If you’re thinking about transforming your life and becoming vegan this year, the first thing you need to understand is that it won’t be easy. Luckily for you, we’ve compiled some expert tips to help you to succeed.
Starting your transformation
According to Victoria Moran, author of Main Street Vegan, you should aim to cut one animal from your diet at a time. When attempting a vegan diet, people tend to get too caught up in the rules of what they should and shouldn’t be eating that they become anxious and end up failing. If you want to be successful, think of it as an evolving process, you’ll become more conscious to leading a cruelty-free lifestyle, and soon your cravings for animal-based products will disappear. It might be easier to transition into a vegan if you don’t tell anyone else. This way you’ll avoid questions and scrutiny that may persuade you to rethink.
Rethinking your food shopping habits
As a vegan, there might be certain aisles in the supermarket that you’ll no longer have to venture down, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t create a thorough shopping list to help you stick to what you need. To help you out, even more, a lot of popular supermarket chains have filters that allow you to search for vegan-only foods without having to check the ingredients manually. You’ll also need to rethink how you shop for cosmetic products too, but luckily more and more companies are emerging that boast only the most natural skin care products without any animal products or animal testing.
Don’t worry about your protein intake
Now that you’ve cut meat out of your diet you might be worried that you won’t be getting enough protein in your diet. As long as you include rich sources of concentrated protein such as beans, tofu, nuts and seeds into your diet alongside protein-rich vegetables (think broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus) you should be fine.
Experimenting with new foods
Turning your favourite recipes into vegan-friendly meals will usually mean that they’ll be taking on completely different tastes and textures. This will probably cause you to try new foods and begin experimenting with ‘transition foods’ that will help you to eliminate the cravings you might have for dairy. Plenty of recipes can still be made with non-dairy alternatives; you just need to know what else to use. Who knows, this might be the perfect chance for you to finally learn how to cook.
Being resourceful
We all know about the wonders of Google and even googling “how to become vegan” yields enough results to keep you reading for weeks. Some of the best blogs include FatFree Vegan Kitchen and Lunch Box Brunch that not only give you vegan recipes but allow you to learn about the virtues of veganism that prompt so many people to leading a cruelty-free diet. We also recommend books including Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.
