Why we are vegetarians

When I found out that today is World Vegetarian Day, I decided that the best way to recognize it would be to do a layout about why Matt and I have become vegetarians.

We actually tried a vegetarian lifestyle several years ago, but we didn’t do enough learning about how to do it well. We replaced way too many of our meat-centric meals with carbs because they’re so easy. But because of that we gained weight, which certainly didn’t improve our health, which was the original reason for starting the change in diet. So we eventually gave it up.

Then, last October, as Matt was getting more into running and losing weight, he began to read more and more about the benefits to an athlete of being vegetarian. So we decided to try again, but this time we did more homework and it’s been a much more satisfying change.

The rest of the reasons for being vegetarian apply to us as well. It started to become harder for us to be passionate animal rescuers and not question our continued willingness to eat meat. We also believe that it’s better for the environment not to allot so much of our land to raising cattle, etc.

There’s a ton of information out there that can convince you to give up meat if you’re interested, but my real reason for doing this layout was to document in our scrapbook album this part of our lives and why it’s important to us.

The journaling

Back when I first saw these bags from Chipotle Mexican Grill, I really wanted to recreate the look with the journaling on one of my layouts. Then, when I thought about doing this page, that idea came back to me. The organic feel of it seemed like the perfect fit for my “granola” message, so I hand-lettered my journaling in the same style.

Product/technique notes: I found the amazing photo I used on my page on the Mercy for Animals blog. The patterned paper is from the BasicGrey Konnichiwa collection.