Moving from a Standard American Diet to a Vegan Lifestyle
You can only fool yourself and your body for so long. Do you realize that if you exist on primarily fast foods you are compromising your health and aging at an accelerated speed. If you want to reap a healthy life, you need to re-evaluate your diet habits and your lifestyle. You know, you reap what you sow – so if you’re eating JUNK your body will be JUNK, if you eat HEALTHY then your body will be HEALTHY! Not a real difficult concept to grasp! (and I won’t even begin to mention the horrors of what the industry does to the animals that you’re ingesting).
Now, vegan lifestyles and for that matter even 100% vegetarian lifestyles may not be for you but you can make simple transitions making it a comfortable and enjoyable experience! Some will dive right into being vegan or vegetarian overnight, others will do it in a slow gradual manner, do what’s best for you!
A big misconception is that you “have” to go to a health food store to get vegan/vegetarian itemsâÂ?¦that’s NOT the case, fruit, vegetables, juices, nuts, beans (fresh ones) can all be purchased at your local grocery!
Here’s a few steps to help you transition smoothly:
�¯�¿�½ When making spaghetti, chili or similar dishes, substitute the meat with beans or soy/tofu meat instead
�¯�¿�½ Use soy cheese in place of regular dairy cheese
Ã?¯Ã?¿Ã?½ Order pizza without the cheese with vegetable toppings, like peppers, mushrooms, olives (and every pizza place I know WILL do this, especially since the cheese is the most expensive ingredient of the pizza, they’re more than glad to NOT use cheese, but don’t expect to pay less though, but great if you can manage to convince them of that!!)
Ã?¯Ã?¿Ã?½ If you “have” to have your “meat”, try veggie burgers, or soy and tofu meat impostors, they’ve come along way and are actually rather good now!
�¯�¿�½ Check out your local health food store, whole or fresh markets for all kinds of goodies, not familiar with some of the items there, ASK, the people working there are usually really great about assisting!
�¯�¿�½ Learn to read labels, because there are hidden animal products and animal byproducts in more foods than one would think! And that includes even vitamins which contain gelatin (animal hooves, bones and skin makes up gelatin-GROSS!)
Try these substitutes for a vegetarian diet and let me forewarn you, after you’ve been vegan or vegetarian for awhile, you’ll experience the true flavorings of foods and not genetically modified chemically enhanced flavors. You’ll also sleep better (and perhaps even less but able to function better), have a brighter better outlook on your daily tasks and be healthier, as well as saving innocent animals from torture and death.
Ice Cream: YES these taste like the real thing LESS the fat of ice cream!!! Try fruit sorbets, ices, soy desserts, and Tofutti..trust me if I didn’t tell you it wasn’t your normal ice cream you would NOT know!
Milk: Large variety of non dairy milks now and you CAN get them at any grocery store-Rice Milk, Soy Milk, (both these usually come in original, vanilla and even chocolate!) Nut milks. IF you “have” to have dairy milk, then buy ORGANIC milk!
Hamburger/Meat: Wide variety of vegetarian hamburgers. You can buy veggie burgers or even tofu and soy Ã?¯Ã?¿Ã?½meat’ crumbles.
Cheese: Yes, they have soy cheese and a variety of flavors at that, so you can still have your cheese fix without actually have real cheese.
These are just a few ideas, go online do a search for “vegan” or “vegetarian” diets or enlist a Vegan Diet Coach to assist you.
