Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [20]
Advantages of taking your time
Sudden changes to your diet can cause many surprising results, but making a slower switch to veganism can help reduce the consequences. Here are some reasons why:
You won’t stress out trying to substitute foods for every animal product you’re used to eating. Consider giving up one nonvegan food category a week. Cheese, milk, meat, eggs, and butter can all move out of your life slowly as you figure out how to substitute for them with new vegan foods. Taking your time allows you to ask questions and discover new protein, fat, and nutrient sources as you move forward.
You’ll encounter less discomfort from detoxifying side effects. The human body has incredible systems in place to help detoxify and release harmful foods, liquids, and chemicals. The skin can sweat out impurities, the liver deals with unhealthy fats, and the bowels release waste. It’s truly amazing what the human body is capable of doing to heal and cleanse itself, if given half a chance. However, this “spring cleaning” effect can manifest itself with some unwanted symptoms like headaches, fatigue, rashes, sleeplessness, fever, temporary loss of menstruation, diarrhea or constipation, increased methane emissions (if you know what I mean), and acne.
People who move to a vegan diet very quickly are more likely to experience these symptoms. Taking your time will allow the body to work these processes slowly, causing less discomfort. Going cold Tofurky can sometimes be pretty painful!
You’ll ease the flow of money out of your new pleather wallet. If you throw out everything in your house that was tested on animals or that’s made of leather, wool, silk, beeswax, dairy, meat, or eggs, your house may look the way it did the day before you moved in: Empty! Allowing more time to replace items that get used up, worn out, or eaten will spread the expenses out and make the cost more manageable.
Problems with pacing yourself
As you probably know, transitioning slowly to veganism isn’t all daisies and sunshine. You may run into a few problems, including the following:
You may be impatient and find the waiting to be frustrating. If you’re the type who likes to make a decision and jump right into new habits, taking your time to make your whole life vegan may be too annoying for you. You may get bored or frustrated because you know what you want to do and how you want to live, but you can’t afford to make all the necessary changes.
The prolonging of detoxifying effects may trouble you more than just getting it done and over with. While the “shock and awe” method of quick detoxification can be too much for some new vegans, others may experience such painful physical problems that they’re ready to get their bodies cleaned out as quickly as possible. When you’ve hit bottom physically, a few days of detoxification symptoms may be preferable to waiting weeks for relief.
The Nuts and Bolts of Changing Over
Whether you’re going cold Tofurky or transitioning over time, going vegan is a life-changing event that requires you to do and remember a few basic things to be successful. I explain these nuts and bolts, including timing, education, planning, and experimentation with new foods, in the following sections.
Choosing your timing wisely
Whether you decide to be 100 percent vegan tomorrow or make the transition over the next few months, you’ll want to make a plan to ensure that you don’t make big changes during inconvenient times. Going vegan right before a rehearsal dinner at a steak house may be tough. Similarly, if you’re about to go on a three-week vacation to Brazil, you’ll find it much more difficult to eat a vegan diet if you’re not experienced in choosing vegan foods. In other words, go vegan slowly over a few weeks where you aren’t required to do something important: take finals, present a paper at a business conference, or give birth — there’s no point in adding extra stress to an already