Your best friend just came out to you. No, she’s not gay. She doesn’t have a terminal illness either. It’s much worse than that—she’s decided to go vegetarian!

Oh, the agony of losing a fellow carnivore…! These veggie-freaks are everywhere nowadays! You keep hearing about these people who eat a plant-based diet excluding meat, poultry, and fish at your workplace and on the news. They say there are hundreds of thousands of them in America, and millions worldwide! And now the craze has hit your love life and it’s thrown your perfectly carnivorous world into tumult.

But fear not, dear meat lover! I’ve got your back and I’m here to walk you through the loss and confusion that is losing a fellow carnivore to “the other side”.

The 7 Stages of Dealing with a Vegetarian

Stage One: Shock: What? Huh? You thought she liked steak… Why is she doing this to you? It used to be fun hanging with her. You’d follow up a night of dancing with some classic drunk food – hot dogs, burgers, tacos. You’d treat yourselves to a classy dinner on a Friday night, clinking glasses over two plates of filet mignon, toasting a well-earned meal after a hard week. And now she’s not having it. She’s all picky about what she’s willing to eat – she even asked the waiter what the base of the soup was! What gives?

How to cope: Here’s the lowdown: Unlike other diets, vegetarianism isn’t taken on after a nausea-inducing step on a scale. She’s probably thought it out and done some research. Vegetarians tend to base their decision to go meatless on three main grounds: moral (animal rights), environmental (many consider eating meat to be unsustainable for the planet), or health (she wants to avoid getting high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, etc.). See? Those are some serious reasons—and plenty of fuel to get her reading labels and asking questions, so get used to that!

Stage Two: Denial: “Sure, she’s vegetarian now, but just wait until the next Fourth of July BBQ or office luncheon rolls around. We’ll see then,” you smugly mutter to your buddies, sharing a laugh at her goody-good expense.

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So I have known about the book Skinny Bitch, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, and its message of veganism as a way to lose weight for quite awhile now. Yet I have to admit, I hadn’t read the book until now, because I don’t believe in dieting. My own experience has proved time and time again that is counterproductive, counterintuitive, and ultimately self-destructive.

Those are just a few of the reasons why I wrote The Acceptance Diet, a book about giving up dieting, and finding your own peaceful way with food. In fact, the whole reason I was reading Skinny Bitch was to research what else was out there addressing diet and weight loss in order to finish up my book proposal. I picked it up on a whim, thinking I had read it all. I hadn’t.

The message, in addition to veganism, is one that wholeheartedly endorses body hate if you are not thin. Though it is meant to be dramatic, its overall message, inspiring self-loathing complete with the names to call yourself was over the top.

My mouth hung open during much of it. As if I was trapped (once again) in the tormented mind I once possessed when dieting turned eating disordered.

Sadly, toward the end of the book, it became evident that despite the author’s self-proclaimed statuses as being skinny bitches, they (at least in part) still hate their bodies. In Chapter 12, they report, “Also, we have some fat, gross body parts, too. We’re women.” Wow. I don’t want to even begin to touch that statement. Moving on.

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What if food was just food? That is, what if you put food back in its place? In this world, with so much emphasis and information constantly thrown at us about which foods are better, better, best it becomes easy to get caught up in all of it. The book, In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, touches on the subject of food getting picked apart as we try to take out all the bad and add in all the good. Food begins to get overly complicated and something valuable gets lost in the process.

Tried Every Diet?

However, I want to take the defense of food in another direction. One that might speak more fully to those who have tried every diet and created a negative relationship with food that preoccupies too much of your precious time and regularly steals away your sense of wellbeing. What if food was just food? What if food, in and of itself, could not take away nor create your wellbeing and peace?

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I love Valerie Frankel’s novels, but I think I love her recent body image memoir, Thin is the New Happy, even more. It’s brutally honest, painful, shocking and very funny. I interviewed Valerie recently and got some great insight into what motivates and inspires her, not to mention how it felt for her to pose nude for Self Magazine.

Why Did You Write Thin is the New Happy?

I decided to write Thin Is the New Happy when my two daughters reached the age when my bad body image demons were born. I didn’t want them to go through 30 years of chronic dieting, self-loathing, always thinking about their weight as I had. So I set out to conquer these issues, be a better role model for them. Also, I didn’t want the next 30 years to be more of the same. Three decades of a dieting addition was more than enough.

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I never liked Thanksgiving much. Actually I have always loved the celebration of the harvest with a Thanksgiving meal, just not the food. Even in childhood I just didn’t like meat. Yams with marshmallows? Yuck. Mashed potatoes—generally yummy, just not with gravy. Stuffing inspired a special kind of gag reflex. Even cranberry sauce just didn’t do it for me. I will readily admit a great love for homemade apple pie, but pecan pie—not so much.

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Becoming a vegetarian in my late teens I was ecstatic when Thanksgiving rolled around. Not only did I now have a valid excuse to not eat that horrible turkey stuff, but I also had an opportunity to show off my vegetarian cuisine. Thanksgiving became a unique challenge to cook something even more delicious than the turkey so that all the meat eaters would covet my meal rather than enjoying their turkey. Over the years each Thanksgiving holiday meal has brought out the best in my culinary skills, with long hours spent pouring over cookbooks in search of a recipe both unusual and scrumptious enough to take grand prize at the family dinner table.

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