“We need a chicken, maybe for dinner tomorrow,” says my mom. We made our way over from the produce section to the deli and meat area. A man is there searching for the perfect rump of meat. There are mounds of large cuts and he sorts through them, reaching to the bottom of the piles, tossing the top pieces so that they land with loud thuds to either side of him. My stomach turns. I can’t help but picture the animals those rumps of meat used to be, before they landed themselves in a BJ’s cooler getting tossed aside by a man in a camouflage baseball hat. That was when I decided to be a pescatarian, slowly working toward being a vegetarian.

It had been coming for a while. Meat had started turning my stomach, an ethics class as well as many documentaries and a Buzzfeed video featuring a chicken farm taught me how harmful agro-business, or turning the raising of animals into a large-scale production, can be to animals, people and the environment. I’m always pretty careful about what I eat. When I can I like to keep my food as natural and as unprocessed as I can, I like to avoid chemicals and weird ingredients, and so eating meat after learning about large-scale farming made me increasingly anxious.

No matter how healthy I ate, I was always a girl that ate meat. My decision was never about not liking the taste of meat. I haven’t been a vegetarian that long, I remember hamburgers and steaks and chicken wings. I know how good they taste, but I hate to ask myself if they were worth it. If meat was worth the environmental trouble, worth the short, painful, limited lives of the animals that fell victim to the system, and worth whatever was added into the meat. For me, it wasn’t. I know that one single vegetarian won’t make a big difference, but it can’t hurt.

I didn’t tell my family until I was back on summer break. I didn’t make a big announcement, they asked what I wanted for dinner and without looking up from what I was doing I told them. When you decide to become a vegetarian, there’s one thing you need to constantly keep in mind: this is your choice. It’s your life, your body and your food. My family is generally an understanding group, but they had some issues with this one. My three younger brothers gave me the most flack. They still do, but I haven’t been a vegetarian for that long. You can’t let this bother you, it’s your life, your choice. A lot of people will take a second, nod and then move on. It’s not that weird a life choice anymore.

Another thing people will ask you is how you get protein. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on protein today. There are a lot of protein sources you can access without eating meat: beans, nuts soy. It’s really all about balance and knowing what nutrients you need. It’s really not that terribly different from how I already ate. The most important thing about making a choice like this, is knowing that this is your choice, being aware of what’s best for you and acting on it.