Want to have more energy? Maybe help your body naturally reverse a disorder? If so, a plant-based diet will be a tremendous help!
There’s no better time to start a plant-based diet. There used to be a time when a diet without meat or cheese sounded incredibly boring and depriving. The common question that people following the lifestyle would get asked would be what could you possibly eat and enjoy on a diet with no meat? This is still a commonly asked question and truthfully, this is something we may have all wondered at some point in our lives.
The good news is a diet based on plants is not nearly as limited as believed. There are countless beautiful, flavorful, filling, incredibly wonderful dishes to be enjoyed from plant-based living. And with the internet at your fingertips, accessing ways to create some truly heavenly vegan recipes has never been easier. Plant-based living isn’t depriving at all. With a little creativity, you can recreate pretty much any of your favorite dishes, so you don’t have to miss out on your favorite foods. With delicious and filling food to choose from such as sandwich wraps, pizzas, popular dressings like ranch, desserts, and even buffalo cauliflower wings, the possibilities with plant-based foods really are endless.
Reasons For A Plant-Based Diet
If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably heard of some of the benefits of eating a diet solely based on plants and what it can do for your physical well-being. In addition to pleasing your taste buds, the benefits of a plant-based diet are nothing short of miraculous.
Enjoying a wholesome diet of plants removes a lot of work off your digestive system so it doesn’t have to work so hard digesting food. Food such as meat and dairy requires a lot of effort for your body to digest it. Especially when it’s eaten as much as typical Americans do. Eating a diet of plants puts your body in a position to begin to cleanse and heal itself from illness. Plus, it provides your body with many good vitamins and nutrients that will give you energy and nourish your cells which is exactly what is missing from a standard American diet. From normalizing your blood pressure to curing cancer, diabetes, and constipation, a plant-based diet can truly work wonders for your health.
So, how do you begin to transition to a plant-based diet? Where do you even start? Since everyone is different, there are a lot of different approaches to this. Some people just decide that they’re through with meat and quit cold turkey (pun intended, lol). Many others have to ease their way out of a relationship with animal flesh. Whatever your method of choice, the following tips can help make your transition into a nutritious plant-based lifestyle easier.
How To Start A Plant-Based Diet
1. Method
Whether you decide to just never eat another morsel of animal flesh again and quit cold turkey, or transition into the lifestyle, deciding on the method that’s going to get you on the path to a plant-based diet is the first step.
Whatever your reasons for changing your diet, it’s important to develop a goal in mind and then proceed from there. Are you using food as your medicine and want to expedite your healing? In this case, some people may feel it necessary to start out with a more intense raw vegan diet.
A fast or detox can help launch you towards healing and veganism. There are many types of fasts and/or detoxes, but the most common ones are eating raw plant-based food such as fresh raw fruit and vegetables for a selected amount of time, like maybe a week or two.
Other people may need to transition into veganism with a more flexible diet that includes cooked whole foods. A great way to begin this is to give up meat on one or more days a week, such as meatless Mondays.
Try this: Meatless Monday one week, then eat fairly decently for the rest of the week. The next week, have meatless Monday and Tuesday and then eat decently the reminder of the week. Week three, eat meatless Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and eat decently the rest of the week. You get the idea. Following this routine, you’ll be eating fully plant-based in two months.
Another method of easing into plant-based is to allow meat during certain times of the day instead of eating it at every meal. I know quite a few people who will only allow themselves meat between the hours of 12pm and 4pm. So, they may start out with a smoothie for breakfast, a turkey salad for lunch, and maybe another garden salad or even a cooked plant-based meal such as potato soup (vegan of course) for dinner.
There are a lot of ways to transition into a meatless lifestyle. If you’re really curious about the diet, it’s best to do a little research and figure out which eating style works best for you.
2. Make It Fun
Changing your entire way of eating can be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be boring and grueling. After all, this is your life we’re talking about. So, why not have your first experience with a potential new lifestyle to be good and even fun?
I’d recommend joining a group of vegans in your city and participate in it. A couple of years ago, I came across a group online in my city called “Vegan Potlucks and Dine-Outs.” The group was great for people who were newly vegan, longtime vegan, or vegan-curious. One Saturday a month, the group gets together at different restaurants that serve vegan food. In my southern city in Tennessee, it can be a little difficult finding people who are vegan and even harder finding places that only cater to the vegan crowd. Coming across this group was a Godsend as a baby vegan because it allowed me to meet people with the same interests as me, and even discover awesome places to eat in my city that I knew nothing about! You never know why you might meet in groups like these. You may even go on to become really good friends with some of the people, and these people could help you further in your journey.
You could also follow plant-based people on social media who you really like, and participate in some of their challenges. I follow some really great groups online and have even participated in some of their really cool challenges online, such as 7-day smoothie challenges, and 5-day plant-based healthy breakfast challenges. These challenges are fun, informative, and subtly effective at helping you to eat better. You can meet great people this way, and you guys can support each other in your journeys and swap and share recipes.
3. Eat Out
Eating out is normally frowned upon by people because of the cost of doing so, not to mention the lack of control of the ingredients in the food. In this case, eating out can be your friend at the beginning of your plant-based journey. Ah, the things you must do in the name of research. Since we just discussed sampling different restaurants with vegan groups, you may as well use that as a tool in your transition.
I admit it: one of the most challenging things about a plant-based lifestyle is the cooking. It took a while for me to get over this hump when I first started a plant-based lifestyle. With our busy lives, we may not always have the time or patience to cook most or all of our meals. For seasoned vegans, eating out may be considered a luxury at times, but when transitioning to a plant-based diet it could be a lifesaver. If your budget will allow it, let the pros handle your cooking for you from time to time.
Now, I’m not saying clean out your bank account and eat out every day. Use discretion when it comes to this. The purpose of this step is to help you practice discipline when eating out by ordering food that’s good for you, and if you’re not much of a cook (I wasn’t when I first started veganism), this step could really help to ease you into the lifestyle. Eating some of the creative dishes restaurants chefs prepare for you can be very inspiring. You may fall in love with a particular salad dressing and want to look up the recipe on how to make it. Before you know it, this could turn into a knack for cooking. From sampling fancy plant-based restaurants to vegan dives and dine-ins, you can get a great sense of awesome ranges of food that can be made without meat or dairy, and you can begin to truly see just how tasty and filling plant-based food is.
4. Make Your Favorite Traditional Meals Vegan
And since we’re on the subject of how great plant-based food is, let’s discuss how to turn some of your favorite meaty food into tasty plant-based dishes.
When I discovered jackfruit, my vegan life elevated.
Jackfruit is a true gem. It is the perfect meat replacement. In its raw, ripe form it has the very sweet taste of Juicy Fruit gum that’s excellent in smoothies or just as a snack, but in its raw unripe form, it has the taste and texture that’s similar to shredded chicken. Oh, yes, my friends. Shredded chicken.
Do you know what this means? This means meatless tacos, nachos, wraps, sandwiches, barbecue pizza, sliders–the works! I’ve made jackfruit tacos and nachos for parties with my loveable meat-eating co-workers, friends, and family, and they all loved it. To this day, I always get requests to make some.
Think of some of your favorite foods and then experiment with replacing the meat with a plant-based alternative. You don’t have to use fake meat products to do this. Whole foods such as jackfruit, mushrooms, and even ground-up walnuts make excellent meat replacers. Fake meat products are very often highly processed and does your body more harm than good. Try your best to avoid them as much as you can. I have a free cookbook with some awesome plant-based recipes you can try! Which brings me to my next tip…
5. Recipe Books and Sites Are Gold
Here’s a Free Gift For You. Download my very own Plant-Based Cookbook to help get you started. It includes my very famous recipe for jackfruit tacos that’s sure to be a hit with your tastebuds!
See? It’s books like these that can really help you in the start of your plant-based journey, provided that you use them.
Want to try some new and fresh ideas? Invest in some vegan cookbooks. Yes, you can find many free recipes online, but what happens when these sites disappear? They take the fabulous recipes that you’ve found and fallen in love with right along with them.
A plant-based diet is wildly versatile. When it comes to the food you eat there are practically no rules when creating in the kitchen. Starting a plant-based diet can be easy and fun… with some guidance.
You can recreate some of your favorite meals with vegan cookbooks. Having a variety of cookbooks can introduce you to many styles of cooking. Whether you’re adventurous and looking to incorporate raw vegan food into your life, you have a sweet tooth and may want to try a healthier plant-based dessert, or you simply want to try a new cooked vegan recipe, a vegan cookbook is a highly recommended tool to have in the kitchen.
6. Clean Out Your Kitchen
Ensuring you keep a variety of healthy, wholesome, plant-based food on deck will make your transition that much easier. It’s not uncommon to have to deal with family who isn’t interested in converting to a plant-based diet with you, but that doesn’t mean you have to make it harder on yourself by stocking your pantry and fridge with junk food.
Do the very best you can with keeping your kitchen filled with lots of whole foods such as grains like quinoa and wild rice (because they’re so extremely versatile and can be used in pretty much any dish), avocados (trust me, you’ll fall in love with them on this lifestyle), fruit, leafy green veggies such as kale, swiss chard, and romaine lettuce. Nuts and seeds such as pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, brazil nuts, and pine nuts make excellent and filling snacks.
These kitchen essentials can keep you grounded and keep you from making bad food decisions not only when transitioning, but throughout your entire journey.
7. Know Your Food
Last, but absolutely not least, you must understand what’s in your food.
Knowing how to read the ingredient list in the food you find at the grocery store is important. It’s not hard. If a word you’re reading in the ingredient list is something you can’t pronounce or recognize, it’s a great chance that word is a processed chemical in the food.
Chances are when you study a lifestyle that you’re interested in, you’re that much more likely to embark on it. The more you know about the food you’re eating and the nutritional value it provides, the more you know how to use your food to your advantage. Eating a well-balanced diet of raw fruit and vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds means you probably won’t run into any artificial ingredients or nutritional imbalances.
Before beginning a plant-based diet, it’s very helpful to know which foods carry which kinds of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients for vegans. Your friends, family, and even curious people you don’t know very well will undoubtedly have questions about how you’re getting your calcium (from kale, spinach, citrus fruits and berries, almonds and sesame seeds), iron (leafy greens, quinoa, legumes, pumpkin seeds), and the ever-popular question of protein (nuts, seeds, quinoa, legumes). And educating yourself is a great way to educate others and dispel widely believed fables about a plant-based diet. Who knows? With your knowledge, you may end up converting someone else to enjoying the rewards of a plant-based lifestyle.
A plant-based diet is very rewarding. Every person who is currently enjoying a plant-based lifestyle to this day used at least THREE of these tips in the beginning of their own journeys. If you’ve been thinking about starting this kind of diet and partaking in the rewards it offers, then these tips will be very helpful in guiding you along at the beginning of your journey.
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