How did you move from a regular diet to vegetarian or vegan?!
How did you move from a regular diet to vegetarian or vegan?
all at once, or gradually removing meats and/or all animal products?
Answers:
I did it gradually over the period of a year, cutting one thing at a time and cutting back. As I cut out one thing, I was simultaneously cutting back on others. My first month I cut pork, and cut meats down to 3 times a week. The next month I cut beef and cut poultry and fish down to once a week. In the third month I starting cutting poultry and cheated once with the beef. By month four, the only meat I was eating was fish,and only twice a month and I started cutting by-products like marshmallow, jello and white sugar. By products took the longest, about 3 months, mostly since I had to learn where to find them and all the names they had.
By the end of a year I was down to just ceasar salads on occasion and that was the last thing to go.
The transition was so simple, I recommend it. I didn't really have to deal with cravings past a month. It was simple to learn to replace foods and eat in restaurants when it was done one at a time. Plus cutting gradually made it easier for my family to understand.
all at once
Most people I know made a decision and stuck to it. If there were lapses, them it was a new start.
It's easier to just go ahead and quit all at once. That way you don't have to think about it so much.
all at once
all at once,just removing meats, thinking about ging vegan though, that will be a gradual move though :)
well, if you do it all in one go, it can be harder and the cravings will come more quick, so when i became a vegan, i quit eating all the luxury food such as chocolate and things like that, but the drinks such as coke and little snacks which i had regulary, i gave them up gradually.
I went stopped eating meat and poultry two years ago. I stopped eating fish just recently, so I can now call myself a true (lacto-ovo) vegetarian. I had always wanted to go veg, and when I thought about what I was eating it really grossed me out. So I just started LETTING myself think about it and I began to not like it (meat) as much - and I was once a steak FANATIC! At that point it was easy to stop. I do use the "fake meats" quite a bit - not so much as I did at first, but I still have them probably 2-3 days per week. I also discovered that if I use the "nigari" type of tofu, it's almost impossible to make it taste bad (unlike the silken tofu I was trying to use before that!) Even my 11yr old bugs me to "PLEASE make TOFU!!!"
You'll also find that no matter how suddenly you stop eating meat, you'll be gradually stopping other stuff too. For instance, I never knew that they still make gelatin from boiled bones & skin, etc. Y UK! When I found that out, I had to start selecting my yogurts very carefully, stopped eating marshmallows & gummi candies, etc. It's a learning process and it's bound to be gradual just because the food companies are so darned secretive with their ingredients!
My transition happened over the course of.. maybe about a year?
I was trying to lose weight, so of course I eliminated beef and pork. I stuck with just doing that for about 7 or 8 months, and then stopped eating red meat entirely.
I've always hated chicken and turkey, so that was easy to give up. I did about two months later.
Seafood was hard. I loved seafood, a lot. That was the last thing I gave up.
I'm still trying to decide to go completely vegan, but I'm weighing it at the moment. It's kind of a big decision for me. =]
I went vegetarian all at once, but I'm going vegan a little at a time. My strategy is to have 'vegan' days and 'veggie' days. On the vegan days I only eat vegan, on the veggie days I eat what I always eat. Slowly I'll add more and more 'vegan' days until I'm a vegan!
As of now I only have one vegan day - Friday. In about three weeks it'll be Friday and Saturday ... and so on and so forth.
Well I haven't been vegetarian for too long. I decided to give up eating all meat including fish for lent. The whole time I never had cravings.. Except for gravy. Which was weird because I never ate much gravy in the first place. Anyway I decided to get a poutine yesterday because lent is over. I took two or three bites and felt so sick and gross I just couldn't eat it. So I will remain vegetarian and perhaps stick to mushroom gravy ? (^_^) ?