How to Switch?
From the time of writing this I have been eating a Whole Food Plant-Based Diet (WFBP) for around 9 months now. In that time I lost 40 pounds, going from borderline obese to right in the middle of normal. I have never felt better nor been healthier in my entire life. I have more energy and even my mental well-being has increased. If you have read any of my other posts, or if what I just said sounds good to you, then you may be wondering how you can do the same as I have. I am going to try and help you switch the way you eat and view food.
For some people like me, cold turkey – or maybe cold tofu – is the way to go. If you think you’re that kind of person, take a look at this post I made where I categorized food, and then go nuts and best of luck to you. For others, like my partner, she looked to make changes more slowly and has taken more care and conscious effort to transition things so it never felt like “a hassle”. If you’re more like she is, this post is for you. We’re going to look at how you can make quick and easy changes to your diet now, to build inertia for bigger changes later on.
I am going to start by assuming that you eat what is referred to as the Standard American Diet and I will give you some recommendations and tips on what changes you can make. Then, you can work in stages, and once you’re comfortable with one, you can move onto the next. If you already eat healthier than that, then just start from wherever feels right for you.
Easy Swaps
To start, what I would suggest, is to swap things that require basically no effort on your part. The only thing you would need to change is perhaps going down a different aisle at the grocery store. If you buy milk, swap it out for a plant based milk. I recommend soy as the best option, with coconut being the worst and all others falling somewhere in between. However, if it’s the only one you enjoy, even coconut milk will be better for you than dairy milk. If you are worried about consuming soy, check out this post to see why there is no reason to be. Same as milk, if you eat yogurt, instead grab a plant based yogurt.
Swap out the grains you currently eat to whole grains. Some are more direct alternatives like whole wheat breads, pastas, couscous, and tortillas. Others, like rice have a few other options. Brown rice is the most obvious swap, however it normally takes a long time to cook, so I’d highly recommend swapping your rice with bulgur. It’s a whole grain that cooks in the same amount of time as white rice. If you eat ramen or other noodles, look for buckwheat or brown rice noodles. Any time you are eating a refined grain, look for a whole grain option.
Swap to less processed versions of your food. For example try getting a peanut butter that has no added sugar, try a cereal with more fiber and less sugar.
Swap your frozen items to the plant based alternatives. If you eat things like chicken nuggets, fish sticks, or any other food like that, look for the equivalent in the plant based options. Preparing them will work in just the same way as you’re used to: just pop them in the oven or air fryer. Look at the different options available to you and choose those which are low in saturated fat. These foods can be really useful for transitioning to a plant based diet but they are things that you will want to cut down on later. These plant based options have come a long way in the last few years, some matching or even beating blind taste tests. Coming from a formerly meat-eating diet, we were pleasantly surprised at the comparable flavours we were expecting.
Before going into all the changes and suggestions, here are a few things my partner suggests you keep in mind as you go through.
Remember your mental space. These swaps are pretty easy and straight forward, but you might find yourself falling into normal patterns. Take a couple minutes while you’re sitting in your car in the grocery store parking lot to create a bit of a game plan - aim for the items you’re looking to swap first-thing in the store, so you don’t have any decision fatigue to convince you out of it.
Look at each change as an exciting new addition of food you are having as opposed to the dread of phasing out an item.
If your grocery store has a mostly vegan section (organics/healthier section), take a bit of time to wander around when you’re in a good headspace for it. It ended up being so easy to switch up my snacks because there was so much fun in wandering around and just going “This looks tasty, let’s try this!” and seeing what stuck. We found some really good things that we might have missed otherwise.
A Conscious Effort
Here are some changes you can make that will require a bit of effort and some more in depth ways to how you eat.
Firstly I would aim to change what snacks you have available to you at home. My biggest point here is to not have things like chips and cookies around, and to instead keep healthier options around. Generally when you want a snack, you want convenience and low effort. If you only have healthy options available, even though you may be craving something less so, you will probably just have the healthy thing. This is because it’s far more convenient and less effort to just have a healthy snack easily accessible to you, than to go out and buy a less healthy option.
For snacking options I would aim to buy, seeds, nuts, roasted legumes, roasted seaweed, fresh fruit, dried fruit, frozen fruit, hummus, and whole grain crackers. For things like nuts and seeds, at the start, I would recommend measuring out a serving, so that you can learn what that looks like so that you have a better idea of how much you should be eating. These little guys are very calorically dense, so if you’re looking to lose weight, learning what a single serving looks like can make a huge difference.
Next I would try and increase the amount of fruits and vegetables in your diet. It can be simple stuff like having apples, bananas, and carrots as snacks, having some sweet potato along with regular potatoes you may already be eating, making a slaw to go along with dinner made from cabbage and broccoli. I would aim to make sure you are having at least a fruit or vegetable with every meal and to always have some form available to snack on. The more you can fit in the better, if you visualize what your dinner plate might look like, make sure half of it is fruit and veg.
For meals, find some flavour profiles that you enjoy whether that be teriyaki, buffalo, Korean bbq, Greek mix, chimichuri, etc. And then you can always build a bowl around that flavour. So have a protein like beans take up a quarter of your plate, a grain like bulgur take up another quarter, and then have the last half be fruit and veg, then finish off with the flavouring of your choice. This will allow you to make varied meals without needing to have much decision making as just changing a sauce could change the overall feel of the dish.
For some recipe ideas browse around Forks Over Knives and just try out some stuff that looks interesting to you.
Some More Effort
Now here comes something that requires a bit more effort. It is time to start trying other sources of protein rather than from animals. Start small if you need to, crumbled extra firm tofu can make for a great alternate anywhere you may have previously used ground meat. A tip for how to think about using tofu, imagine it were a chicken breast, you would probably not enjoy a completely unseasoned one. Experiment with flavours and sauces here. Make a chili with only beans, make a bolognese with lentils. Look up recipes from all over the world, dishes with legumes as a staple are commonplace in cultures outside of the west, and even within it there are hidden gems. I can’t possibly list every dish there could be, look around, find what you like and build from there.
Challenge yourself to try eating a fully WFPB meal every day, so not even one that is plant based, but one that follows the food categories that I have laid out here. You may find breakfast to be the simplest place to start. If you need some inspiration take a look at the overnight oats recipe that I eat every single day. I really like it as I can batch prepare multiple days of it and then not need to think about it further. I can eat something very healthy while still having it be convenient.You can start thinking about and experimenting with dinner meals that could fit the WFPB diet and figure out a few “go-to” weeknight (quick and low effort) meals could look like. Think of a couple replacement meals to the: meatloaf, chicken and broccoli, spaghetti and meatballs, etc. that you currently have in your repertoire.
In for the Long Run
If you have reached this point you are probably ready to fully dive in. Work towards building your base of recipes to 10-20 meals, or even less if that would not bother you, that can be considered your “base meals” that you can rotate through and that you would always have the ingredients on hand to make at least one of them. Also aim to have these recipes be things you can stretch over multiple days so that you are not having to make dinner every day, especially if you are a busy person. You can continue to experiment with other recipes that may be more time consuming, but consciously getting a good base of recipies makes it so that you don’t have to spend a lot of energy on thinking about food, and thus aren’t tempted to “fall back” on the less healthy alternatives.
Set time aside once a week to plan out all the meals you are going to eat that week and make a grocery list to fit it. That way, when you go shopping, you can ensure to have everything you need, which will also lower the mental load of food on you throughout the week.
Don’t forget that this is not a “diet” in the traditional sense of the word. This is you changing up your relationship with food and how you go about eating. This is not about just losing weight, or feeling healthier, and then going back to the way you ate before. If you do that, any weight and issues will just come back. That being said, also remember that what‘s important is how you eat the majority of the time. You can have cake on your birthday, pie at thanksgiving, and when traveling, if you need to eat something greasy, all of these are ok. You won’t suffer long term consequences from one offs, just make sure to keep them as such.
I hope that this little guide I have put together has been of some use to you. Remember to go at your own pace but also that you can probably move faster than you think. I believe that a large part of what hold us back from making these sorts of dietary and lifestyle changes is simply inertia. You and society have been doing things one way for so long that it is hard to imagine doing things any other way. Just be confident in yourself and know that you can and will make a change for the better.
