How to start going vegan?

How to start going vegan

You’ve made the (amazing but scary!) decision to go vegan. Well done, I salute you! Now you need to know how to start going vegan?

Where do you start? If you’re making the transition from being vegetarian it’ll probably be easier (unless you can’t live without cheese?), if you’re going straight from being a meat eater it’ll take longer to get used to. But you can do it! If you’re on the fence read this for some reasons to start going vegan.

In this article I’ll be going through how and why I started my vegan journey in January 2020. The foods I started with, the foods I eat now and the bonus foods I’ve discovered that you’d never think were vegan, but actually are (bourbon creams!). Hopefully by the end you’ll know how to start going vegan.

What is a vegan diet?

If you’re really new to veganism you may not be 100% sure what a vegan diet actually is. Nothing to be ashamed of, I’ve had loads of my friends ask me about it.

A vegan diet is the next step up from a vegetarian diet. Vegetarians don’t eat any meat or fish (if you eat fish but not meat you’re a pescatarian), and vegans don’t eat any meat or animal products. This includes cheese, milk, butter and eggs.

A vegan diet consists of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, and soy.

I’m eating a high protein diet at the moment because I’m weight lifting, if you’re interested in high protein vegan foods check out this post:

My vegan strength training diet

Benefits of going vegan

There are so many benefits and reasons to going vegan, I won’t mention them all but they usually fall into one of three categories:

• Health benefits
• Ethical benefits
• Environmental benefits

Health benefits

I’m telling you guys now I’ve never felt better than I do since going vegan. I have more energy, I don’t feel bloated after I eat and I’ve lost a tonne of weight (with exercise as well). Us vegans naturally eat more fruit and veg which has fewer calories and fat in than meat.

15% fat beef mince has a whopping 1048 calories per 500g!!!

Lean beef mince (under 5% fat) still has 620 calories in. Some vegan mince alternatives are high calorie too (although I did find a frozen one in Tesco that was 495 calories per 500g) but the great thing about being vegan is you can ditch the (vegan) mince completely!

There is another way, it’s all about the beans

Why not make a chilli with kidney beans, black beans and loads of veg? Or a spag bol with a mushroom mince or even a red lentil pasta sauce!? The meat alternatives are a great place to start but as you go through your vegan journey you’ll discover more and more foods that you’ll end up not needing the meat alternatives.

Anyway back on to health benefits. If you’re trying to lose weight a vegan diet could help because you naturally eat fewer calories so you don’t feel like you’re cutting back on what you’re eating or missing out.

Vegan diets are also usually higher in fibre, antioxidants and vitamins A, C and E.

I say usually because this ain’t gonna be happening if you’re living off jam sandwiches and chips lathered in ketchup!

Vegans also tend to have lower blood sugar levels and have a reduced risk of developing type two diabetes.

Ethical benefits

This was the main reason I went vegan in the first place. I personally don’t like the thought of an animal having to be killed just so I can eat, there’s an array of perfectly good vegan foods I could eat that taste great and fill me up. I extend this to eating any animal product as well, just because a cow isn’t being killed for its meat it’s still being exploited for its milk and being made to suffer.

Unless you’re a baby cow you don’t need to drink cows milk.

I’m pretty sure animals were not put on this earth for us to use, abuse and eat. And talking of our planet, that brings me on to…

… Environmental benefits

To be honest with you, I didn’t know the impact that eating meat was having on our planet until quite recently, maybe a year ago (about 3 months before I went vegan). Reading about how the rain forests are being cut down to make room for cattle really shocked me. We’re literally killing our planet by eating meat and animal products. The amount of natural resources it takes, the land, the crops to feed the animals and the water. Then there’s the methane gas produced, none of this is good for the planet.

A vegan diet is much more sustainable, yes it still takes water and land to grow fruit, veg and soy but it’s a hell of a lot less than the meat industry.

How to start going vegan?

If you’ve read this far (well done for reading me waffling on!) you really are serious about going vegan, good on you! Now we just need to convince the rest of the planet!

Going vegan will be much easier if you don’t think about the foods you can’t eat, instead think about the foods you can eat.

For example don’t think about the take away pizza you can’t order, make your own with vegan ingredients instead!

Start with vegan meat alternatives

If you’re not sure where to start try going with meat alternatives to start with.

• Replace chicken with vegan chicken pieces
• Veggie burgers can replace beef burgers
• Vegan mince can replace meat mince (check it’s vegan as some contain egg white)

So far so good.

This is a good place to start but some meat alternatives aren’t very healthy as they’re often full of other ingredients, hidden calories and they’re processed. If you’re interested in losing weight on a vegan diet have a read of this article.

The next step in how to start going vegan…

Start searching for recipes online (at the time of writing I don’t have any recipes on the site but I will), if you’ve found an ingredient you like try searching for that. E.g chickpea salad, chickpea curry, quinoa salad etc. There’s loads of different recipes you can try and tweak to your own taste.

As you progress through your vegan journey you’ll discover what you like, what you don’t like and all sorts of stuff like nutritional yeast (which tastes of cheese!). I rarely use meat alternatives now because I don’t feel I need to and I like to know what I’m eating.

What vegan foods I eat now

My diet includes things like porridge oats (check out this recipe for my delicious morning oats with banana and cinnamon), plant milks, nuts, beans, lentils, bulgar wheat, bananas and other fruit and veg. I like to eat wholesome foods and I cook pretty much everything from scratch.

I’ve replaced the shop bought veggie burgers with home made black bean burgers, the fake chicken with tofu and the mince with either mushrooms or a mix of beans. Although I do still love a biscuit (bourbon creams!) with my evening cuppa and I can’t tell you how happy I was when I discovered that galaxy had released a vegan chocolate bar (well nobody’s perfect!)

For some healthy vegan recipes (not including bourbons or galaxy chocolate!) including pasta, curry and teriyaki tofu click here.

It’s not all tofu and quinoa!

I often find when you tell someone you’ve just met you’re vegan they’ll often say something about quinoa (but they’ll pronounce it wrong) or that we don’t get enough protein, which is rubbish! (Read my article about vegan high protein foods here). Some people just don’t get it and they probably never will.

Let them take the mick out of our quinoa and tofu, we’re the ones that are (probably) gonna live longer, with less health problems, sleeping soundly at night because we know we’re doing right by the planet and our animal friends. Yay us!!!

Have you gone vegan yet?

I hope I’ve answered some of your questions and given you a good starting point for how to start going vegan. As you can probably tell this is something I feel really strongly about and if this article convinces just one person to go vegan I will die a very happy vegan. Plus the 100 or so animals that you’ll save (per year) will also thank you.

I’d love to know what you thought of the article, please let me know your comments/ questions below.

All the best

Katie