Start Where You Are

The hardest thing to do to make any kind of change is to start.

We get it in our heads that we have to do 101 things or approach change like it’s some kind of competition, and we end up complicating things and falling back on old habits because we tried to do too much too fast.

Sometimes, the biggest changes happen when we make small steps.

Take for example, drinking water.

When I am working with transitioning clients, one of the first things I do is get them to assess their water intake.

Before I get to the food I want to know: What are you drinking throughout the day and how much?

If you find it difficult to add four to eight, 8-ounce glasses of water* to your daily liquid intake, then how are you going to add new foods into your diet?

By starting with their water intake, my clients and I both get an experience of their own resistance to something as simple as drinking more water.

As you transition into your new plant-based dietary philosophy, I invite you to start small. Think about where you are in your life right now economically and ecologically.

What makes sense to you right now as far as budget, time, food access, and cooking expertise go?

Is it easier for you to focus on one mealtime instead of all three meals?

How can focusing on what you’re adding in instead of what’s being taken out help you transition more smoothly?

Think Outside the Vegetarian Box: Create Your Own Plant-Based Dietary Philosophy

Too often, people view plant-based diets as a deprived, mock-meat variation of the Standard American Diet.

For them, people who practice a plant-based diet are denying themselves the pleasures of food, mainly, animal-derived foods, and make pathetic attempts at recreating the idea of meat and dairy with plant-based substitutes.

What I find most interesting about interpretations of plant-based diets is the idea that, by definition, plant-based diets should be “healthy”, and by healthy, devoid of all pleasure and enjoyment. This idea that plant-based diets can not be nutritious while also making room for the occasional indulgence assumes that “healthy” means you have to deny, deprive, and otherwise punish yourself with what and how you eat.

This idea couldn’t be further from the truth.

We eat to satisfy hunger and to maintain our physiological functions, but food is also connected to memory, culture, family, religion, social experiences and pleasure.

This also means being aware of how we relate to food during emotional highs and lows and periods of distress.

Eating is a whole person, full sensory experience and no aspect of food or eating should be denied just because once chooses to eat without specific ingredients.

Because of the way food is marketed and the way people like to box each other in based on beliefs and practices, the full experience of plant-based diets can get lost in judgment, misinformation, and misinterpretation.

There’s no one way or right way to practice a plant-based diet, and individuals who are transitioning should be allowed to experiment with the many dietary philosophies available to them.

What does a healthy and pleasurable plant-based diet look like for you?

How do you practice a plant-based diet without focusing on what you’re not eating, thinking in terms of deprivation or denial? 

Why Most People “Fail” Plant-Based Diets

How often have you heard, “I tried to go veg*n, but it didn’t work for me because ________” Or, “People who go back to eating meat just didn’t try hard enough!” or the dozens of ridiculous and irrational emotional-bashing people dole out on themselves or other people during their plant-based transition?

Here you are, having one particular relationship with food all these years and then you suddenly switch it up, only to find yourself struggling against everything you once knew to be true and good about your life with food, and you suck!

It’s any wonder you can manage the rest of your life.

-_-

I’m talking to privileged Western first world folk, those of you wading through a thousand and one food choices everyday, all big and shiny and screaming at you via mixed marketing messages about what’s good, fast, convenient, cheap, healthy, indulgent, and will otherwise make you feel-good-in-this-moment-only.

If you’re like me, you grew up with someone making your food choices for you every day. Someone else making decisions about what you will be eating based on their own understanding of food and nutrition, personal preferences, and/or what their budget will allow.

You experience your friends and relatives’ relationships with food as you navigate school food and social events; perhaps you even get a little money to spend and you use it to assert some autonomy over what goes in your mouth.

You eat anything and everything, and maybe you know, deep down, that some of it isn’t good for you. But you keep going because you know you have choice(s).

And then one day, you decide to embrace a new way of thinking and relating to food. You pick up a book or two, browse a few websites, join a few clubs, and start to immerse yourself into this new philosophy.

But something’s not quite working out for you, and slowly find yourself reverting back to your familiar food ways, and here’s the world looking, pointing with their I-told-you-so’s.

Instead of being aware of the challenges of transitioning to a new dietary philosophy, instead of recognizing that you’re not a perfect human being and you don’t have to be, you see yourself as having failed to do right by the world, and yourself.

But whose Right is it anyway?

Whose Truth did you embrace when you decided to make your transition?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could transition to a new way of experiencing food without rules and dogma?

What if, you could see your transition as something that happens over several years, as you unlearn all the years of your old ways for the new You you’re becoming?

What if transitioning to a plant-based diet wasn’t about some war against “murdering” animals or the planet, but an opportunity for you to have a new relationship with yourself?

What if you took your transition one meal, one day at a time, even if it meant periods of yo-yoing back and forth?

What if, after so many months and years, you just decide you want to make a different choice?

Who has the right to judge, shame, or bash you for that choice?

Everything else changes, the seasons, weather patterns, our moods, feelings, everything.

We grow up, old, and out.

Why should a dietary choice operate in a fixed state?

There’s no such thing as “failing” when it comes to food, health, and well-being.

No one has optimal nutrition and compassion locked down.

We each have our own unique nutrition and health profiles.

We each have our own personal, cultural, and spiritual connections to the land, to animals, and to each other.

We have a lot of stuff that was passed on to us from others with some well intentions and not-so-well intentions.

It takes time to sift through all of it.

It takes time to create the space for change.

It takes a willingness to be still and listen for our own voice.

So here’s to you, ebbing and flowing through a new way of being, yourself, on your plant-based dietary journey.

Salute!