I submitted an FML last night, but it wasn’t selected. Nevertheless, I’ll publish it here:

Today I saw my mom for the first time since Christmas break. She asked me whether I was pregnant; after I denied it, she asked if I had gotten an abortion and hid it from her. Then she said, girls your age aren’t supposed to gain weight that quickly. FML

So after three months of being vegetarian, I actually gained weight. When I started the school year, everyone was worried about me because I looked so skinny. Now, everyone is commenting on how much fatter I got (they do that in China; it’s supposed to be a compliment).Today I went shopping and couldn’t even fit into the largest size pants in all the stores. A week before I came to China, I started eating meat again, justifying it on the fact that: I knew I was going to eat meat in China anyway, so why not start a week early?

I know why I failed at being a good vegetarian: 1) I never stopped eating lots and lots of sugary snacks (my achilles heel), 2) I didn’t exercise as much as I used to before I became vegetarian, and 3) I was hungry a lot and so went out for fast food late at night.

Despite my weight gain and my inability to continue, I still don’t consider my vegetarianism a failure. Since I’ve come to China, I have indeed been eating meat, but much less than I had eaten in my previous diet; I mostly eat some rice and lots and lots of vegetables. This isn’t because I’m trying to follow some strict regimen, but because I actually like the taste of vegetables and prefer to not eat much meat. In the end, that’s all that I wanted to get out of my vegetarianism: a healthier eating habit.

So, I’ve decided to scrap vegetarianism and continue on this new diet:

• continue eating lots of vegetables and little meat
• do not eat cookies or any other dry snacks (so hard! especially in China with so much good stuff to eat!)
• when I do want to eat a snack, have fresh fruit, or at the worst, allow myself to eat dried fruit. (very easy in China, have basket-fulls of fresh cherries, pears, apples, strawberries, and all sorts of fruits I’ve never seen)
• drink more water (I constantly have headaches from dehydration but never remember to drink)
• eat lots and lots of Indian food when in England (yay! looking forward to that)

I will continue updating about how this diet goes. And yes, it’s a good thing you didn’t make a bet on how long I would stay vegetarian.