If you’ve been toying with the idea of going vegan, or even just introducing more plant-based foods into your diet, this complete guide on how to go vegan can help you follow through with your decision.
First of all, I want to get something out of the way: you can eat anything you want. No one is telling you what you can or can’t eat, so the question of what vegans can or can’t eat just rubs me the wrong way.
It’s all about what you choose to eat, and what you choose to eat either makes you a vegan, or a non-vegan, or any shade in between. And slapping a label on your diet is not the answer to eating healthy.
But if you’re here, I think it’s safe to assume that there’s a knowing feeling inside of you that maybe, perhaps, for some reason you should at least try to go vegan. You might feel that this could be the right decision for your health, or maybe you feel a pang of guilt every time you bite into a juicy burger.
This article isn’t here to tell you what you can or can’t eat. It’s here to guide you towards introducing more plant-based foods into your everyday life in a healthy and manageable capacity.
I don’t think everyone should become a strict vegan over night, but I do believe that the world would be a slightly better place if everyone could replace a few meals a week, or even a day, with healthy plant-based alternatives. A thousand individuals eating one vegan meal a day can have a much bigger impact than a single person replacing all of them.
And while this is a wonderful notion, the million dollar question is - where do I start?
This depends on so many factors, including why you’re going vegan, whether or not you’re planning to go completely vegan, what your diet has been so far, and how strong your willpower is.
There are essentially 3 options for how to transition to a vegan diet, and they mostly depend on:
- What kind of a diet are you currently following?
- How strong is your willpower?
- What is your timeframe for the transition?
If you’re an all or nothing kind of person, skip right to option 2. If you like to take things slow, start with 1.
Option 1: Omnivore to Vegetarian to Vegan
This is a slow transition, and the easiest one. It’s a great option if you know that you’re currently not following the healthiest omnivore diet and want to first focus on upping your intake of fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains and healthy fats.
Step 1: Omit all meat (yes, that includes seafood) from your diet and substitute it with plant-based sources of protein, such as legumes, tofu, etc. This will make the transition from vegetarian to vegan later on easier.
Step 2: Start reading the labels. There are a few tricky ingredients that aren’t vegetarian that make food you’d never expect not to be suitable fort vegetarians. The three most common ones are:
- Gelatine (made from skin, cartilage and bones of animals): found in gummy bears, marshmallows, jello, and even yogurt
- Rennet (enzyme found in the lining of a cow's intestines): commonly found in hard cheeses, including parmesan
- Lard: often found in pie pastry, tortillas, refried beans and even fries
These products are not necessarily made from these non-vegetarian ingredients, though! So it’s important to always check the labels for any of these ingredients.
Step 3: Make sure you’re using free-range eggs and ethically sourced dairy, then slowly start phasing out eggs, dairy and honey. Don’t worry about your favourite treats just yet.
Option 2: Vegetarian to Vegan
Once you feel confident enough in your vegetarian diet (whether this was your lifestyle before deciding to go vegan, or a part of your transition), you can slowly begin to omit all animal products from your diet.
Step 1: Increase the amount of plant-based ingredients in your diet. Eat more veggies and legumes, whole grains, fresh fruits, dried fruits and nuts. Stick to simple swaps, such as nut butter for dairy butter, vegetable stock for chicken or beef stock, agave syrup for honey, etc.
Step 2: Completely omit all obviously non-vegan foods from your diet - dairy and eggs. The easiest places to start are vegan breakfasts, creamy soups and fresh salads, and filling side dishes.
Step 3: Start paying close attention to the ingredients found in processed foods (powdered milk in sweets, such as chocolate). Transition from eating all vegan food to eating whole foods. Remove your barrier foods last.
Option 3: Omnivore to Vegan
If you know you can handle it (and no-one knows you better than you know yourself), simply get rid of all animal products in your diet, and replace them with healthy vegan substitutes.
Step 1: Omit all meat (including seafood) from your diet, and substitute it with plant-based sources of protein, such as soy products, legumes, seeds, etc. (see below for a complete list).
Step 2: Completely omit all obviously non-vegan foods from your diet - dairy and eggs.
Step 3: Start paying close attention to the ingredients found in processed foods (powdered milk in sweets, such as chocolate). Transition from eating all vegan food to eating whole foods.
However, make sure you don’t reach for the easy way out/vegan junk food. Here are a few traps to pay attention to:
- Don’t go too quickly only to relapse later.
- Make sure you don’t go for the easily available junk food and stick to eating real food.
This transition can be overnight, or as gradual as you want it. My top recommendation is to save your favourite food for last.
You don’t want to get stuck on that one thing that might be causing you problems (like that tub of Ben and Jerry’s sitting conveniently in the freezer) if you know you could easily substitute all other animal products in your diet. It's all about balance.
Step 4: A true vegan lifestyle also means that you don’t purchase or use anything that contains animal sources. This is not limited to your diet alone, but also includes clothing, cosmetics, body care and household products. You can learn more about how to make the switch to a cruelty-free home in this educational article.
*What Your Vegan Diet Should Look Like
Focus on Eating High Quality Food
This doesn’t mean you should pick the most expensive products in the store and call it a day. Eating high quality food means eliminating processed foods from your diet, sticking to real food, and making sure you meet your necessary requirements for protein, fat, vitamins and minerals.
In order to survive, humans need at least a minimum intake of proteins and fats. Carbs, though useful, are not essential to survival.
Protein
Proteins can be ranked based on two factors: their completeness of digestion (how fully our body is able to absorb the amino acids from the protein source) and the ratio of amino acids they provide (building blocks our bodies need to function properly).
The truth is that animal protein sources tend to rank higher when it comes to both completeness of digestion and amino acids. When following a plant-based diet, it’s important to focus on:
- Consuming complete plant sources, like quinoa and soy
- Eating more protein than a typical meat-eater, to balance the poorer digestion and amino acid fractions of plant proteins
- Supplementing some of the micronutrients inadequately supplied by plant-based diets, such as the B vitamins and iron
This probably makes you wonder, why bother with a plant-based diet at all then? Studies have shown time and time again that individuals following a vegetarian or a vegan diet tend to be healthier and live longer. This is largely due to the fact that they tend to care more about the quality of food they consume, but also because plant-based foods tend to be:
- Lower in saturated fats
- High in mono saturated fats
- Higher in fibre, vitamins and minerals
Examples of Vegan Protein Sources:
- Seitan: 25g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Tofu, tempeh and edamame: 10-19g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Lentils: 18g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Chickpeas and most beans: 15g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Nutritional yeast: 14g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Spelt and teff: 10-11g per 3.5 oz (100g)
- Green peas: 9g per 3.5 oz (100g)
Healthy Carbs
When comparing the sources of carbohydrates by their effects on health, we can order them by how they rank on two distinct variables:
- Concentration of micronutrients: fibre, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals
- Rank on the glycemic index and satiety: to what magnitude a carbohydrate digests and appears in the blood
Examples of healthy carbs include: most vegetables and fruits, potatoes, whole grains (such as oats), and to a slightly lesser degree also bananas, rice, pasta and whole grain breads.
Healthy Fats
There are four basic categories of fat, based on their molecular structures:
- Trans fats: commonly used to increase shelf life of most processed foods. These are the fats you want to consume as little as possible.
- Saturated fats: mostly found in animal products. While not quite as bad for your health as trans fats, excessive consumption of saturated fats has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.
- Poly-saturated fats: most commonly found in plant oils and certain animal products. There are two groups of poly-saturated fats that are especially good for your health: Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats. These are essential to our health and because our bodies can’t make them themselves, it’s crucial we get them from our diet. They are very common in animal products, but there are a few vegan options as well, including:
- Flaxseeds
- Rapeseed/canola oil
- Hempseed oil
- Walnuts/walnut oil
- Sunflower oil
- Mono-saturated fats: they most often occur in plant foods, especially nuts, olives and olive oil, and avocado. Their positive health effects when they replace polyunsaturated and especially saturated fats in a diet are well documented, and if you are going to eat a lot of any one kind of fat, monounsaturated is your best bet.
Sources of healthy fats include:
- Avocados
- Nuts
- Chia seeds
- Olives and olive oil
- Coconuts and coconut oil
- Dark chocolate
Examples of Healthy Food Sources for Vegans
Protein Sources
Tofu, seitan, tempeh and edamame, lentils, chickpeas, green peas, black beans, chickpeas (aka. garbanzo beans), kidney beans, pinto beans, white beans
Veggies
Broccoli, spinach, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, red pepper, yellow peppers, asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers
Fruits
Apple, pear, cantaloupe, watermelon, banana, grapes, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, honeydew melon, oranges
Whole Grains
Whole grain bread, white rice, brown rice, oatmeal, steel cut oats, sweet potatoes, quinoa, regular pasta, whole wheat pasta, corn, buckwheat, whole grain crackers, whole grain wraps
Healthy Fats
Cashews, pistachios, walnuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, pecans, canola oil, flaxseed oil, avocado, olive oil, nut butter (natural)
Hit the Right Balance of Macronutrients
Now let’s take a look of how much protein, fats and carbs your body really needs. The goal is to eat your daily recommenced allowance of calories (assuming you neither want to gain or lose weight) by balancing protein, fats and carbs. Your body doesn’t actually need carbs, so as soon as you hit your protein and fat goals, you can fill up the remaining calories with healthy carbs.
How much protein do I actually need?
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Because our bodies can only produce 11 of the 20 essential amino acids, we need to source the remaining 9 from our diet. So it’s not just about how much protein you eat, but also what kind of protein you eat.
Here’s a rough guideline: the average mildly or moderately active person living in a modern society should eat a minimum of around 0.3g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day (roughly 40-45g a day for most people).
When you’re following a vegan or even vegetarian diet, you should probably aim to eat up to 0.45 of protein per pound of body weight, to compensate for their poorer absorption and quality. For example, this would mean roughly 55g of protein for a 125-pound woman.
Based on the available research, a minimum intake of fats is 0.3g of fat per pound of body weight per day. For example, this is 37g of fat if you weigh 125 pounds.
Carbohydrates are actually not essential for our survival. All essential carbs can be manufactured in the body from eaten proteins and fats, so their intake from our diet is not mandatory.
Supplements
If you follow a balanced diet, you should be able to meet all your vitamin requirements without any supplements. But, we don't live in a perfect world, so it’s a good idea to at least take your multivitamins just to cover your basics.
If you’re vegetarian or vegan, it's highly recommended to also take B vitamins, which are difficult to get with plant-based foods alone, as well as vitamin D, iron, calcium and zinc.
Here are the vitamins I personally take every day:
- B vitamins: promote healthy red blood cell formation and cell health
- Multivitamins: combats any deficiencies in your diet
- Iron: promotes healthy red blood cell formation
- Calcium: promotes healthy red blood cell formation, and is important for bone formation
- Magnesium: important for bone formation
- D vitamins: Increase the absorption of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphate and zinc
Final Thoughts
- Go easy on yourself. Remember: just the fact you’re doing something is better than not doing anything. Even if your diet isn’t perfect, you’re still doing the best you can.
- Focus on healthy food. If restricting your diet to plant-based foods is causing to crave processed foods, try to figure out what you’re missing and indulge every once in a while. Real food should always come first.
- Learn to enjoy cooking your own food. I know this is easier said than done, but you’re the one who knows best what you like. Experiment with your favourite spices, learn which veggies work for you and which don’t (no one likes everything, and just because you’re vegan it doesn’t mean you should become a fan of broccoli), try crazy flavour combos and generally just have some fun. Life is too interesting to be taken seriously.
- Remind yourself why you’re doing this: the animals, the planet and, when done right, your health.
DO VEGANS HAVE FUN? Like ever?
More like all the time. If you’re kind of sceptical about the tastiness of plant-based foods, or are just starting out on your journey, here are my top meat-eater approved vegan recipes you need to try TODAY:
- Banana bread muffins
- Banana pancakes
- Breakfast oatmeal raisin cookies
- Crustless apple pie
- Green beans and cherry tomatoes salad
- Lemon drizzle cake
- Peach cobbler
- Peanut curry
- Pesto pasta salad
- Sweet potato Buddha bowl
*The information provided on Spoonful of Kindness is not a substitute for professional medical advice, or treatment for specific medical conditions.
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