and meat products.

While you will be very spoiled for vitamins you must ensure you also put in the nutrients that you would otherwise get from meat, poultry and fish. The most important of these are protein, iron, zinc, calcium, B12 and vitamin D and omega-fats. While most of these are very easy to include in a vegetarian diet, you must make a conscious effort to do so. Until you get in to the good habits of balancing your intake without even thinking about it you should keep a log and plan out meals for a few weeks.

So where do you get these essentials from?

VEGETARIAN NUTRITION
Nutritional element	Meat sources	Vegetable sources
Protein	BeefLamb Seafood Pork Chicken	PeasBeans Lentils Nuts peanut, cashew Soy products Eggs Dairy
Iron, Zinc	BeefLamb Seafood Pork Chicken	Leafy green vegetables spinach, kale, swiss chardDark chocolate and cocoa Tofu Seeds squash, pumpkin Beans white beans, mung beans Mushrooms Lentils Nuts peanut, cashew, hazelnut, almond, pine nut Fruit Eggs Dairy Whole grains Bran Cereals (fortified)
Vitamin B12	ShellfishFish Crustaceans Red meat	Soy products (fortified)Eggs Dairy Cereal (fortified)
Vitamin D	FishOysters Caviar	MushroomsSoy products (fortified) Dairy (fortified) Cereals (fortified) Margarine (fortified)
Omega fats	Seafood	WalnutsFlaxseed (linseed) Rapeseed Chia Soybeans Wild rice Beans edamame Dairy (fortified) Eggs (fortified)

Come back tomorrow for the next part of the series!

Samoan Honeymoon Days #4-5

Day 4

The last few days of our South Pacific honeymoon played out much the same as the first few – swimming, eating and sleeping. We got another chance for a sleep in and grabbed a late breakky of eggs benedict and bagels. We noticed both taps in the bathroom sink were labelled “Hot” and agreed that this summed up the place nicely.

The view from our room never got old.

We had a nice beach walk culminating in a long and langorious swim before a read in the sun. This is where we were a little foolish. Now, I am not exaggerating when I say we were the whitest people on the island. We followed our reading and sunbake up with more swimming and more sunbaking before a nap. That took our total time in the sun to at least 5 hours for the day. We didn’t pack sunscreen so you can imagine what happened next. While Chey and I did convincing impressions of boiled lobsters walking upright we bemoaned our stupidity and sorted a couple of things we needed to on the internet. The only 30 minutes online we got the entire week – and it was just to transfer some money. Despite this we still had a lot of fun for the day.

We decided to film a fun “challenge” video over there and I pulled a wee prank on poor Chey.

Day 5

Our penultimate day was spent – you guessed it – eating, sleeping and swimming. Chey seemed to take on a personal endeavour to replace most of her being with mimosas and I took to the rock pools to scope out the reef life. I had a wonderful time and I took a lot of videos and pictures. Some of them weren’t even very blurry. I am sure I will look over them in another blog some time and won’t bore you with the rockskipper blennies, pistol shrimps and baby moray eels quite yet.

Most of our time was spent here.

We purchased some sunscreen and spray for our sunburn. I think they must have thought Australia was even more commercially limited than their quaint island the way we carried on over the presence of anaesthetic in the after-sun spray. It was glorious. It was like unicorns with fairydust flavoured lip gloss licking our skin. We carried on about it for 2 weeks after returning home. The sunscreen allowed us to get in a bit more swimming just in case there was any part of us that wasn’t 50% chlorine yet.

Cheyanne gets comprehensively refreshed, both of us well into double figures soon after this point.

The rest of the evening comprised a giant hermit crab liberating my thumb of dead (and some living) skin, a lovely dinner and getting very, very merry at the cocktail social they invited us to. This is the last blog I will do on our trip for now, though there are lots of details I did leave out in the interest of keeping it “short and sweet” that I can revisit if needed. Our final day was mostly more of the same and some preparation for getting up at 3:30am to shuttle to the airport. Hope you enjoyed it, but not as much as we enjoyed it because we paid a lot of money and I’d be a little annoyed.

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 5 – The Switch

In this series of blog posts I mean to share my experience successfully switching to a vegetarian diet in the hopes that it may help others to do so. This entry covers the main methods of making the switch.

The Instant Switch (Overnight)

I would suggest only doing it if your reason for change is resolute.

Everyone you meet will have a different story of how they made the switch. While most people gradually transition out of a meat-eating diet it is still a large percentage that will tend to drop meat completely and suddenly. Swapping your steak for a vegetable stir-fry overnight is not always easy but it also depends on your reason for doing so. Some people might have experienced something that they had previously not considered that disgusted them about the consumption of meat and they end up completely cutting it out of their diet without looking back. Others may have been prevented from switching when they wanted to because of religious or living circumstances that no longer apply, so they make the switch quite suddenly. Yet again some people may just not feel ready and confident in their cooking skills or research to make the switch yet. When they do feel that they are ready they may make the switch suddenly.

This option is probably easiest for single people or people with a vegetarian partner as the pressure of providing well-balanced meals for others while juggling negativity, having to explain yourself constantly and being exposed to smells and meals that trigger your cravings will all put a lot of strain on your resolve. The risk of course is that you do not adequately prepare and end up running out of steam. If you intend to take the healthy option suddenly you should ensure you have adequately prepared with the appropriate research and some practice cooking some vegetarian meals. Try and perfect your own recipes by cooking them once or a couple of times a week before you commit to switching “cold turkey”.

To achieve success switching this way, as I did, I would suggest only doing it if your reason for change is resolute. For me the initial switch was made through a combination of wanting to lose weight and get healthy and minimise my environmental impact, but most importantly I could not stand to harm animals. I knew that as long as I feel this way I will never eat meat no matter the cravings. However, if your reasoning is that you just want to try it out I would suggest the more methodical, long-term approach that allows adequate planning and a smooth transition.

The Gradual Switch (Step by Step)

My advice to best implement this gradual plan would be to slowly phase out meat.

Most people will tend to slowly phase meat out of their diet. Whether it was a conscious decision to reduce their meat intake or just a natural progression to a meat-free diet the time-span will vary from person to person. You may choose to exclude a certain type of meat, or just gradually reduce the amounts of all meats until you reach the end goal of complete vegetarianism. People that adopt this method are varied in their reasons but choose to take time because they want to make sure they succeed, or simply think they couldn’t handle a sudden absence of meat in their diet.

My advice to best implement this gradual plan would be to slowly phase out meat. Red meat is a good starting point as it is high in fat and hard to digest, and you will often find filler “meat” used even in supermarket-bought red meats. This filler usually consists of tendons and entrails and is quite easy to give up once you know what is in that mince you are eating. During this time you will be a semi-vegetarian as outlined earlier.

Set yourself a timeline for removing other meats, starting with those you enjoy most. This way you still have some comfort in other meats when you are deprived of your favourites and regulars. While phasing out meats try to fit in at least some fully vegetarian meals each week (preferably each day) so you aren’t overloading on one type of meat. To do this, cook your favourite meat related meals with substitutions in place of meat as well as trying new vegetarian meals.

Incorporate at least one new vegetarian recipe each week as you phase out the flesh based foods. This will help to keep you motivated to cook, further your research and hone your vegetarian cooking skills. If your cooking is not resulting in satisfying meals, try eating a vegetarian meal at a restaurant to keep your view of vegetarian dishes positive while you continue to improve your recipes. In this way you will get through your goals that you outlined earlier and will be well on your way to becoming a successful vegetarian.

Come back tomorrow for the next part of the series!

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 4 – Preparing

This is part of my series of blogs sharing my own experience switching to a vegetarian diet. This part in the series details how you can prepare – a vitally important step to a successful change.

Preparing

You’ve made the leap and decided on a healthier, more ethical lifestyle but now you want to actually do it. Once you’ve done your research and decided on the foods you will and will not eat you have to work on establishing a system that will help you keep your promises and reach your goals.

Develop a Plan

Do a lot of reading and research, especially focussing on vegetarian meals and ingredients. Buy yourself some cookbooks and leave them lying around to peruse when you have the time. Try cooking some of those recipes or invent your own based on your previous favourites. The idea is to become good at vegetarian cooking before you become a vegetarian. This way you can counter the cravings for flavour – often people fail because they are unprepared and when they start to cut meat from their diet they are just cooking the meals they always have, minus the meat. This is obviously a very bland experience and is not what a vegetarian meal is. A vegetarian meal is its own dish entirely and is not just a regular meaty meal with the flesh removed. The flavours come from all new combinations of ingredients and do not rely on the easy flavour option that the fat in meat provides. Now you want to put this research to good use.

Start by making a list in one column of the ingredients in the foods you regularly eat – including main meals, desserts and snacks. In the next column start to list the vegetarian alternatives next to the original ingredient using the knowledge you have just gained from your research. You can also add to the bottom of the list with new ingredients that you think of that you might like to include in your staples. Go shopping with this list! Some common trade-offs are swapping gelatine for agar, meat in stir fry for textured vegetable protein (TVP) or tofu, and rennet (in cheese) with non-animal rennet products. Remember to include some vegetarian snack foods (discussed later) so you are not tempted when just a little bit peckish.

VEGETARIAN SUBSTITUTIONS
OUT	IN
Ground beef	Bulgur wheatTVPLentils
Chicken	TofuTempehBeansLentils
Red meat	TofuPortobello mushroomsEggplantSpinach
Seafood	FlaxseedTofuSoybeansWalnuts
Jerky	NutsSeedsCheese
Seasoned meats	CheeseSeasoned tofu
Beef or chicken stock	Vegetable stockDilute miso
Gelatine	AgarArrowrootGuar gumXanthan gum
Refined sugar	Unbleached cane sugarMaple crystals
Ice Cream	SorbetFrozen YoghurtSoy Ice Cream

Set up a vegetarian meal plan. It is probably easier at the start to do a 1- or 2-week plan but many people like to do a “meatless for a month” or even “meatless Mondays” so try to make your plan as large and varied as you can manage. This plan will probably be your #1 tool to achieving your goals. You can even research local restaurants that offer vegetarian options, or even completely vegetarian restaurants, to include a night out in your meal plan.

Here are some links I have found useful in forming my own vegetarian meal plan:

Weight Loss Plan #1

Weight Loss Plan #2

General Vegetarian Plan

Create a reference source for ingredients, meal ideas, convenience foods, etc. Make sure it includes a list of prohibited items that might be less obvious. I kept a list of non-vegetarian friendly additives and preservatives in my wallet so when I was shopping and was presented with a huge list of complicated sounding ingredients I could cross check it with my list to see if it’s suitable. There are some real surprises if you are being strict as often red-dyed foods will use crushed insect shells for colour and some alcoholic beverages remove sediment and “cloudiness” with products derived from the death of fish.

It is not hard to stop eating meat. It may be inconvenient at first. It may be awkward at first. Those who have prepared adequately will find the transition quite easy and their research very convincing, but those who have not prepared are much more likely to slip back to their unhealthy habits. Make sure you are familiar with vegetarian foods and cooking before you make the switch so you are not left hungry and clueless, with bland meals of simple vegetables with the flavour boiled out of them and mountains of potato or frozen peas. It is a time to substitute, experiment and learn. Replace meats with tofu and TVP, experiment with brown rice, lentils, couscous and other more exotic options, and learn new and exciting ways to cook your meals.

Set Your Goals

One of the most important steps in both sudden and gradual transitions to a healthy vegetarian lifestyle is the founding of goals. These goals keep your motivation high and make the process a lot easier. Start out with a small set of goals – how small or large you start is really up to you and what you think you can handle. You might want to start with small daily goals like swapping some items in your shopping cart for a vegetarian-friendly brand. Alternatively you may want to set a goal along the lines of not eating meat for an entire day. After achieving that you might then try another day, and then three days in a row, a week in a row, and so on. Start simple so that you know you can do it, your sense of achievement will be real.

See the print out attached here to get started with your goals and log your improvement, or make your own!

Printable Goals – Steps To A Healthier You

A goal could be as straight forward as cutting out all meat for a day, or you may just want to start with cutting out one type of meat or animal product. Make your goals fit your lifestyle and current situation as there is nothing more demoralising than failing your goal because it was unrealistic. It leaves you feeling as though your efforts are hopeless and you are doomed to failure.

Definitely get creative with your goals. Do not limit it to cutting out meat for x number of days. Try applying goals into everyday activities rather than just what you eat. Some ideas for goals might include:

• Setting 30 minutes each week aside for vegetarian research
• Swapping two servings of meat with a single serving plus some vegetables
• Learning a new vegetarian recipe each week
• Memorising an additive that contains animal products
• Blogging or vlogging about your achievements
• Keeping track of meatless meals on a calendar
• Tracking physical benefits by recording gym achievements; or
• Listing a new mental or physical health benefit you have experienced each week

The ultimate goal, of course, is to be a fully fledged vegetarian completely independent of meat and animal based foods. Continually work towards this goal and remind yourself of it at all times.

Support Systems

Make sure you tell your friends and family and anyone close to you so that they don’t just know that you intend to be a vegetarian but they know why you want it. In this way you will create social support systems that will encourage you to get your goals. The important part is that they understand what you are doing and why you want to do it because then they will know when you are vulnerable or tempted to “cheat”. They can convince you rather than just remind you and it is important to have strong emotional support in times of weakness.

Another major support system is rewarding yourself after you achieve anything, no matter how small you think it may be. If we continue the earlier example of cutting out meat for first a day, then two days, then a week, you might want to reward yourself after the first day by doing something you enjoy if you achieve this goal. This could be buying something for yourself, going somewhere you enjoy or even just bragging about it on social media sites (brace yourself for negativity!). In the second week you could similarly reward yourself with a movie or favourite dessert food. Reward yourself with something you really want so that you are really going to feel it emotionally if you miss out. For example if you are a big sports fan you might bargain that you can only watch the big game on the weekend if you successfully avoid eating meat for your nominated period of time.

Come back tomorrow for the next part of the series!

The Successful Vegetarian – Part 3 – Making Your Choice

This is part of my series of blogs sharing my own experience switching to a vegetarian diet. This part in the series reviews a few different types of vegetarianism that you should know about.

Making Your Choice

Types

If you are going to adopt a new diet you must choose what you will and will not eat. While this is very much up to your own preference these are the commonly referenced “options” (though of course your real options are limitless). While this book has a strong focus on lacto-ovo-vegetarians it is important to know about all of your options.

• Semi-vegetarians may be people who are transitioning to or from a vegetarian diet and wish only to avoid certain types of meat or animal products at a time. An example might be someone who simply doesn’t eat red meat, or someone who is fully vegetarian except that they eat fish and shellfish.

• Lacto-ovo-vegetarians do not eat any animal flesh (pork, beef, lamb, chicken, duck, fish, etc.) but will eat eggs and dairy products. More often than not the choice of dairy or eggs are based on maximising the comfort and rights of the animal, such as cage-free eggs.

• Lacto-vegetarians will not eat any meat or eggs, but do eat dairy products.

• Ovo-vegetarians will not eat meat or dairy, but do eat eggs.

• Vegans do not eat meat of any kind and also do not eat eggs, dairy products or processed food containing these or other animal by-products.

Add to this all manner of variations such as how strict you are with your consumption of animal-derived products or eating only raw foods and you begin to get an idea of the alternative choices available to you, to tailor to your own personal needs.

Come back tomorrow for the next part of the series!

Samoan Honeymoon Days #2-3

Day 2

The second day of our recent honeymoon in Samoa started with a much needed sleep in. Not realising how much planning and organising a wedding takes out of you, we had been getting up no later than 7:30am most mornings – and this was supposed to be our time off. This was our first meal at the resort and I had some delicious eggs benedict. The serving sizes were small even though the prices were about what you’d expect. I would have been disappointed if the food wasn’t especially tasty, but as it was I was happy enough.

I was immediately drawn to the water and eager to see some tropical wildlife that we don’t really get to see in Canberra; maybe a fish or even a particularly energetic sea-sponge. Anything. Fortunately what we saw was wonderful (for me, as a fish fanatic), through the shallows and inlets there were all kinds of reef and brackish-water fish. I counted close to a dozen types on the first glance, including target fish (tiger bass), humbugs, chromis, mullet, southseas devil, fiverband flagtail and a couple more. While I couldn’t photograph anything underwater with my phone, there was plenty of terrestrial wildlife (see the gecko below) to maintain my schoolboy interest while Chey worked on her tan.

A gecko on a light post

We then swam a lot. And I mean a lot. We spent upwards of 3 hours a day in the pool, and on top of that we often went for wades in the shallow ocean waters. I think we put a few people off coming in the pool with us because we were very cuddly in the water. Understandably mind you – it was our honeymoon after all. The vegetarian options for lunch were great so I had a roti-wrapped vegetable curry (Thai style) with local and native veggies in it. It was delicious as was Chey’s club sandwich. A nap soon followed to complete the cycle that we would loyally adhere to over the next week. Eat, swim, eat, sleep, eat, swim, sleep.

The night was capped off with a cultural show by a youth group after dinner. I won’t keep going on about food except to say that we ordered a bread dip and expected something savoury like hummus or basil and olive oil dip but got three dips – sweet banana, caramelised onion/honey, and something that tasted like burnt with lots of seeds in it. The cultural show was better than I expected, especially for a still-learning youth group. It went for a decent amount of time and tried to involve the crowd as you would have seen from the video in my last blog.

Day 3

On the third day we took the shuttle into town with the same driver who seems to think that the reflection of us on the inside of his windscreen actually is us. While he had a deep and no doubt enthralling conversation with the dead flies on the dashboard we took a few snaps of the endless taro and banana plantations, listening to his muffled musings the whole time.

The funky bus stop in Apia town.

The town was great for a once-off visit but would be severely lacking if you intended to stay here longer than, say, a month. It had all the basics and was substantially bigger than the nearest town where we are near the ACT. It even had McDonalds, where we grabbed a refreshment in the form of a gallon bucket of Coke that they labelled a “small”. We did the obligatory tourist things of sending some (terrible) postcards from the postoffice before visiting the flea markets. They were great but soon got repetitive. The people were somewhat open to bartering and they weren’t TOO pushy with their items, except when they saw you buy a similar item from a nearby vendor. I don’t know why they thought that after buying about a dozen sarongs (locally called lavalavas) we would need some more but there you go.

Papapapaitai falls

On the way back we visited a very nice waterfall – the largest in Samoa apparently – with a supremely satisfying name. When our guide told me the name I thought he was having a stroke or maybe a light seizure. Then I thought he was making a joke. Then I realised it was the actual name. Say it yourself a few times, it’s sure to cheer you up. The day ended with some cocktails – Samoan variants of popular or common cocktails including much the same ingredients except replacing some things with an island fruit like coconut, banana or melon. This followed another show – this time for the adults doing a similar routine, except that it included dances from islands all around the region including Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti and Samoa. I won’t dwell, but I think I saw Chey’s breaths get a little short when the men – well I say men but realistically they were sixpacks with faces – were doing something physical. Even moreso when they came to shake our hands afterwards. The group was planning to do an anti-suicide camptaign that took them around Australia – we both agreed they would raise a lot of money from single women if nothing else. We wondered how someone could be that depressed in this care-free and laid back paradise but then both realised that that is the point – you just don’t know why you feel that way. We had recently lost a friend this way so donated what we could in cash. We were keen to end the night on a happier note. Sinacolada, Seaduction and Banana-rama cocktails got us very merry before we retired to the air conditioned room for the night.

Told you it was real.