Posted by Click here to get a free newsletter Zen and a Way of sustainable prosperity: Balance, financial success, and sustainability with the secrets of the Japanese Omi-merchants.
I live in Shiga Prefecture, which is next to Kyoto, and we have a gubernatorial election this Sunday. So I have been busy in the last few weeks; sorry for not updating this blog much. Meanwhile, I uploaded a new video. This time it is on Ikigai Business.
I have been talking about similarities and differences between Ikigai Diet and Whole food plant based diet. In the last post, I said that our attitude toward vegetarianism was similar to that of Whole Food Plant Based Diet; we both focused on health more than regular vegetarian diet; what we ate was important, not just avoiding meat.
Yes, just like whole food plant based diet, we focus on health and the reason why we don’t eat much meat is that meat isn’t good for us: It contains a lot of chemicals, and it is hard to digest, which means it gives a lot of strains to intestines. So it isn’t because we think about the ethical factor of meat eating.
Having said that, we do think about the ethical and environmental factors of meat eating since we are interested in social health as well as personal health. I don’t think the way meat is produced is good for society and it is better for us to do away with it.
Why don’t we stop eating meat completely, then?
If we make it a rule, some people can follow it, but there are a lot of people who can’t practice it: It is too difficult for some of them, and some of them have psychological resistance when it is presented as a rule. They feel they have been judged and try to justify their meat-eating habit. Another word, by stating strongly that you shouldn’t eat meat, sometimes we are creating a reverse effect.
I am proposing a diet to reduce the frequency of meat-eating instead. If you eat meat every day, you can reduce it to once or twice a week, if you eat meat once a week, you can reduce it to once a month. In this way, more people can practice it, and at the end of the day, we would consume less meat on the whole, and that is the result we are after.
So, Ikigai Diet isn’t just focusing on health, but we have a similar stance on vegetarianism with whole food plant based diet for a strategical reason.
We also value mental health as well as physical health, and how you feel when you eat is crucial: You want to enjoy eating, and you want to have a positive feeling when you eat.
When I was a vegetarian, quite often I had a negative feeling when I couldn’t get a vegetarian meal at a restaurant: I felt bad because I could eat only salad and no protein based food; I criticized the restaurant for serving meat, judging them how unethical they were.
I felt much better when I allowed myself to eat meat when it was easier to do so: I could enjoy eating and I stopped judging others, and yet overall meat consumption didn’t increase that much.
Neverthless, this is just my experience, I am sure there are a lot of vegetarians who feel positive when they eat.
Again, there isn’t any rule in Ikigai Diet, and therefore you can choose to be a vegetarian as well. I also value the effectiveness of vegetarianism: It is easier for some people to have a clear stance like that; if you bend your rules time to time, you can get carried away easily, too.
The bottom line is do what you want to do. Each person can decide what feels best for you.
Omi-merchant's way of Sustainable Prosperity 