Vegans?

Hi everybody!

I want to become vegan but I don't think my parents agree with that so any tips & ideas to get started with my new lifestyle?
& how can I convince them to support me?

The macrobiotic diet is vegan if you eliminate the fish they allow. You can look up this diet on the internet. The Kushi institute is one place that teaches it.

You get most of your protein from beans and bean products. You should eat beans every day. For example, one meal would be lentils cooked with butternut squash, brown rice, and steamed kale. Your parents are probably worried you won't get enough protein, but you will get plenty if you do your research. If you log in a meal with beans on your food diary here at MFP, you will see that the beans have loads of protein. Millions of people around the world eat beans and rice and are a lot healthier than overweight people in the United States who depend on meat and dairy for their protein.

You can tell your parents that the vegan diet is very healthy. My husband's oncologist (cancer doctor) put him on a macrobiotic diet and his cancer went into complete remission with no other treatment as long as he stayed on it. The diet also asks us to be aware of our planet's resources and the lives of the animals that share the earth with us. Good luck to you.

Not being an A** or anything just genuinely curious nikilis, Are you actually curious? Vegans and vegetarians get so much crap about the way they eat but in all honesty theres nothing wrong with it. If you are genuinely curious then sure we can all have that conversation if not I don't think a newbie is someone you need to give crap to ( if that is your motive). I think the real question is why not?

why do you want to become vegan?

This. Ethical reasons? Do you think it'll help weight loss? Are you already vegetarian?

It's a worthwhile question because if it's on moral grounds then that's fair enough. But if only for health / weight loss reasons then there is no reason to cut meat / fish / dairy from your diet.

If you're totally new to vegetarianism then you'll also need to be familiar with what food sources to get your macros and micros from. Speaking as a vegetarian, before I started tracking my food my diet was probably only around 5% protein as I mostly lived off carbs. I now get around 25% of my cals from protein. It takes a lot more forward planning but it is possible.

Iron and vitamin B12 are also often lacking in a vegan/vegetarian diet so be sure to eat plenty of foods rich in these and/or take supplements.

I couldn't be vegetarian while I lived with my parents unless I bought and cooked all my own food. It was much easier once I left home.

yah... ^^that.

I'm Pescetarian now but I was vegetarian for 10 of the last 15 years, you really need to know how to eat a healthy and balanced diet before considering becoming vegetarian or vegan. if you cant plan and cook your own weekly menu of nutritionally balanced meals at this point, you might want to start there.

if your diet is currently deficient, and then you cut out 2 major food groups, you are heading for trouble.

If you're doing this for ethical reasons, and you want to convince your parents it's a good idea (I'm guessing you're still living with them?), I'd say you have to do a lot of research into how to get a very nutritionally balanced diet without animal products so that you can show them that your health won't suffer.

A quick glance at your profile - to be honest, I'm not trying to be mean, but it rang alarm bells for me. You're already well within the healthy range for your height, and your goal weight would make you underweight, and I'm sure that would be a far bigger worry for your parents than veganism. "I only feel beautiful when I'm hungry..." - that sounds very worrying to me. If you are wanting to become a vegan in the pursuit of thinness, or to force yourself to be more restrictive, that's a really, really bad idea. Do you have anyone you can talk to about this?