New Year Resolutions: My Journey Of Becoming A Vegetarian

By
Aisha Abdulkareem Yakubu

The year 2024 is here and usually, the start of a new year serves as an opportunity for most people to set new goals which they hope to abide by and commit to better habits. But how many of such New Year goals or New Year resolutions come to fruition after the excitement of a new year? This brings to mind the question of how long does the average New Year’s resolution last?

Failing at New Year’s resolutions is so common that there’s even unofficial dates commemorating such failures-some sources cite ‘Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day’ as January 17 while others denote the second Friday in January as ‘Quitter’s Day’.

The Forbes Health/One Poll survey found that the average resolution lasts just 3.74 months. Only 8% of respondents tend to stick with their goals for one month, while 22% last two months, 22% last three months and 13% last four months.

I am one of the few that have successfully not failed my 2023 New Year resolution as I resolved to be a vegetarian from the 1st January 2023. The beginning of 2024 will be exactly one year since I took that decision of becoming a vegan.

There’ll be no New Year resolution for me in 2024 as I’ll use this opportunity to recommit to my 2023 resolution of being a vegetarian. June 1 is unofficially known by many as ‘New Year’s Resolution Recommitment Day’ but having passed that stage, I’ll use the beginning of 2024 as a time to hit the reset button of my 2023 resolution.

Nigeria is primarily a non-vegan region with less than 0.2% of its population being vegetarians…In Lagos alone, an estimated 164 trailers come daily with 6000 cows slaughtered for various purposes.

Being a vegetarian in this kind of country is not easy, especially the northern part with the culture heavily dependent on meat in their diet.It’s my most dreaded conversation on why I am a vegetarian.

Some people even argue with me and try to convince me to eat me again. They’ll ask me all sorts of questions like; where do you get your protein from? Or don’t you feel like eating meat again since you are from a non-vegan family?

I’ll always answer them with; I get my protein from other sources like; beans, nuts, tofu (Awara), lentils, avocado, soybeans and spinach.

And yes, sometimes I get tempted to eat meat again since it’s my first year in the journey into living a vegan life. When I think about the health benefits of being a vegetarian and that I’m into it for my well-being, I can’t give up that soon. But these answers don’t seem to always placate them since they think meat is the main or only source of protein.

What triggered the idea of becoming a vegetarian started one night when my father told me that his line manager in the office has a daughter that’s a vegetarian and I was like, that’s crazy; I can’t go a day without eating meat or fish.

A few days later, I started to develop interest in why would someone want to become a vegetarian a nd I found that there are tons of reasons. Everyone’s journey is unique, yet has so many similar and familiar aspects. Many choose to become vegetarian for health reasons, others for environmental or ethical reasons.

I then focused on the health benefits of cutting down or completely quitting the intake of meat and fish looking at its predisposition to cause certain disease conditions. According to a study published by HARVARD UNIVERSITY, researchers found that vegetarians consume less saturated fat and cholesterol than non-vegetarian. They also have greater intake of vitamins C and E, dietary fiber, folic acid, potassium, magnesium and other plant nutrients.

With this interest, I found out that there are different types of vegetarians or diets vegan (exclude meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products and food that contain these products). There’s the lacto-vegetarian, which exclude meat, fish, poultry and eggs as well as foods that contain them, but allow dairy products such as cheese, milk, yogurt and butter in their diet. The ovo-vegetarians exclude meat, poultry, seafood and dairy but allow eggs in their diet. On the other hand, the lacto-Ovo vegetarian diet excludes meat, fish and poultry, but allows dairy products and eggs.  The pescatarian exclude meat, poultry, dairy and eggs but allow fish.

I then decided to be a lacto-ovo vegetarian.After taking the decision, I then took the first step by informing my father and luckily for me he was not against it. But it was a different ball game with my mother, who vehemently kicked against the idea as according to her, it’s against our religion and culture.  The reasons she posited was that our religion allows us to slaughter and eat animal meat for different occasions while vegetarians say that it’s the maltreatment of animals.

I told her I want to do it for the health benefit but she still did not agree. However, after so many trials, I was able to convince her but on the condition that I consult an Islamic scholar to find out more on the religious (Islamic) perspective to the issue. I went ahead and asked a scholar in our community and alhamdulillah he said yes I can decide to become a vegetarian for personal reasons, such as not liking the taste of meat or for health purposes, with the understanding that only Allah (SWT) can prohibit or permit eating meat.

I thus started the journey by reducing the amount of meat I eat; like having three meatless days in a week but fish was ok. On the other four days I had a choice as to what I ate (meat or not). I thought I was doing my part and that was good enough for me. I could still eat meat when I wanted to but by reducing it drastically.

I became a full-fledged vegetarian on 1st January 2023. At first it was very hard for me being the only vegetarian in my family and friends. I have to contend with people eating meat in my presence or trying to convince me to eat meat again.  But after sometime I got used to people eating meat around me without getting tempted to relapse in my decision. I no longer feel like an alien among my friends and family with my meatless food.

Every new journey has its own difficulties but alhamdulillah the only difficulty I encountered when I started this journey was when I attended my friend’s wedding in Ganye Local Government Area of Adamawa State. It was a really tough time for me because that was my first time being a bridesmaid, with a very busy day and at the same time looking for my type of food to eat in the midst of the abundance of meat.

What makes me happy about being a vegetarian is eating food without any worry or concern about my ingestion of cholesterol. Even though we don’t have vegetarian restaurants in Yola we have a variety of food for pescatarian lacto, Ovo and lacto-Ovo vegetarian. That’s why I don’t have a tough time when going out.

If I was told a few years ago that I would become a vegetarian, I think I would have laughed at what I might have thought an impossibility. But on one random night, everything changed.

Happy New Year!

AISHA ABDULKAREEM YAKUBU  abdulkareemyakubuaisha@gmail.com