Becoming Vegan: Switching to a Plant-Based Diet

If you haven’t heard the terms ‘vegan’ or ‘plant-based’ at this point you very well may be living under a rock lol. These terms have come into vogue and I must say, it’s about time. 

So you’ve heard the buzz, but it’s likely just left you with questions. Things like, why should I become vegan? What are the benefits of being vegan? How do I start being vegan? Or, isn’t being vegan expensive? I hear you. I have been you. 

With thoughts of veganism comes questions, lots of them.  

I hope to do just that with this post. Answer some of those burning questions you have and ease your mind a bit. And just maybe by the end you’ll be inspired to jump into a new plant-based lifestyle!

And, yes things seem daunting at first. However, it is not all so mysterious or difficult once you start digging in to what it all means. And here you are 🙂 

Times They Are A Changing

Oh my, yes, times are indeed changing. Veganism has entered the mainstream. It is now easier than ever before to be Vegan in our society, especially in a big city centre.

In the last couple of years it has really jumped into the spotlight. And dare I say, it’s even become a bit trendy.

There are a few documentaries that have received a lot of positive recognition and are extremely easy to access (thank you Netflix!). This seems to have a lot to do with it. The information is out there and your average Joe is getting their hands on it.

There are restaurants popping up everywhere that are either completely vegan or have vegan options. There are shops, bakeries (yum!), and new foods emerging all of the time. And the number of people going vegan rises daily. 

The Road to Vegan

My Earliest Influence

So, I grew up in Atlantic Canada in a small city, in the 80’s. Our family was a very meat and potatoes kind of family, along with pretty much everyone else I knew lol. Being Vegetarian was odd and being Vegan was practically unheard of.

Though I did have one aunt who was Vegan when I was a child. This made me aware of what it was in a time where the knowledge really wasn’t out there.

When we went to her house we always ate Vegan food (it was always delicious by the way). Other than the times we ate with her though, veganism was never thought of or talked about.

Out of site, out of mind as they say.

Many many years passed…

Throughout 2016 I began to enjoy meat less and feeling the animal cruelty more and more. Becoming vegetarian began to cross my mind.

Just thoughts though, I never acted on them. I suppose I wasn’t ready. We all must do things in our own time. 

Hello Netflix!

Then at the beginning of 2017 we got Netflix (yes finally lol). The binge watching of documentaries began. There were just so many to choose from!

I have always been interested in health, fitness and feeding your body well. Not so surprisingly, the health documentaries peaked my interest.

Due to this I chose the documentaries discussing the benefits of following a plant based diet to watch first. It took about 3 documentaries, the third one being Cowspiracy, to become vegetarian. 

The first 2 I watched were, ‘Forks Over Knives’ and ‘What the Health’. 

Though I was pretty convinced after the first two, Cowspiracy blew my mind. All three of these docs should be on your watch list, if they aren’t already. 

The first couple focused mostly on the health detriments of eating animal products. As well as, the horrible animal cruelty that occurs in the industry. Both already valid reasons to ditch the animal products. These docs did such an amazing job at highlighting just how bad these two things were. I was pretty much convinced. 

And then came Cowspiracy. The documentary that left no question as to the choice I would make.  It focused on the environmental aspects that are threatened due to animal agriculture and the statistics are staggering. You watch it and can’t believe nobody is talking about this!

However, at this point it is beginning to be discussed more and more each day. 

The Earth is in Trouble & Needs Us to Care

While the health aspects and respect for all life are reason enough to give up animal products, the third element of the environment really drove it home.

Both my partner and myself gave up meat immediately after watching.  There were no final goodbyes to meat or last meals, we just stopped eating it and that was that.

It did not feel difficult. Making the decision and sticking to it felt easy and better than that, it felt good, empowering even. We were doing something important for the environment, the animals and ourselves.

Though being from the Atlantic provinces I did mourn seafood for a moment because, well, I loved it. Lol. C’est la vie!

Not to mention, my partner and I are both devotees to nature based faiths (witch and druid) the thought of contributing to the deterioration of the environment in this way was not something we could continue doing.

Now that we were aware of the eco consequences, taking part in it  felt completely wrong.

Thus began the, ‘are we going to become vegan’ talks.

Making the Jump

We became vegetarian in February and by June we were on the vegan train. Now while I said becoming vegetarian was easy, becoming vegan was more of a challenge.

Yes because we were saying goodbye to things we loved and ate on a daily basis. Goodbye yogurt and farewell cheese! But, aside from that, there are milk products in everything!

Things where it just doesn’t seem to belong and you are left asking yourself, why!? Why does there have to be modified milk ingredients in 90% of granolas….umm really, it’s oats! Yes I am using exclamation points because that is how it feels when reading the labels on things at the grocery store.

And in most regular restaurants so many items have meat, cheese, or simply milk ingredients in them. So yes, even though I wrote above that it is easier now than ever to become vegan it is still not a walk in the park.

Many adaptations and changes needed to be made to our daily diets and eating habits.

But was it worth it? Absolutely.

Biggest Challenges

Here are a few of the biggest challenges we had making the switch:

Finding a milk replacement for our coffee.

This was a tough one. Firstly, a lot of non-dairy milks are a bit thin and they do not compliment well with coffee, at least in my humble opinion.

Secondly, we have coffee out a lot and many places did not carry non-dairy milks at the time. At least not the tasty ones lol.

This has gotten much better! Places like Starbucks and pretty much every independent cafe tend to carry a couple of options.

However, after trying pretty much every non-dairy milk on the market, well almost, it was oat milk for the win (followed by cashew).

Of course back in 2017 we had to hit up our local natural stores to find them. Not anymore!

Regular grocery stores have full sections now dedicated to plant based milks. This alone shows just how much things have changed in 3 short years.

Breakfast dates can still be tough. Standard breakfast joints almost always only have regular milk and cream. Hello black coffee.

Finding a cheese replacement.

Because well, let’s face it, there is no replacement for cheese. Cheese is delicious and you can’t imitate it, not really.

We have tried quite a few different ones at this point. Cashew cheese is my favourite, though it doesn’t taste like cheese per se, it is tasty in it’s own right. It reminds me of flavoured soft cheeses like cream cheese or Boursin. 

There is also the Earth Island brand, which has pretty decent mozzarella and pizza blends. Yes I am aware, they don’t taste exactly like cheese either lol. BUT they do the trick and are especially tasty melted on pizza or in quesadillas.

I will also say here, your taste buds will change, trust me. You will enjoy things more as time passes (including your vegetables!). And I can confidently say that I no longer miss cheese.

Discovering the art of eating out as a vegan.

Eating out can be difficult at regular restaurants. I mean you are not always in the mood for a salad (and even this is hard at some places).

And if you don’t eat fries, like me, you are left with little options. There are definitely some restaurants where literally every item contains animal products except the fries lol.

So you research. You discover where in your area it is easiest to eat vegan, how to order, and what questions to ask.

I definitely had more than one disappointing meal out during this process. There is a learning curve!

Happy Discoveries 

Our local Thai place allows us to make our pad thai orders vegan very easily.

Panago one of our local pizza places offers pretty delicious vegan pizzas, yay!

We are lucky to live in Toronto where there are lots of vegan friendly places around the city. We basically only hit those ones up the these days.

The transition also had us actually cooking more at home, which is pretty great.

Silliest Mistakes

The road to veganism is paved with good intentions. Lol. We have made some surprising, and rather silly, mistakes thus far on our journey.

I thought it might be fun to share a couple of them with you. Nobody gets it right all of the time in the beginning.

• Ordering a ‘vegan’ pizza with pesto as the sauce. Ummm yeah, pesto almost always has parmesan cheese in it. We realized after we got home and thought about it.
• Ordering a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks with soy milk, no whip and assuming that the pumpkin spice syrup did not contain milk ingredients. Ah no, never assume these things. I realized, again after I was drinking it, that it likely did have milk ingredients. And boy did I savour that latte. Bye bye pumpkin spice (at least from Starbucks).
• Assuming our granolas were vegan. Apparently most oats need milk ingredients to make them edible. Please note the sarcasm. Now though, we have found some delicious vegan granolas. *happy dance*
• Ordering Pad Thai with no meat or egg completely ignoring what might be in the sauce since it clearly is not milk based. Of course it makes perfect sense that what it does have is fish and oyster sauce lol. Live and learn!

These are the ones I can remember right now, but trust me there have been more! 😛

The Pay Offs

Nothing tastes as good as vegan feels. This is a statement I now wholeheartedly believe.

Our bodies felt great and we both ended up losing weight. Not to mention during every meal we are very aware of what we are not contributing to. THAT is the big one.

We are not killing innocent animals unnecessarily and we are not adding to the environmental issues that animal agriculture seriously contributes to. That alone makes you feel pretty damn good about your choices.

Then there are all of the health benefits. It’s not like dieting where you feel you are restricting yourself. We don’t feel restricted and we are not hungry all of the time.

Guys, there are SO many foods out there that do not come from animals, like most of them! The options are endless.

And no, we are not worried about calcium or protein intake. People like to assume those are concerns. There are many many plant-based foods that provide those things. Posts on these to come.

We have also discovered plenty of vegan junk food along the way to satisfy cravings, so no worries there 😉

Being Kind is Cool.

Now I ask you to please keep in mind these are simply my choices, views, opinions and some insights into my own personal journey. You in no way need to agree with me or think I now look down on people who eat animal products, I don’t.

Eating meat and dairy is what we are used to as a society, it is still very much the norm and that is fine and expected. I say this because discussions around veganism are so often filled with hostility from both sides. The things you read online are appalling.

Why do so many people get so up in arms about what some people are choosing to eat or not eat is a mystery to me. Eat what you want, what you think is healthy, and what makes you happy. No need to bring out the boxing gloves lol.

At this point, however, I do strongly advocate a vegan diet.

Though I will not preach it to all who cross my path. I don’t like preachy people in general about anything. So if we have dinner together and you decide to get a giant juicy steak please enjoy, you won’t hear a peep out of me.

I will say though, if you are an environmentalist, advocate for animals, or follow a nature based spiritual path, being vegan seems the obvious choice.

Talk to me!

Okay, that is all for me! Are you newly vegan or just thinking about making the change? Have you been vegan for years and have some tips to share?

I want to hear from you! Please feel free to drop me a line on here or any of my social media accounts.

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Bright Blessings Pixies. 

Yours in health and magick,

~ Krystle xo