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    Going Vegan

    I’ve copied and pasted my response to someone asking for tips on becoming vegan. I will definitely be updating this page in the future—making it more thorough and including more tips and resources—but this should suffice for the time being!

    • Eat your fruits and veggies. Make sure you’re incorporating them into your diet as much as you can. If you don’t particularly like the taste, or don’t have enough time to eat them all, I’d recommend blending. It’s an easy way to get all of the nutrients out of the produce with out having to eat pounds and pounds of it.  
    • On that note— Try adding a daily green smoothie into your diet. This will enable your taste-buds to adapt to greens and fruit, and eventually you will be craving plants over your what used to be your favorite foods.
    • Don’t make meat substitutes a large part of your diet. It’s fine to enjoy these every now and then, but they are nutritionally inadequate (and have questionable ingredients, GMOs, high sodium). I chose, from the onset of my transition to veganism, to avoid them at all costs.
    • Protein/iron sources. Great staples to include in your diet are beans, quinoa, brown rice, steel cut/rolled oats. They are all very affordable, can be stored for long periods of time, and are easy to cook with (and delicious)!
    • Low fat. One mistake I made was getting almost half of my calories from fat (nut butters, nuts/seeds, avocados). As long as you’re getting your fruits/veggies in, this shouldn’t be a problem for you.
    • Keep fancy ingredients to a minimum. These include things like agave nectar, cacao, special oils, etc. Use these for special treats, or every once in a while, not every single day. 

    Overall, I recommend that you keep it simple! Find creative ways to use basic ingredients like fruits, veggies, grains, beans.

    If you find that you’re missing dairy/eggs, try out Almond Milk and other great substitutes like Nutritional Yeast, which is packed with vitamins. There are some awesome cheese sauce recipes that use nutritional yeast!

    Also, be sure to check out some great books and documentaries to keep you inspired. I found that to be especially important when transitioning. I’ve listed a lot of great ones in my Resources section.

    Take a look through my Answered Questions for some more tips and advice. And if you ever have any questions, drop me a message!