In case you haven’t heard the news, I am conducting a personal vegetarian challenge and giving up meat for 30 days.

Yesterday was my first day off meat and I am happy to report that I survived. Breakfast: Cinnamon Harvest cereal (obviously). Lunch: Penne pasta with marinara sauce, wheat thins with cheddar cheese, and a huge bowl of fruit (random, I know). Dinner: Parmesan risotto with steamed veggies, salad, and a wheat roll. So far, so good….

As promised, here are a few tips from my vegetarian hero Kyla Roma, who has kindly offered to share some words of wisdom with us. Thanks Kyla!

Being vegetarian tends to get me mixed reactions from people – some are defensive about what they eat, some are interested in what I eat, and others want to grill me about my ethics. It’s always interesting, but now and then someone  asks me for tips on being vegetarian, and I tend to come up empty. I’ve been vegetarian since I was six years old so the struggles that someone goes through when changing their diet are foreign to me- but in March I spent a month being vegan and it shed a lot of light on how big a deal changing what you eat really is!

So If you’re like Ashlee and are planning a vegetarian (or vegan) challenge, with my new perspective and a whole lot of hours logged with veggies, these are my best tips for you:

Buy a Simple Cookbook

While I love blogs as much as the next girl, having a really wonderful cookbook you can actually flip through for your meal planning is priceless. Recipes you can find online involve can be wonderful, but involve a lot of searching around and vary wildly in their difficulty. I can guarantee you that there will be one day after work when you’re tired and without ingredients, and you will want to give up. Having a great cook book with simple and delicious recipes is an investment in your success- check for basic ingredients and fast assembly time and you’ll do well.

Replace Your Protein

One of the most frustrating things for me when I went vegan was that I was really hungry for the first few days. I hadn’t taken enough time to find good ways of getting protein that didn’t involve my normal eggs, or that weren’t covered in cheese! You have to find a way to get tofu (marinated & baked is great) or beans (eat Mexican all you like!) into your diet or you’ll be hungry and irritable, and will start filling up on carbs. Just filling up on carbs instead of protein is great way to actually gain weight instead of losing it when you’re changing your diet, and can eventually make you seriously sick. Make sure you’re giving your body what it needs!!

Plan One Week At A Time

Having a plan is a huge step towards success, and planning your meals in advance will mean that you can do your grocery shopping in one move. When you’re changing the way you eat you’re also changing your habits at the grocery store, and not having to constantly run out for an ingredient you didn’t think of will help to make your challenge feel like a challenge- but not like a chore.

Reward Yourself

When I was on my vegan challenge I bought 100% fruit popsicles that I could have every night, and if you’re going vegetarian I vote that’s a free license to have a little baking through out your week. Treating yourself when you’re doing well is a great thing.

Take Your Health Seriously

If you’re making a permanent change, tell your family doctor. Some doctor’s won’t be as supportive as others, but if you decide to stay vegetarian the benefits of having your doctor know where the gaps in your diet might be and what the health complications are if you don’t replace them far outweigh a raised eyebrow or two. Give the health professionals supporting you all the information they need to help you stay healthy- it’s not that scary, I promise!

The biggest thing that I learned in my month as a vegan is that all of this stuff? It’s just not as hard as we think it is. Plan a little and have a bunch of recipes you can be excited about and you will do fine. More than fine, you’ll even have a little fun.

Want more? Read about My Split Kitchen (or how my omnivore husband and I eat) and my in depth post on planning a veggie challenge.

Tags: challenge, guest post, Kyla Roma, vegetarianism

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 10:16 am and is filed under eat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.