The mysterious V word. VEGAN.
No meat. No eggs. No dairy. No animal derived products.
How. do. we. do. it?!?!
Here are some tips on going vegan:
1) Go slow and take it one step at a time. I know too many people who decided to go vegan, rushed into it, and gave up because it was too hard. When you drastically change your diet without giving your body and mind time to adjust you are setting yourself up for failure. Your mind will be craving your old comfort food and your body will be in shock from detoxing. Instead transition slowly with baby steps.
The first step is cutting out the meat one meal at a time. Start with a meatless Monday and work your way up to 7 days a week. Next, cut out eggs and eventually dairy one meal at a time. Instead of thinking of all the restrictions, think about all of your options! Make a Pinterest board of a bunch of rad vegan recipes you want to try. Then try them out and spend the next week or so finding your new go to breakfasts! Then slowly do the same thing for your lunches, dinners, snacks, and desserts!
Now I will let you in on a little secret…If you mess up and eat a burger or ice cream, IT’S OKAY. Vegan police are not real, and if someone is acting like they are the vegan police then they are really just haters. Many people will pick at flaws in vegan people’s diets to justify their own diet. Instead of thinking that you failed think about how you just took 100 steps forward and only one step back. One meal does not make you a failure. Don’t let yourself fall apart and quit or ruin the next few meals because you have the mindset that you “already failed”. Instead try to just make your next few choices even better!
2) Stop Labeling. Stop trying to fit into a label box like pescetarian, vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, or raw vegan. I can’t speak for you but if someone tells me I can’t do something, then it makes me want to do it even more. I was vegetarian for years, then vegan for a few, then pescetarian, then vegan, then pescetarian, and now I am just the healthiest version of Kylan. I believe in living a balanced healthy lifestyle. I eat 99.999999 vegan, however if I really want to have a bite of a non vegan cookie my great grandma spent hours making for me, then I will eat it! This style of thinking helps you stick with a plant-based life style in the long run. Perfection does not exist!
3) Listen to your body. Figure out which foods make you feel good and which don’t. I feel AMAZING on a clean vegan diet, but when I “cheat” with sweets or something then I feel the negative effects from eating foods my body doesn’t love. It reminds me why I don’t eat like that on a normal basis. On the other hand I also love eating raw vegan foods. I will go days at a time only eating raw plant-based foods because it makes me feel good.
So if you are going vegan and need advice feel free to email me or comment on this post. I have hundreds of recipes and know a substitute for almost anything. Good luck!
~Kylan
