The "Tomato Sauce is a Vegetable" Days

When I look back at my first year living and working in Sydney around 2016 and 2017, I have to laugh at how stubborn my eating habits were. If you had told the 2016 version of me, the guy who had just moved from Croatia carrying around 10 to 15 extra kilograms from years of sitting at a Zagreb desk job, that I would one day willingly stop eating meat, I would have thought you were out of your mind.

Shortly after arriving in Australia and landing my first job in Sydney, I met a colleague who happened to be vegan. We ended up hitting it off and became very good friends, but back then, his diet was a complete enigma to me. Coming from a rustic Croatian village where meals revolved almost exclusively around pork, beef, chicken, and rich meat stews, the idea of avoiding animal products altogether seemed absurd.

I remember regularly teasing him during lunch breaks. I would look at his plant-based meals, smile, and proudly declare that I ate vegetables too, pointing to the tomato sauce slathered across my pasta or meat dish. To me, processed tomato sauce was about as close to a vegetable as I ever cared to get. Vegetables were always an unwanted side dish in my youth, something I usually pushed to the side of my plate in favor of french fries, bread, and meat. The thought of making vegetables the centerpiece of a meal felt completely foreign.

Running, Injuries, and a Changing Mindset

As I shared in my post about moving to Sydney and my very first run, the end of 2016 marked the very beginning of my physical wake-up call. That agonizing 3.65-kilometer jog across the Bennelong Bridge made it glaringly obvious how unconditioned my body had become after years of smoking, desk jobs, and heavy eating.

While running gave me a much-needed jolt of motivation, putting my body through regular runs while carrying 10 to 15 extra kilograms quickly proved to be a painful experience. My joints and muscles simply were not prepared for the impact. Every time I tried to build a consistent running routine, I ran straight into a wall of nagging injuries. Shin splints would flare up after a couple of sessions, my knees would ache for days, and tight calves would force me to stop running altogether for weeks at a time.

It was a deeply frustrating cycle. I was running because I wanted to lose weight and get fit, but carrying that extra weight made every stride pound my joints on the pavement, directly causing the injuries that kept sidelining me.

For the first couple of years in Sydney, I tried to out-run my bad diet. After every run, I would still fill up on heavy, meat-based meals. But as the persistent injuries kept interrupting my progress, I finally realized the hard truth: I couldn't just run off the weight. If I wanted to run pain-free, protect my joints, and finally break the cycle of constant injuries, I had to fix what I was putting on my plate.

About seven years ago, I decided to make a career move and transitioned to a new company. Changing work environments brought a natural moment of reflection. Surrounded by a fresh routine, tired of dealing with recurring running injuries, and still determined to shed that extra 10 to 15 kilograms, I started paying closer attention to how different foods made me feel. I noticed that after heavy, meat-filled lunches, I would crash hard at my desk, feeling bloated and lethargic, which only made my evening runs feel heavier and more painful.

Taking the First Step: Going Vegetarian

About six years ago, I decided it was finally time to take a real, decisive step. I made the firm decision to cut out meat and fish entirely and go vegetarian.

Making that transition was both empowering and surprisingly challenging. For someone who grew up believing a meal wasn't complete unless something had died for it, walking past the butcher section at the grocery store felt like stepping into uncharted territory. At first, my brain didn't know how to construct a plate without a piece of meat taking up half of it.

I had to relearn how to assemble meals. Instead of relying on chicken or beef as the default centerpiece, I started experimenting with legumes, beans, whole grains, and vegetables. To my genuine surprise, I discovered that plant foods could actually be filling and deeply satisfying when seasoned properly.

The physical benefits followed quickly. Within a few months of dropping meat, I noticed a dramatic shift in my energy levels. I didn't feel weighed down after eating, my digestion improved significantly, and the extra weight began coming off much more consistently. Most importantly, running felt noticeably lighter and smoother. With less weight pounding down on my joints and better nutritional recovery, those frustrating running injuries finally began to recede. The guy who used to joke about tomato sauce was now genuinely enjoying big bowls of lentils, chickpeas, and roasted vegetables.

The Great Cheese Sanctuary

However, my vegetarian transition had one major, undeniable hurdle: my profound, borderline-obsessive love for cheese.

While giving up meat turned out to be much easier than I expected, giving up dairy felt almost impossible at the time. Cheese became my ultimate culinary security blanket. If I made a vegetarian pasta, it was buried under a mountain of grated cheese. If I made a sandwich, it had thick slices of cheese. Pizza with double cheese became my weekend reward.

Whenever anyone asked me back then if I would ever consider going fully vegan like my friend from work, my answer was always an immediate, unhesitating "No way. I could never give up cheese."

In hindsight, holding onto cheese was an essential part of my process. Vegetarianism provided a comfortable, sustainable middle ground. It allowed me to break my lifelong dependence on meat without feeling completely overwhelmed or deprived. It proved to me that I didn't need animal flesh to survive, thrive, and run without pain.

Looking Back at the Stepping Stone

Looking back now, I view my vegetarian phase as the indispensable stepping stone between my old life and the plant-based lifestyle I live today. It gave me the confidence to experiment in the kitchen, shed the weight that was hurting my joints, and fundamentally rebuild my relationship with food.

It is almost funny to think back to 2016, sitting across from my vegan colleague in Sydney, cracking jokes about tomato sauce while holding a meat-filled lunch. Life has a funny way of surprising you. That decision to drop meat six years ago was the first real step toward true health, paving the path for the full plant-based transformation that was still to come.