Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [91]
11. If you are invited to a dinner party, let your host know ahead of time that you are vegan and ask if she would like you to bring a dish or two. It will most likely make for interesting dinner conversation, so bring enough to share! If it’s a barbecue, bring over some veggie dogs and burgers and vegan cheese, so that you can join in with everyone else. Don’t worry about offending anyone; as long as you are gracious and don’t preach about what anyone else should eat, everything will be fine. And if it’s not, and your host seems prickly, chalk it up to it being nothing you can change. You can’t make everyone happy, but you can be kind and informative (if asked) and people will eventually come to understand your new way of eating (if not join you!).
12. Try to eat a few servings of veggies every day, whether as side dishes, in salads, or as centers to the meal (like stuffed butternut squash). When you eat a wide variety of colorful, fresh veggies, you guarantee yourself lots of fiber and much of your needed nutrition. Enjoy lentils, chickpeas, beans, tofu, seitan, and tempeh, and meat alternatives like Gardein for your main sources of protein, but remember, protein is in just about everything, so if you are eating a varied plant-based diet, you will most likely be getting plenty. And enjoy your fruit—pears, strawberries, figs—as snacks or condiments; you won’t need sugar to satisfy your sweet tooth when you enjoy fruits regularly.
13. One of my favorite ways of getting in a couple doses of fruits and veggies is to throw them into a smoothie. I start with a base of coconut water or nondairy milk and protein powder—I like Solaray Soytein, Life’s Basics, or Vegn because they are not sweetened with anything that will spike blood sugar—then add in blueberries or raspberries. The kicker is the cup of frozen broccoli; you can’t even taste it when it goes in frozen, so even kids will go for it.
14. Steer clear of junk foods like chips and cookies and sweets (well, at least don’t make a habit of eating them!) so that you keep your energy high and your cravings low (remember: junk begets cravings for more junk). Just getting animal products out of your diet alone won’t make you thrive; you still need to crowd in nutritious foods while saying no to empty calories.
15. Don’t make yourself (or the waiter!) crazy about foods that may have less than 2 percent of something animal in them. For instance, don’t interrogate your server to make sure there is no milk in the bread or insist that your veggie burger is not on the same grill as a steak. You don’t want to give the impression that vegans are hard to please!
When you are adding in all these delicious and nutritious foods, you won’t miss the things you are taking out. In fact, you will be glad they are out of your diet, and out of your body. If you backslide and eat something you wished you hadn’t, don’t worry about it. Note how you feel, and plan for what you will do the next time you are tempted. The trick is to replace—crowd out—what you no longer want to eat so that you never feel deprived, and fill your home with delicious food so that there is always something healthy on hand.
As you become a veganist (or vegan-ish), your tastes will also evolve. In fact, your taste buds themselves will change; they will adjust to the cleaner, purer flavors. Your skin will look brighter, you will shed weight if you need to, and you will improve your overall health. Your energy, too, will begin to lift because you will be getting good nutrition while at the same time avoiding all the problems that go along with rich, fatty, problematic animal protein.