How to Become a Vegetarian
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Over a year ago I made the decision to become a vegetarian. After reading dozens of articles and several books, I decided to try it out for myself. Today I can assert the benefits of the switch. Immediately after switching I noticed a boost in my energy levels and mental clarity. These short-term effects along with the knowledge that my health and the environment would continue to benefit from my decision allowed me to stick with it.
In all I would consider my conversion to be very successful. I never get cravings to eat meat and I enjoy a diet with a lot of variety and flavor. Of all the habits I’ve consciously changed, this is probably one of the biggest and one of the most successful. Considering eliminating an entire food group from your diet can be a bit daunting to a prospective herbivore, I’ll detail some of the things I did to make it a success.
Inform Others
If you are committed to making a change, the people who are around you should be aware of it. Your family and those you eat with regularly should know about your decision not to eat meat. Many of the habits I changed I did without informing others, becoming a vegetarian is large enough that you should probably mention it to people who might end up cooking with you.
But don’t expect people around you who aren’t vegetarians to be particularly supportive. My family figured I would give up pretty soon and couldn’t really understand why I would make a switch. The purpose of informing the people around you is so that they are aware of your decision, not to form a cheerleading section.
I made my switch for health and environmental reasons, but many people switch for ethical reasons as well. If this is the case, you aren’t going to win supporters by being intrusive or demanding for your personal decisions. It may be your choice, but not everyone’s, so politely inform the people around you but don’t expect to convert them. Even if you are hoping other people will make a switch, your actions will speak louder than words.
Try Out New Foods
A vegetarian diet has the potential to be incredibly varied and satisfying, but if your solution is simply to cut out all meat and not expand your diet it will probably be pretty dull. When I made the switch I went out to the grocery store and tried out tons of different meatless food choices. With many different ethnic and new meatless options available, you will probably have a lot more choice than you can handle.
Be patient when trying out new foods. About a third of the foods I tried to make turned out to be awful and another third took a few attempts at cooking before they tasted any good. Creating a new dietary base takes time and patience, but once you have filled your cooking repertoire with plant options you likely won’t even notice the difference.
Make it a Habit
I set up a 30 Day Trial to test out becoming a vegetarian in which I stuck to the program fully for an entire month. Although the initial trial can be somewhat difficult, the habit becomes conditioned in you until you are at the point where it would be harder not to continue. The principles of conditioning, leverage, replacement and experimentation all apply to making this change as well. I’d suggest reading my Habitual Mastery series if you are interested in making a change.
Keep a Journal
I went into the trial originally with a curious and open mind. I had heard many things about the benefits of becoming a vegetarian and decided to run an experiment. In any personal experiment, you are never being objective, personal biases and subjectivity are going to make your approach rather unscientific, but this form of personal experimentation can let you figure out what does and doesn’t work for you. A good way to conduct an experiment is through a journal.
At the end of each day I wrote down a subjective rating of what I felt my levels of mental clarity, physical and mental energy were before and after starting the trial. Along with this I wrote down about any solutions I had discovered or problems I had overcome during that day. Noticing my levels of clarity and energy go from median levels of 3-5 to 8-10 just from the first week of the trial was enough to keep me committed.
Worry Less About Protein, More About Health
The protein myth has been shouted so loud in our culture that people believe it. Plants have enough protein, especially lentils, nuts and seeds. A lot of new vegetarians become so worried about not getting enough protein that they start drinking a lot of milk and eating a lot of eggs, which from a health standpoint isn’t much better than meat.
I’ve put on close to twenty pounds of muscle and greatly increased my strength since becoming a vegetarian. In many areas doubling my endurance and strength when applied with exercise and training. Although you may need to concentrate more on protein if you are looking for a bodybuilders physique, you can still do this with a vegetarian diet. If your aim is simply better health or weight loss, then maximizing protein isn’t going to be the biggest issue.
Spend more of your focus ensuring that you have a balanced diet that includes a large variety of vegetable, grain and lentils. So long as your diet includes a large variety of different plants and you are consuming enough calories it is unlikely that protein will be a problem. You may want to pick up a vitamin B12 supplement because it is one of very few nutrients that is difficult to get naturally on a completely vegetarian diet (certain yeast and soy-based meat substitutes also have B12).
Plan for Contingencies
Eating at home where you have full control over your diet makes it relatively easy to sustain a vegetarian diet. But when you start throwing in restaurants, banquets or family events, it can make your dietary choices more restrictive. There have been a few times where I have had very little to eat at a particular event because there wasn’t any vegetarian substitutes available. Especially in the early phases, planning for contingencies is crucial to avoiding make or break moments.
The first step is to commit to yourself that even if a situation makes it difficult to continue, you will persevere. It isn’t the 99.9% of the time that managing your lifestyle is easy that will cause problems. It is the one tenth of one percent of occasions where it creates conflict that you need to prepare for.
Although you can’t plan for all contingencies, informing anyone in advance of your dietary choice is generally enough to ensure that you don’t have any problems. Even most steakhouses have vegetarian options if you ask for them, and most people will try to accommodate your choice if you give them the chance.
Build Up Your Reasons
The difference between lasting with a change long-term and giving up is associating the right set of reasons to your decision in the first place. After I made the change to a vegetarian diet, I backed up my initial whim with more and more concrete evidence supporting my decision. Ethical, environmental, ecological and the multitude of health reasons created the neurological linkages to ensure I would stick with it.
Early on in a habit change you need certainty, not an open-mind. Now that I am very comfortable with my habit, I am more willing to look deeply into viewpoints that contradict my currently held beliefs. But once you have made the initial decision, you need to build up your emotional certainty that you made the correct choice, just to get you through the tumultuous conditioning phase. The China Study and Diet for an New America both present very solid cases for the benefits of vegetarianism.
It’s Your Choice
I dislike the stereotype of vegetarians as being ethically imposing, whiny and anemic hippies. This may be one form of vegetarian, but today and throughout history people have made the decision to switch for a variety of reasons. Men such as Ben Franklin, Leonardo DaVinci and former Mr. Olympia Bill Pearl were vegetarians. Your identity is no more a specific dietary choice than it is what type of shoes you wear or what kind of job you have.
Ultimately it is your choice about what you choose to put in your body and to accept the consequences of doing so. If you choose to eat meat, then that is your choice too. If you are interested in your health and the well-being of the planet you deserve to do the research yourself and make your decision consciously.
Peter said,
March 13, 2007 at 3:09 am
I always thought it is perfectly ok to be a meat eater if you can say in a calm, confident and relaxed tone:
“I’m perfectly ok with the slaughter of living creatures in order to fill up my belly.”
I agree with Scott, make your decision consciously!
As for the B12 thing… do a little bit of research on Google using “B12 myth” as a search phrase and decide for yourself if it warrants food supplements.
Scott Young said,
March 13, 2007 at 5:47 am
Peter,
I’ve heard about the B12 issue from several reputable sources, but I’ll definitely look into it more.
Pat said,
March 13, 2007 at 12:32 pm
I found informing others very useful. It worked in a lot of ways. They gave me the reminder about the thing I told them I will change. Also the motivation they provided during down times where I almost wanted to change back.
kamal said,
March 16, 2007 at 10:51 pm
You want to become vegetarian this is verry useful to you.Using this u can became pure vegetarian and also you can loss your weight.
Vegetarian Diet Info. Diet And Weight Loss Advice For Vegetarians.
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Laine said,
April 2, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Great article. I also was a vegetarian for about 4 months and I felt fabulous, but my European mom, who uses meat in practically every meal, was nearing a nervous breakdown over not knowing what to cook for me! I’m exaggerating - but it really did limit my food options. This post inspires me to try it again, though, now that I am at college and cook for myself. Thanks.
max night said,
April 6, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I respect all your decisions to not eat meat, but I wouldnt do it myself in the future. After all, many other animals in the wild that are predators and pure carnivores kill their prey in seemingly cruel and senseless ways, but you dont see others of their kind switching to vegetables and fruits. Dont get me wrong, but Im not trying to seem “vegetarianist” to anyone who is but natures not exactly kind or generous, now is it? I also dont want to seem like Im saying that all of you are going to go up to someone and say “do you know what youre eating?” like your anti-meat activists or something to that nature.
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max night said,
May 6, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Scott you should do an article on animal testing. Youtube is very good at demonstrating such things. After witnessing those videos, I felt completely digusted and am starting to reconsider my meat eating ways. Animal testing should be outlawed and a felony all in one, everyowhere in the world. Everywhere…
Matt said,
May 9, 2007 at 9:05 pm
There are plenty of reason to be a vegetarian. Crying because animals die is hardly one of them. Feel around in your mouth and you’ll find the teeth designed for the processing of meat AND vegetables. Raising animals for consumption actual produces more greenhouse gases than cars. The animals we eat have been raised lazy, fat, and pumped full of hormones. (not exactly what we “grew up” on over the years of evolution) Deplorable living conditions for livestock is not right and should be spoken against. Thats when you don’t buy from KFC or whichever corporations promote it. Historically meat has been a luxury or a supplement not the main or sole course in a meal. Just like always it’s a question of quanity and quality. A grilled chicken breast tossed in with a salad as opposed to say battering it with white flour dropped it in hydrogenated vegetable oil and then slapping it on 2 lices of white bread with a souce consisting primarily of high fructose corn syrup. And… what the hell does animal testing have to do with eating meat. The less animals you eat the more there are to be tested right?
Scott Young said,
May 10, 2007 at 5:23 am
Matt,
I don’t really see your logic when it comes to eating less meat results in more animal testing. But animal testing is only a very small percentage of the total animals used for food. I support some animal testing because unlike eating meat, it provides us with useful scientific advancements that save human lives in the testing of new drugs and medical techniques. But I’m more utilitarian than moralistic so some might disagree.
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molly said,
August 17, 2007 at 7:03 am
Hey Scott,
This is my first time reading your blog, sent over from zenhabits. The one thing I want to mention, is that you probably shouldn’t mention Ben Franklin when you talk about famous vegetarians. One thing that stuck in my mind from high school when we read sections of his autobiography that he gave up vegetarianism pretty much because he got hungry, liked to eat fish, and reasoned that if fish ate other fish, he might as well do it too. He’s more of a good example of how to give up vegetarianism through insipid rationalization.
http://www.ivu.org/history/northam18/franklin.html
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Molly
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Scott Young said,
August 17, 2007 at 1:32 pm
molly,
I hadn’t heard that before. Interesting.
-Scott
max night said,
August 17, 2007 at 2:11 pm
my previous comment was a spur of the moment thing after going on the wrong side of youtube. we humans are omnivores and there is no escaping that, but it doesnt mean we have to eat all meat or all vegetables. most nutritionists would say that a balanced diet of both would be healthiest, but only if everything werent cooked in fat and oil.
Scott Young said,
August 18, 2007 at 7:13 am
Max,
Read the China Study. I used to think an omnivore diet was better than a vegetarian diet too.
-Scott
Mariah said,
November 4, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Well im a 15 year old and starting today i decided to be a Vegetarian. It will be hard, but my friend Leslie is one and i was with her all weekend. It made think that i dont need this meat. I was reading facts she gave too me and it is healthier for me to be one anyway. Today at supper, we had chicken and veggies. I did not want the chicken. I told my family i wanted to to become a vegetarian. They did what most likely any family does and laughed. They questioned my choice. I just let them know that it was not what i wanted anymore l. I thought about that fact Im eating animals. They told me i wont last. But tommorow is a new day and i know that this is what im intrested in. My friend leslie has invited me to her house after school for dinners so i can get into it. I want this .
Scott Young said,
November 5, 2007 at 9:15 am
Mariah,
Great job Mariah. Don’t worry about your parents, they’ll get used to it if you stay committed.
-Scott
tiffany said,
January 1, 2008 at 11:07 am
I think is pretty sad and depressing how the torture, mutilate, and kill those poor, defenseless animals in order to feed humans. What if they did that to me!! I already made my decision!
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Jade said,
April 15, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hi I’m 17 and I only recently became a vegatarian, It wasn’t just a last minute desision, I have always wanted to become one because of the guilt I felt when eating meat and wondering what animal I was eating every time I sat at the table. I only changed recently because I feel I now have the will power to keep to it. It’s a little hard finding thing’s to eat but I’m sure with all the links from this page I can find alternatives.
Denise said,
April 28, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I’m having no problem not eating meat, it really disgusts me now. The problem I have is with telling other people about this. Do I really need a good excuse? I don’t think so. If I don’t want to eat meat, I don’t have to, end of story. So, why is everyone pressing me for a reason? If you really want to know the truth, it’s because I had to put my 13 year old dog to sleep and since then the thought of eating a dead animal for my own consumption disgusts me. Happy now? No, now you think I’m a nut job. How can I skirt around this issue without sounding loopy?
Caitlin said,
May 13, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Denise,
It doesn’t make you a nut job - you are making a connection that the living beings that you love being the same as the living beings that are killed for the table. Sorry to hear about your dog. I don’t tell many people I’m vegan because I agree that you don’t need a good ‘excuse’. Your health and vitality should be evidence enough that your diet is a positive change. When people comment on my skin/hair/weight loss, then I tell them
Nice post Scott.
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miranda said,
June 28, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Hey there. I’m 13 years old and i’ve been vegetarian for about a year now. It all started while I was looking around Youtube. I found a video of how they slaughter animals. It really disturbed me. Im doing a speech about animal cruelty at my school and while researching I found things that changed my life and my perspective of humans. I saw how some people in china cut off raccoons hands and feet and then skin them alive. I love animals so much, more than i could ever love another human. Humans disgust me. I wish i werent one.