Becoming vegan...

Some of my friends are vegans, and have been for several years. You have to work into it. You can't just say "from now on I'm vegan". It takes some time to make the full transition. That's what all the successful vegans (meaning they're still vegans) I know say anyway.

I would love to know too, since I have been toying with the idea of vegetarian/vegan for awhile now.

Bump. I'm flirting with the idea too.

Hi, i am not a vegan but a vegetarian. I know that at least for vegetarian you need to know why you want to make the change and remind yourself why. You need to eat a wide variety of foods. You arent getting rid of meat, you are crowding it out. Just try a variety of foods all the time and learn new ways to cook things. And it isnt a overnight decision. There is a lot of stuff you have to look out for such as gelatin. There will be alot of trial and error and learning what you can eat. Best of luck.

^^^TOTALLY AGREE!! I'm on the path to vegetarianism because just the thought of how the US now mass produces meat grosses me out. I've set a goal for the end of the year... Long enough to get the last couple of pounds of chicken/turkey out of my freezer.

I do have one friend on MFP that became vegan overnight after watching some documentaries like "Forks Over Knives" and "Food, Inc."

Good luck with your journey! :flowerforyou:

Do the transition approach. Cut out all red meat first, then pork, then chicken (I never cut out fish), then transition the dairy, use almond milk instead of cows milk. During this time have a vegan day. Monday all meals will be vegan etc. While I am also working my way back to eating like this, I didn't realize until I hit dinner tonight that up until that meal today was a completely vegetarian day. It would have been vegan but I did have eggs.

Going veggie is much easier than it ever was before - the step to vegan can be tough and a lot of it depends on where you live ie access to health food stores, restaurant options etc.

I agree with a lot of the points above - take it slowly and don't be disheartened if you make a mistake. The Kind Diet is a great book as is Appetite for Reduction. The internet is your friend too, with great sites like BBC Good Food and fatfreevegan.com.

Feel free to add me as a friend if you want ideas or to look at my diary :-)

I became vegan in baby steps. First I stopped eating the things that I didn't often eat anyway, like red meat and eggs. Then after a couple of weeks of that, I moved on to include poultry to the list of foods I don't eat. A couple of weeks later, I stopped eating fish. Then, I quit dairy. Finally, I started to really read labels and avoiding all processed foods that had any animal ingredients in them. That was the toughest part for me, since I found out that milk and eggs were in TONS of stuff that I used to eat daily.

I'm on my third week or so being vegan. I've was vegetarian for almost a year before that. I agree with baby steps which is what I did too. Years ago, I cut down on ground beef and started eating ground turkey. Then I started eating Boca burgers/chik'n and Quorn once in awhile and found that it helped my craving (or mindset) that I had to have something 'meaty'. And then started incorporating more vegetarian dishes into the weekly meals. So once I got used to that, it made it much easier to go vegetarian. It was a hundred times easier than I thought and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. My husband caught on and is pescatarian (he still eats seafood and cheese/eggs) - but that's his decision. I just told him I will no longer cook with those ingredients.

Then I started using Egg Replacer once in awhile and Almond, Rice and Coconut milk. After using non-dairy milk for awhile, you lose the 'taste' for dairy milk and it started to taste gross to me and I prefered the non-dairy milk. The problem is how many freaking products they like to sneak in a touch of milk or eggs to and how many restaurants are clueless to vegan options.

And cheese, dear god, cheese. It used to be my favorite thing in the whole world (besides chocolate!). And it's highly addictive- it actually has chemicals in it that trigger the dopamine in your brain. So it's no wonder people are so gung-ho about it. It's a drug that's legal. But it's also full of pus cells (750 million pus cells are allowed per liter of milk. There are 10 liters of milk in one pound of cheese- so thats 7.5 billion pus cells in a pound of cheese in the U.S: See more about it here: http://www.drheise.com/powercheese.htm). So anyway, that grossed me out and I had this weighing on my conscious every time I ate cheese thinking about how I am stealing milk from a calf who it should go to instead of me. Instead, the calf is slaughtered or if it's a female, goes on to the same fate as the mother, who is kept constantly pregnant by artificial insemination. Gross and not natural or cool at all. So here I am- running that over and over again in my head every time I am slightly tempted to have some cheese or something with dairy in it. Plus the fact that my skin is clearing up, my digestive issues are going away...gives me a health reason too. And my family has a history of dying young of chronic diseases so I am determined not to go out like that!

I'm not sure how I'm going to fare when traveling (going to Asia next month) but I'll do the best I can. I'm not going to be hard on myself if, god forbid, I have something with dairy or eggs in it (as long as there's no meat!) I'm not going to let it ruin my vacation, but if there is another (vegan) choice, I will always take that choice.

And just take it one day at a time. It's so worth it! I feel happier, healthier and feel like I'm living in line with my morals now. I thought I was an animal lover when I ate meat, dairy and eggs. But I knew deep-down there was something wrong with eating them. But society makes us so blind and makes it so easy to ignore....but I just could no longer ignore it. I can understand how people do though- we grow up thinking it's ok and normal, but it really doesn't have to be. We have a choice these days.

Sorry to write a novel, I just had to get some stuff off my head anyway and will probably put this in my blog

Good luck to you! Do what feels right to YOU!

I am a recent vegetarian (working on moving to vegan by eliminating cheese, although live2dream's post may have helped push that along LOL). I have to say, I switched to eliminating meat, eggs, and all dairy but cheese literally over night. I didn't eat a ton of meat to begin with, and never loved most dairy products, so it wasn't that hard. What mentally made it easy for me was reading a few books, most notably Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. There were times I cried while reading it. So I told myself I was done, and I was. I am confident that I can ditch the cheese habit. Since then, books like the China Study and Skinny ***** have further convinced me I'm doing the right thing for animals, for my health, and for the environment.

The benefits for me are feeling more positive, in general, and more at peace. Maybe that sounds hippy-dippy but it really is true. I feel "lighter" and I have more energy. And finally, I used to get stomach aches 3-4 times per week and I haven't had one in over a month. Not sure why, but I'm not questioning it!!

Good luck with your journey!!