Going Vegan

Hello. I became Vegan and in the first 9 days I lost 13 lbs. It was hard the first three days, I would dream at night of eating buttery cake. But I would wake up feeling thinner. I drink only water and fresh juiced veggies. You will be amazed how much you can eat but still lose weight. After 12 days I had serious diarrhea, i read online that it was cleansing old fecal matter out of me, it subsided the next day. If you have any questions Ill be glad to help. Good luck, you can do it!

Hi everyone! I'm thinking of going vegan, does anyone have any tips on making the transition? Thanks

I got carried away n didn't answer. If you have a sweet tooth stay away from fruit for a good week. Otherwise stock up on fresh organic veggies, tofu, beans, wheat tortillas, brown rice, veggie cheese, olive oil, agave sweetner, almond milk, sea salt, and herbs and seasonings. Stay away from Splenda it's bad for you. Google online vegan recipes and substitutes, you can make any and everything that is delicious and nutritious. Good luck!

Is there anything particular you want to know?

What are you transitioning from? Are you going direct from an omnivorous diet to vegan? Why are you considering doing it?

I went vegan a little over 3 weeks ago. I was becoming a vegetarian by default through making healthy diet choices for me and vegan wasn't a big leap. However, I have been STARVING!!! I eat tons of veggies, fruit and whole grains but I am still hungry most of the time so I have been consuming significantly more calories in the last couple weeks in grains whereas before it would have been lean meat. I'm trying to find my way because I do feel good and my energy levels are great. We'll see...

Why don't you just eliminate red meat first?

I did the PCRM 21 day Vegan Kickstart program.

It is completely free and run by doctors and nutritionists. At the beginning of each month they run a new challenge. You just sign up to their emails and they send you recipes and eating guidelines and there are videos from famous vegan celebrities to encourage you along the way.
They also have a forum so you can chat to other people doing the challenge or to ask the nutritionists question.

http://support.pcrm.org/site/PageServer?pagename=21day_vegan_kickstart&JServSessionIda003=upegog3qg1.app234c

Definitely a wonderful service they provide. I highly recommend you check it out and maybe before the first of the month, until then start experimenting with a few meals, as much as you can manage and trying new foods like tofu, non dairy milks and different bean dishes and find out what of the current foods you have might have hidden eggs or dairy in them.

This program is HEALTHY low fat vegan. It doesn't rely on fake meats or other processed vegan foods which aren't actually healthy for you at all. If all you eat is vegan cupcakes, vegan cream cheese, and a whole bunch of fake meats, and then pour a bucket of olive oil over it all you won't loose weight. So focusing on being vegan for health rather than simply cutting animal products is key.
I certainly lost weight doing this and i am now continuing to eat a low fat vegan diet.

The benefits of eating this way for me is now i don't have to count calories and i continue to loose weight! Such a relief after being on my MFP for about 2 years now counting and getting nowhere. Such a relief! Because low fat vegan foods have a really high volume for the same number of calories as animal foods i feel as though i can now eat whatever i want and not count and i'm fine! It really works.
The other benefit is i cured myself of asthma. Turns out the dairy was doing it to me. I had no idea. That is not why i went vegan, but it is a great extra bonus.


I also recommend reading Dr John McDougall's book: The Starch Solution
And there are lots of others out there too like 'The Kind Diet', 'The China Study' and 'Main Street Vegan' which are all excellent books about veganism.

It might help to start following some healthy vegan blogs too where you can get some free recipes. One of my favourites is The Happy Herbivore.
Her chocolate zucchini muffins are to die for!

Good Luck. Friend me if you want some support.

Bump

I would transition slowly, and learn to cook lots of delicious meals with beans, legumes and tofu before you make the leap.

A lot of Japanese, Korean, Thai and Indian food is already 'normally' vegan - lots of meals you can make without substitutes and without feeling that anything is missing.

Some good vegan blogs for ideas are:

http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/

http://veganyumyum.com/

bump!

I was vegan for about a year. Before that I had been vegetarian. At first I felt great. I felt like I was losing weight and I felt like I was doing the smart thing by staying away from all those hormones and chemicals added to meat and poultry. I also felt like I was doing the right thing because of how livestock are treated. When I went vegan I got a lot of criticism from other people about going vegan. They told me how unhealthy it was and that i was crazy for doing it. They told me I wouldn't get enough vitamin B12 and I'd get sick. I thought they were just upset because it reflected on their own poor choice of nutrition and they didn't want to think of parting with their beloved hamburgers.

I was really into Alicia Silverstone and her blog "The Kind life" and I got her book "The Kind Diet." I got a lot of other books too with vegan recipes and some former Vegans gave me some books they wanted to get rid of because they were no longer vegan...(this should have been a sort of warning to me!) I did lots and lots cooking while vegan, although Whole Foods also supplies lots of frozen and ready-to-eat vegan assortments. But trust me, if you are going to be vegan you will be doing LOTS of cooking and preparing of food.

I took lots of supplements (Especially the vitamin b12) and tried to limit soy (that's another thing you will have to watch out for if you go vegan because a lot of vegan foods out there are full of soy).

unfortunately, after about a year I started to notice negative changes. I started to lose a lot of energy. I was constantly feeling tired and weak. I was also starting to become more forgetful. I started gaining flub weight and my skin started to lose its elasticity and I started to get a lot more sagging. I couldn't get any muscle tone. I was trying to go through personal training at the time and my trainer noticed how weak I was and how I wore out so quickly. my hair became thinner which is weird because I naturally have very thick hair! my nails became somewhat brittle. Then I started to breakout with acne more often. I also had (like someone else on here experienced) bouts of diarrhea, but that was earlier on and it did go away. I also started to have aches and pains in my joints. My father had talked with a neighbor whose daughter used to be vegan and was a dietitian. He told my dad how sick his daughter got while trying to be vegan. As a dietician she learned how hard it is to get the necessary vitamins and nutrients needed from just supplements. According to her, it is almost impossible to get the necessary nutrients because some of the vitamins and nutrients only come from certain foods (meats, poultry, fish, dairy, etc) and if you cut those out you won't be able to get them anywhere else....Not even from the supplements because they are just naturally occurring and are almost impossible to recreate. It took me so long to get this through my head because I honestly believed that if I just kept taking the supplements that they would give me what I needed. I believed that the vitamin b12 supplements would work. unfortunately I learned that the vitamin b12 supplements only supply one type of b12 since there are different variations of b12 that our body needs.

I eventually couldn't take it anymore and slowly weened myself off the vegan diet. that's another thing, when you stop you can't just go drink a whole glass of milk unless you want throw up or get the runs. you have to slowly go back to eating dairy and everything else. My initial plan was to go back to being vegetarian, but I actually started to crave meat as soon as I stopped being vegan! It was very weird because for the longest time I had been turned off by meat, i hated the taste and being vegetarian had almost just come naturally to me. But now I was actually was craving chicken and steak!!! (although I still hate hamburger meat). After that I just slowly went from being a vegan to carnivore! I believe my body was trying to make up for all the lost protein or something. Recently I developed a problem with eating butter or steak. I get really sick if I try to eat it. Sometimes I can eat a lean piece of steak, but now I just try to completely avoid butter because it now makes me sick as a dog. No i'm not lactose intolerant. I can drink milk without any problems, but I believe the vegan diet somehow screwed up my ability process certain types of fats. I still feel like my body hasn't completely recovered from the vegan diet. I still feel weaker than I did before I was vegan and I feel like my memory isn't as sharp as it once was before being vegan. It also took a long time after being vegan for my skin to clear up and return to its normal elasticity.

My advise from this. Don't go completely vegan. just flirt with it. go vegan one week every month and you can still feel like you are doing something to help out the animals because you are cutting down on the animals products you take in. If everyone could just take a week off of animals products per month it would help and it also might help as far as giving your body a break from having to digest meats. Also, keep in mind that going completely vegan would mean cutting out all animals products and you'd be surprised how many foods and ingredients out there actually have animal products: Jello, Jellies, Pretzels, food dyes, pudding, etc. Going vegan is a huge (and somewhat risky) commitment.

That's just my 2 cents!

p.s. if you are going to try being vegan one week a month (or if you decide you want to take the risk and go completely vegan) my favorite vegan dessert was the frozen Rice Dream chocolate pies. A great snack was quesadillas made with grated carrots, beets, and Daiya cheddar "cheese." Quinoa salad was good. Hemp milk was good. Rice Tempeh was good (although it has soy). Becareful with the Veganise because that stuff has a lot of soy in it, at least it did back when I last had it. Toffutti sour cream... but also has soy. Toffutti cream cheese.....Earth Balance is a great butter substitute you probably will end up using a lot. if you can, try to eat lots of seeds and nuts.
I will say that being Vegan introduced me to many new types of food.

The guy above me mentioned what i what I was about to say which is that McDonald's fries are not vegan. They are flavored with beef extract.
here is a recipe though that you can make that tastes almost EXACTLY like McDonald's fries without the need for beef extract:
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html

Thanks everyone for your responses! I was thinking of going 2 weeks vegetarian and then transition into fully vegan. I really want to go vegan because of the health benefits such as lower my risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. For those of you who are vegan what are some basic grocery items I should buy when I stop by the market this week?

You can get all the same health benefits by having a micronutrient-rich whole-foods based omnivorous or vegetarian diet. Becoming a vegan is extremely restrictive and requires more attention to nutrition- I don't think it's a wise choice unless you have a strong moral or ethical obligation to do so. In all my many, many years as a vegetarian, I never met a single vegan that lasted more than a few months who did it for health purposes- the science just doesn't justify the restrictions it imposes.

Thanks everyone for your responses! I was thinking of going 2 weeks vegetarian and then transition into fully vegan. I really want to go vegan because of the health benefits such as lower my risk of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. For those of you who are vegan what are some basic grocery items I should buy when I stop by the market this week?

You can get all the same health benefits by having a micronutrient-rich whole-foods based omnivorous or vegetarian diet. Becoming a vegan is extremely restrictive and requires more attention to nutrition- I don't think it's a wise choice unless you have a strong moral or ethical obligation to do so. In all my many, many years as a vegetarian, I never met a single vegan that lasted more than a few months who did it for health purposes- the science just doesn't justify the restrictions it imposes.

Not quite true. There is actually very good scientific evidence otherwise. 'The China Study' (Dr Colin Campbell) shows that while there are huge positive effects to anyone increasing their nutrients from eating more fruit and veg, one of the issues with dairy meat etc is it's effect on increased cancer. Casein which is a protein found in animal products (cottage cheese is almost pure casein) is a known carcinogen. Studies have shown an increase in tumour growth with increased casein consumption. This isn't true of plant based proteins, so it isn't about the percentage of protein in the diet it is about whether or not it is animal or plant in origin. There is also strong links between populations that have a higher animal product consumption and many different kinds of cancers.

What are these extreme restrictions people keep talking about. I have found it very easy. However I don't eat out and love preparing my own food, so maybe that is what people are talking about. But the idea that it is easy to be Vegetarian but going the extra step (which for most people is mainly about milk and cheese) is too extreme?