If you’ve made it this far, you’re obviously ready to change your life and become a vegetarian. But giving up meat – especially if you’ve become accustomed to making it your main source of protein – can be tough. You’ll find as you go along that it’s about more than just changing the foods that you eat – you’re going to have to adjust the way you think about nutrition, about your body and self-image, and about how your choices affect the world you live in. But it’s also a deeply personal voyage that’s yours to do in your own way, finding the path that will take you into the future in the healthiest, happiest way possible.
It may not be an easy transition, either. You may still love the taste of meat, and the idea of living your entire life without it is daunting. You may have family members who are resistant to making the change, and who’ll try to sabotage you for their own reasons. You’ll need to learn new recipes, plan new menus, and arm yourself with nutritional information that you never bothered with before. It’s a lot to think about!
It can all seem overwhelming, but with a plan, some structure and a little guidance it can be done by anyone. The most important thing is to be patient – allow yourself the time you need to develop new menus that you enjoy, try new recipes and discover new foods. Don’t think that becoming a vegetarian means that you’ll be spending countless hours wandering the aisles of natural foods stores and figuring out what to do with quinoa – unless you enjoy that sort of thing. The truth is, the easiest way to transition to a meatless diet is to eat foods easily available at your neighborhood grocery store – although you’ll definitely want to check out that health food store as you become more comfortable with your vegetarian lifestyle.
Finding a sense of purpose
To successfully change a lifelong habit like eating meat to the healthier habit of living entirely on plant-based foods, you’ll need a strong reason for changing. If you aren’t 100 percent sure of your reasons for becoming vegetarian, you’ll find it hard to resist temptation. Social pressure is often the undoing of new vegetarians – they’re completely committed when at home or eating out with another vegetarian, but give in to meat-eating when presented with a friend’s meat loaf or attending an outdoor BBQ. I was the same way – until I found a way of thinking that helped me to stick with the vegetarian lifestyle.
When I first started to become a vegetarian, I "fell off the wagon" many times. I’d be a committed vegetarian for days, then give in to some form of temptation (I still craved KFC!), feel bad about myself, then try again. And again. I kept improving all the time, eventually sticking to my vegetarian diet for weeks at a stretch. I was sure I was successful when I stayed true to my new lifestyle for three months – and then a friend took me to a seafood buffet, and I gave into temptation yet again! I knew that I wanted to become a vegetarian because I hate the idea of killing animals for my food, but sometimes animal foods are very hard to resist.
I wanted so badly to become a vegetarian, yet I kept failing. Why? How could I want to do this so much and still fail? After a lot of soul-searching, I found my reason to be a real vegetarian, and I’ve never looked back since. Once I knew, completely and with every part of my mind and my heart, why vegetarianism was so important to me, I was able to commit to it completely, and not have any desire to eat meat again!
Here’s the reason that I found works for me. Like most people, I don’t want to be hurt, killed, or receive pain, and animals certainly don’t want those things either. They feel pain, just like we do. So isn’t it wrong to inflict pain and death on animals? Just because humans have better technology, we often believe that we’re superior to other living beings and we can do whatever we want to them.
In an earlier chapter, we discussed the concept of an alien race coming to earth and believing themselves to be superior to humans. We would be nothing to them, beneath their respect – much the same way we look at cows, pigs and chickens – so why wouldn’t they think, "These humans are a low, primitive species. We can do whatever we want to them since they can’t fight back. We have complete control over them?" And if these aliens were meat-eaters, there would be nothing to stop them from herding us into pens, cutting off our feet and hands so that we can’t run or fight back, kill us in slaughterhouses and then eat us for their food. I mean, we taste great! So they kill millions of us every day, cut us up into steaks and chops, store the meat and sell it to each other in little white, plastic-wrapped packages.
It’s a horrible, horrible thought. Yet this is exactly the way we treat animals right now, because we believe we are superior to them and we have better technology. But is this really the right way to treat other living beings? Just like, they feel happiness and fear, pleasure and pain. They just want to live.
Think about that. They just want to live. Who doesn’t want to live? What right does humanity have to decide the time and the manner in which an animal’s life should end?
That’s my personal reason for becoming a vegetarian. Once I came to the realization that harming and killing animals for my food was wrong – and completely unnecessary – I was no longer even tempted by meat. I found my reason to stay committed. My journey has ended.
And I’ve been a vegetarian ever since. You need to find your own reason that strikes such a strong chord with you intellectually emotionally that you never look back at your previous life. A reason that you believe so strongly, you’ll never regret the decision, because you know that it’s the right thing to do.
If you found my "alien" reasoning quite logical, whenever you have the temptation to eat meat again, please try to remember about it . Whatever reasoning you choose, make it something that you believe with your whole heart. Once you do, vegetarianism will be something that you can adopt completely, for your entire life.
Look on the bright side!
window.google_render_ad();
Look on the bright side!
The best way to make stress-free changes in your eating habits is to keep your mind on the benefits of your new diet. Many meat-eaters think that vegetarians must have a painfully boring diet, all brown rice and broccoli and tofu. But in truth, most vegetarians have much more adventurous, interesting diets than your average Joe Meat-And-Potatoes. Crack open a few vegetarian cookbooks and you’ll find delicious recipes drawing from cuisines with long histories of meat-free eating – foods from India, China, the Mediterranean, loaded with spices and exotic flavors. Add those to the meat-free foods you already love – like macaroni and cheese, vegetable soup, pasta with marinara sauce – and you’ll find there’s a whole world of delicious things you can eat!
How long it takes for you to fully embrace vegetarianism is entirely up to you. Some people give up meat in one fell swoop, deciding in an instant that, for moral, ethical or health reasons, that the time to give up meat is now, and they never look back. Other people transition slowly, giving up meat-based foods one at a time over a long period. Many take the “two steps forward, one step back” approach, falling off the meatless wagon here and there on the road to a plant-based diet. None of these methods is the “right” way – the right way for you will be any way that works! But there are methods that can make the change easier.
A radical dietary can take a lot of getting used to, both mentally and physically. And while a vegetarian diet is absolutely the best, healthiest way of life, not everyone can dive straight into the deep end straight away. Many people take a long time to slowly make the changes necessary to live a meatless lifestyle – and transitioning gradually is often the most enjoyable, low-stress way to do it.
But before we outline a ten-point plan for gradually transitioning to a vegetarian diet, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of making a quick change versus making a gradual one.
Tearing Off the Band-Aid – Making the Quick Transition
There are a number of benefits to making a one-step switch to meatless eating. They are:
You can feel good about changing your life right away. There’s something deeply gratifying about taking decisive action and making positive changes in your life. You reach your goal right away, and you get to say to yourself, “Yes – I’m a vegetarian!”
You’ll enjoy the benefits of vegetarianism starting on the very first day. By making a major, life-altering change right away, you’ll see the results much sooner. This is especially important if you’re going vegetarian for health reasons, say because you want to lose weight or you’re concerned about your cholesterol.
There’s less concern that you’ll fail and never become a “total” vegetarian. For some people, doing things gradually just isn’t an option – they lose focus and never make it to their goal. If you’re the sort of person who has a history of giving up on diets before you’ve reached your goal weight, or on hobbies before you master the craft, you my want to make the change in one big jump. There’s nothing wrong with you if that’s the kind of personality that you have – you just need to own up to it and act accordingly!
The quick approach works best for people who’ve already educated themselves on basic vegetarian nutrition, have a strong support system in place (living or working with vegetarians, or having a partner who’s also making the change at the same time) and who don’t have other stressful situations going on while they do it. Again, only you can determine if this is best for you – many people find the gradual approach just doesn’t work for them because they lose their motivation during a slow dietary overhaul, but others do much better at making huge changes slowly over a long period of time.
You may choose to make a quick change to vegetarianism because you have no other choice. You may have seen a documentary on factory farming practices and just can’t stand to eat meat again. You may have been diagnosed with a condition like diverticulitis—which causes small pockets in the intestine to harbor bacteria – and your doctor has advised you to stop eating meat. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to do your homework ahead of time – but you can still do the best you can with the information in this book and other resources that you’ll discover as you go along.
There are a few drawbacks to this method, of course. You’ll be changing a major part of your everyday life without any learned skills, and without the education that comes with experience. You’ll be springing your new meat-free lifestyle on your family, friends and co-workers all of a sudden, and will have to deal with their reactions. If you’re bombarded by negative feedback from those around you, you may find that your new way of eating is kicked to the curb before it really starts.
But, as mentioned above, many people thrive on this kind of change. You may find that giving up so many of your old habits all at once helps you to break unhealthy old patterns and seek out new recipes and menus right from the start. If that’s the case, keep an eye out for bumps in the road, look for support – whether from other vegetarians you know or on the Internet – and check out the chapters in this book dedicated to nutrition and meal planning.
Easing In – The Gradual Approach to Going Meatless
Taking changes one step at a time makes the process more manageable and, for many people, makes the entire transition seem far less daunting. It also makes it fun – with each step, you change a little something, learn some new information, and try a few things you’ve never tried before! As you master each new skill, you become more confident in your ability to maintain your new lifestyle, plan your meals and handle yourself in any number of social situations.
There are two main advantages to taking a gradual approach to switching to vegetarianism.
They are:
You’re more likely to make the changes permanent if you change your habits slowly. By changing your habits gradually, you change the way you think about eating as you go along, learning more and creating a strong base on which to anchor your new, better, healthier habits.
Making a number of small changes gives you the chance to adapt them to your current lifestyle as you go along. You probably have so many things in your everyday life going on at once that you often feel overwhelmed already – making a slow transition is simply less disruptive to your family life, job, etc. than making one huge, sweeping change.
The downside to the gradual approach, as we’ve already discussed, is that you might find yourself losing focus and taking longer to complete the transition to a completely meatless lifestyle. If you take too long, you never make it to your goal. Be honest with yourself – if it’s been months since you started changing habits and you’re still not there, you may want to take a hard look at where you are, where you want to be, and what steps you need to take to get there.
It’s also possible, if you make changes slowly, you may get stuck in one place and stay in a state of semi-vegetarianism permanently. You might decide to stop eating red meat, but never move on to giving up fish and chicken. You might intend to eventually eat an entirely vegan diet, yet you never give up eggs and cheese, and end up feeling like a failure. So if you want to make a slow transition, plot out the changes you intend to make, set specific goals and follow a structured plan.
Your Ten-Point Plan to Becoming a Vegetarian
For those craving guidance and structure, what follows is a simple ten-step transition from meat-eater to veggie lover. Of course, you don’t have to follow this course of action to become a vegetarian – but sometimes having a carefully thought-out plan in place before beginning a major venture can make you feel more secure about the unfamiliar path you’ve chosen to take. You’ll notice that, at the beginning, we’re only making changes to your evening meals – dinner is perhaps the single most “planned” meal of the day, the time when families eat together and put thought into main course, side courses and dessert.
If you think about the variety in your current diet, you’ll discover that you already draw from only a handful of recipes to make family favorites over and over again, relying on basic meals that you enjoy and have made before. You may go out to a new restaurant for a special occasion or try a new recipe now and then, but we all keep going back to tried-and-true favorites several times a month. Planning vegetarian meals is no different.
During the steps of your transition, you’ll discover a number of delicious new meals – and you’ll revise current favorites to make them vegetarian – so that you have as many meal options at your disposal as you did as a meat-eater. Maybe more!As you develop healthy new habits and learn more about nutrition, you’ll find that your previous ideas of what constitutes a complete evening meal will change drastically. Ever since the era of “Ozzie and Harriet,” we’ve been told that an appropriate family dinner includes a large portion of meat, some veggies on the side, a starch of some sort and, often, a big glass of milk.
Soon you’ll be abandoning that idea –eating a healthy satisfying vegetarian diet isn’t just a matter of replacing meat with something else while continuing the same old method of consuming “four squares.” A quickly put together veggie stir-fry with a multi-grain roll is a fast, nutritious evening dinner – so is homemade macaroni and cheese accompanied by a green salad. The old ways of eating don’t apply to you anymore, so go ahead and forget what you were taught about meal planning – you’re about to develop your own rules, based on what your body needs.
Step 1: Eat three meat-free dinners during the week that you already enjoy.
Make a list of vegetarian main dishes that you and your family already like – macaroni and cheese, vegetable soup with bread and salad, cheese quesadillas, vegetable stir fry, quiche and cheese pizza are just a few of the meatless meals you already eat. This still leaves four nights a week that you can include meat in your meals – but you’ve taken the first step toward thinking differently about your eating habits.
Step 2: Adapt three favorite recipes to make them vegetarian, and add them to your week’s dinners.A wide variety of main course meals can be turned into delicious vegetarian fare, allowing you to enjoy healthier versions of foods you already love. Take a recipe for vegetarian chili and make it your own by using the same mixture of spices in your own ground-beef chili; leave the beef out of your lasagna and replace it with sauteed zucchini, eggplant and mushrooms; make your favorite soups and stews using coarsely chopped Portobella mushrooms; mix up a zesty taco salad with the usual lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream and salsa, but replace the ground beef with a mixture of black and kidney beans. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination!
Step 3: Add three brand-new vegetarian meals to your repertoire.
During the previous two steps, you developed six vegetarian dinners that you and your family are happy to eat. Now it’s time to do a little research and find a few new tricks to spice up your menus even further with some new recipes. Purchase a couple of vegetarian cookbooks, borrow them from friends or check them out of the library. We’ll even provide you with some great recipes in Chapter Twelve, as well as a list of cookbooks to get your started. You can also search the Internet for recipes, and online vegetarian support groups are a terrific source for recipes from other veggie-lovers.
Find recipes that look tasty and give them a try. This is a time for experimenting – if something doesn’t appeal to you after you’ve served it up, discard that recipe and try something else. No matter what your level of cooking expertise, there are recipes you can make, and you’ll even find yourself becoming a better cook as you develop new skills.
Step 4: Make all your dinners meatless.
Once you’ve found three new dinners that you love, that’s nine vegetarian dinners to choose from! That’s a different meal every night, if you like, plus two alternates – which may be more variety than you had before you started transitioning to a meatless diet! Odds are good that, at this point, you’ll be intrigued by the different flavors and textures of your vegetarian entrees and you’ll keep on creating new menus. After all, you’re not going to eat the same nine things for the rest of your life – but it’s a great place to start! With so many dinners to choose from, it’s time to ban meat from your dinner table entirely. You should feel secure that you’re not going to hungry with so many options, and inspire you to discover even more.
Step 5: Lose the lunchmeat.
Your next step, now that you’ve successfully given up eating meat during your evening meal, it’s time to turn your attention to your lunches. If you’re the sort who takes a lunch break from the office at a restaurant, look for places that offer meat-free pasta options, vegetarian (or vegetarian-friendly) cafes, and places that have well-stocked salad bars. Burger places probably won’t have much for you to eat, but spots that specialize in sandwiches usually have vegetarian options. The downtown areas of many big cities also have street vendors offering Indian, Thai, Mexican and vegan specialties.
If you eat at home or take your lunch to work, you’ll naturally have a lot more control over your meal planning. If you have a microwave at work, you can heat up a bean burrito, a frozen vegetarian meal or leftovers from your evening meals. A snack-ish meal of pita bread slices, hummus and fruit is nutritious and fun, and if you’re lacto-ovo, there’s always egg salad or grilled cheese.
Step 6: Change your old breakfast habits.
Breakfast doesn’t have to be eggs, bacon and sausage. It can be anything you want it to be! If you want cheese enchiladas or leftover vegetarian chili, go for it. A fruit smoothie with a scoop of soy protein powder is a quick breakfast that’ll give you the boost you need, or you can toast a couple of pieces of whole-grain bread and top it with peanut butter. On weekends, when you have more time to cook and linger over breakfast, make an omelette stuffed with mushrooms, onions and cheese, or cook up a stack of blueberry pancakes. If you simply can’t shake the craving for breakfast meats, there are vegetarian sausage links – even fake bacon, made from soy! – that can help satisfy it. Just remember that breakfast is whatever you want it to be – so long as you’re getting the nutrition you need, you can eat anything you like.
Step 7: Get creative.
If you’ve gotten this far, it’s time to get serious about embracing the vegetarian lifestyle. Giving up meat in only the beginning – there’s a whole world a foods to explore, from grains and seeds and nuts to vegetables you’ve never tried before. The more foods you’re open to eating, the more creativity you can bring to your cooking.
At this point, you should be feeling pretty good about the meal choices you already have under your belt, so now is the time to start having fun and trying new things. As you thumb through vegetarian cookbooks, you’ll find recipes that use “exotic” ingredients like quinoa, tahini and spelt. Try using soy milk as a replacement for cow’s milk in recipes, and experiment with exotic spice combinations that you’ve never tried before. This is your chance to develop a broader, more interesting recipe repertoire. Enjoy yourself!
Take a trip to your local food co-op of health food store and spend awhile reading the labels on all the products you’ve never seen before. Don’t be intimidated by the unfamiliar labels and ingredients – and don’t be shy about asking the employees how to use foods you find intriguing, or for recommendations and recipes. Tell them up front that you’re new to vegetarianism, and they’ll be happy to point you towards foods you’ve probably never considered before.
Step 8: Giving up the eggs.
During the last step, you may have noticed something – you’re now an ovo lacto vegetarian! Congratulations! You may also notice, though, that you’re eating a lot of eggs and cheese. This happens to most new vegetarians, actually, because cheese is tasty and eggs are inexpensive sources of protein. But both add the amount of fat and cholesterol in your diet and, if you think back to previous chapters, the practices of high-tech egg farms are barbaric.
But experienced vegetarians know how to replace eggs in recipes, and now that you’re an experienced vegetarian, it’s time you started doing it, too. You certainly don’t have to give up eggs entirely if you don’t want to – but there are a number of ways that you can at least cut back on the amount of eggs you eat.
If you’re a fan of egg salad, try replacing the eggs with tofu – use everything else you would in your favorite egg salad recipe like mayonnaise, celery, onion and mustard, and you’ll find you’ll never miss the eggs. Tofu also works as an excellent substitute for scrambled eggs when sauteed with onions, mushrooms, garlic and little salt. For a binding agent when making a veggie loaf or vegetarian burger, try some tahini (chickpea paste, available in the natural foods or ethic section of your grocery store), mashed potatoes or soft tofu.
You may find, after some experimentation, that you don’t want to give up eggs after all. But even then, cutting back on your consumption is a good idea for a number of reasons – and you can always seek out organic eggs from small, local farms that don’t indulge in the same abhorrent practices as the big operations.
Step 9: Find new ways to build your bones.
When we’re kids, we’re all told over and over again to drink our milk. Even as adults, the milk industry keeps drumming into our heads that we have to drink milk and eat lots of dairy products to maintain strong ones and teeth. While it’s true that our bodies require calcium for good health, we don’t need to drink milk to get it.
Did you know that humans are the only animals who drink the milk of another species? Cow’s milk is ingeniously designed by nature to provide the calcium, riboflavin, fat, protein and carbohydrates that a baby calf needs to grow into a huge cow – and even calves stop drinking milk once it develops past infancy. Humans have actually evolved over thousands of years so that many of us —mostly Westerners—can drink milk without getting sick by producing lactase, an enzyme that breaks down the sugars (lactose) in cow milk. But many non-Western cultures have never developed the ability to drink milk, and a large number of people of European descent are still lactose intolerant. Drinking milk as an adult is simply unnatural – people who can do so without suffering intestinal discomfort are benefitting from a genetic anomaly.
Yet, we still need calcium. If you enjoy eating cereal, try one of the many soy or rice-based milk replacements on the market. There are a wide variety of brands and they all taste different – so if you don’t like the first one or two you try, keep experimenting until you find one you like. And make sure you add calcium-rich food to your meals like leafy green vegetables, and beans. We’ll discuss this is further detail in the next chapter.
Once you find yourself enjoying a wide variety of foods that are rich in calcium, you’ll find it a lot easier to eliminate dairy from your diet. After you become accustomed to eating calcium-rich foods drinking non-dairy milk supplements, you can move on to trying soy-based cheeses. And look for nutritional yeast at your health food store – added to tofu dishes or sprinkled on popcorn, it adds a delicious, cheese-like flavor to recipes.
Step 10: Become a savvy consumer.When you shop for food, examine the labels carefully for animal products you need to avoid. You’ll be surprised by how many foods contain lard, dried milk, eggs and other animal by-products. It can be extremely challenging at first, but don’t be discouraged – you’ll soon find yourself becoming as familiar with the products and brand names that help you stay on course as you were with the products you used in your old life.
As you spend more and more time educating yourself about eating meat-free, you’ll discover exactly how diligent you want to be about your new lifestyle. You may find that it’s worth the effort you put into it, and you want to embrace a completely vegan way of life. Or you may find you are comfortable eating commercially made bread products that contain eggs while not cooking with eggs for your other meals. Don’t allow politics to dictate your dietary choices, seeing a began diet as ethically superior to an ovo lacto one, and beating yourself up because you still eat cheese. You can be proud of yourself for adopting a vegetarian lifestyle, and even if you don’t go 100 percent vegan you’ve still made a healthy, humane choice.
Be proud of yourself!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment