I did it cold tofu. I read about being vegetarian and vegan online and knew if I went vegetarian, vegans would ask me why I didn’t go the whole way, so over a week I got rid of any non-vegan food, ta-dah – vegan!

I went vegan not because of any ethical considerations but totally selfishly because I loved the food, I felt really good when I ate vegan, and my social group at the time was predominantly vegan (i.e. I hung out most regularly with 3 people, all of whom were vegan)

I remember it as being a transition from vegetarian to vegan in one fell swoop – my last vegetarian meal being haloumi & tomato & basil with lemon juice – going to sleep vegetarian, waking up vegan. My old flatmate says it was more gradual than that, however I choose not to believe him!!

My brain certainly switched to no animal products really easily.

So I guess I went cold tofu

I had been trending towards vegetarianism for some time, making vegetarian choices when I could. Then I went overseas for a few weeks where I found it quite hard to get vegetarian food and I found myself getting increasingly agitated by this. I came back to Australia and ate chicken and chips from somewhere and felt so horrible afterwards that I went vegetarian that afternoon.

Although very swayed by the arguments behind veganism, I didn’t really give it a lot of consideration (I really had no idea what I’d eat). This time it was Steph who made the choice, and I more gradually transitioned into a vegan lifestyle. Of course nowadays I am a committed vegan and eat the bestest food I’ve probably ever eaten.

I’d been an on and off vegetarian for 13 years until I decided to become vegan a year and a half ago.
Like Lisa, I didn’t really put any pressure on myself, I just thought I’d try making as many vegan choices as I could, and see how it went, and if it was too hard I wouldn’t worry too much.
I didn’t really ever expect myself to become A Vegan.
I ate all the non-vegan stuff in my pantry until it ran out but then I didn’t replace it- eventually the whole house became vegan in this way. First it was food, then shampoo and cosmetics, and just recently alcohol and leather.
It was a really simple and totally not scary way of doing it- one step a time, and making incremental decisions as your knowledge and familiarity increases.
I still see myself as a transitioning vegan, even after this time- it is a constant and gradual change. I don’t think I’ll ever be the Perfect Vegan (you know, I’ll sometimes drink a glass of wine without checking the label, I buy 2nd hand leather goods etc), and I reckon it’s an ace way to be- relaxed, sensible and easy to maintain and expand.

I went vegan first time 2001 after the mad cows outbreak and figuring out exactly why it happened then of course about food production and so forth, it was never about animals. I was vegan for about a year (full cold turkey from a heavy dairy meat once a day diet). It was hard and I lost a shit load (like 25 kgs) of weight which got all of the badgering meat people in my face about how I looked/unhealthy etc. I then found a meat company that is what is termed ‘family farm meat’ and I went back to eating meat twice a week but stopped that after about a month… I profoundly noticed the change in my body/psychology when I ate meat. I was also unable to handle the meat without gloves nor eat meat from bones etc etc which showed me I had a big psychological problem with it.

I then began to really think about the animals. That what we are consuming is suffering, chemicals in muscles released from suffering animals. I then decided it was wrong to kill animals to live. I began to eat a little bit of organic dairy but remained vegetarian for 6 years.

Suffering tonnes of health problems and having severe cravings for salmon in 2008 I spent a year eating fish. So at this point I’m eating fish, eggs, some dairy.

February 2009 I went snorkelling off Rottnest Island and I spent an hour on the beach crying my eyes out after seeing all the fishes swimming around, these giant magestic creatures that I couldnt look in the eye.

I went vegan that day forever.

Thanks for the tips Lisa. I’m going to do it cold tofu. I’m quite prepared to leave the meat eating days behind.

Thinking about it makes me realise I’m a passive-change kind of person. I was on a camp in Italy where the food was vegetarian and when it was ended I didn’t see why I shouldn’t continue.

Then I lived with vegans for a few years, including the lovely Lidia who taught me how to cook for the first time – apart from maybe frying an egg I don’t actually know how to cook non-vegan! Falling into a social group quite obsessed with eating great food, making it such a positive and central part of their lives, made me want to be a part of it. It was a short and easy road to vegan.

On the last meal side of things, my life partner made the decision to go vegan from omni as a NY resolution, and my family served them literally piles of meat in the weeks beforehand. However my partner said it was a painless switch, fuelled by a change in mindset to match their feelings about animals. They even say they wish that making resolutions about healthy eating and exercise were as easy and permanent!

I am not a vegan, as I still have fish 1-2x/week. However, when I made the switch from a standard omni diet 2.5 years ago, I had the eye towards becoming vegan. In the first year, I stopped eating meat (other than fish) and dairy, cold tofu. My primary motivators were personal health and wellness, and ethical objections to factory farming from the perspective of animal suffering and harm to the environment. My decision was emotional in that I made the choice the instant I learned particulars about meat production. After the first year I had researched veganism to my satisfaction and developed enough vegan meals into my lifestyle that I felt ready to give up the fish. What I learned in my 2nd year was that a 100% vegan diet was not sustainable for me. My wellness was not optimal. I found myself gradually going back to dairy since I had made a commitment to avoid consumption of flesh. This choice did not serve me as I confirmed that I am allergic to dairy. I understand this is common to most humans but I was not conscious of my body’s sensitivities before I had introduced the vegan diet to my life. Looking back on my experiences, I felt the best when I had no dairy and occasionally eat some fish. My naturopath agrees that this is what is healthiest for me so I am currently happy with the plan. I understand and support that my position on veganism is a constant path of growth and one day my body and my diet may shift. Today I feel fantastic, my skin glows, and I have more energy than ever. I have not once looked back at the consumption of meat besides fish.

I did it cold tofu from omnivore to vegan. No cravings yet and I’m a month in

I also went cold tofu after reading ‘Skinny Bitch’. I pretty much came out and said ‘I’m going vegan now’ and that was that so I don’t remember my last meal as an omni. I do remember that my BF was planning to cook something nice for dinner as his comment was “Now? Can’t it wait? I’ve got a really nice dinner planned!” I never did find out what that meal was going to be!

I wrote about it on my blog.

http://afamilyofvegans.blogspot.com/2009/10/not-food-post-how-i-went-vegan.html

I was a vegetarian for two years and never considered veganism until Bob Torres (my undergrad advisor) went vegan, along with a few friends of mine. I decided I would try it out but wouldn’t stop myself from ordering the occasional cheese pizza if I really wanted it. And then I never did. So I suppose it was a cross between the trial and the cold tofu approach.

My vegan transition was one of the most joyous and exciting times of my life, and I’m convinced that part of the reason it felt so great was because I gave myself some preparation time.

I set myself a date a couple of months away, and used the time to wean myself off animal products while building up a collection of favourite vegan recipes and trying all these new foods like rice milk and tempeh and king oyster mushrooms. I read up about vegan nutrition, and devoured the fantastic “Vegetarian Food for Thought” podcast. The prep time also allowed my wife to get used to the idea, since I do most of the cooking!

I didn’t have a ‘last supper’ as such, though I wrote up a whole list of favourite meat dishes that I was going to eat one last time for closure. This helped me make the psychological transition, even though I didn’t end up making most of the dishes, since I became less interested in eating animal products as time went by.

I also decided to fast for the final 5 days of my pre-vegan preparation. Partly to detox my body of animal products, plus the spiritual calmness and openness of fasting seemed an appropriate way to start, since veganism has a lot of spiritual significance for me. The fasting also made it feel like something of a rite of passage, which made the whole thing more fun.

In the final weeks, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas, and once it came, I was over the moon. I think it was such a big thing for me because I’d always been a meat fanatic (my favourite dish involved raw beef and my favourite cooking fat was lard…) so it felt like a conversion of sorts. It felt great knowing that I had embraced something that was good and kind and more in line with the compassionate God I believed in, and with the values that deep, deep down I always knew I had.

So the planned leadup approach really worked for me. I think it enabled me to get lots of the trial and error stuff out of the way early, so that once I was fully vegan I could just enjoy it and never look back.

I went vegetarian first, but only because I thought that was as far as I was going, it wasn’t as a transitional step to me when I first took it.

It took me a couple of years to admit to myself that being vegetarian felt hypocritical to me, and that I needed to take another step.

Before becoming vegan, I felt I needed to “work myself up to it”. I set a date to go vegan, and I decided the one thing that I wanted to “say goodbye to” was Creme Brulee, so I guess that was my “last meal”.

I tell people who are thinking about taking a step to vegan (or vegetarian): “don’t be too hard on yourself, it’s ok to take small steps, and any change you make is good”. I guess some would see this as a cop out, but I’ve known so many people who have tried to go cold turkey without having a plan, and end up going back to being omni after two weeks of eating jam on toast (and wondering why they feel so tired!). I think that going more slowly gives you a chance to build an arsenal of tricks etc. Major kudos to those who can go cold tofu though!

On top of Annette’s advice to take it easy at the beginning, I’d also add that even once you’re fully vegan, you shouldn’t worry too much if you slip up and eat an animal product, either out of temptation or by accident.

A couple of months after I went vegan I went on an overseas trip, and I had a few ‘accidents’ there. In Hong Kong I scoured what seemed like the whole bloody airport before I finally found a soup that looked vegan. Once I got it though, it tasted suspiciously like it was based on chicken stock. In Poland, I let my guard down at a vegetarian restaurant and accidentally ordered something that had cheese in it. In England I ordered Chilli con Carne only to discover that I was the only person on the planet who didn’t realise there was beef in Chilli con Carne (the similarity between “carne” and “carnivore” really should have tipped me off, but I’d only heard of Chilli con Carne in vegan cookbooks so I just figured it was always a bean dish – oops).

If you slip up, don’t get stressed out – just move on. And it’s up to you what to do with the food. In some cases the damage is done and throwing the food away will help neither animals nor the environment, so if you’re hungry and you’re comfortable with it, just eat it. It doesn’t mean you’re less of a vegan or less of a person. It just means you slipped up, but, being only human, you’re probably pretty used to that by now. In my case, I ate the soup despite the chicken stock, and I ate my vegetarian meal after scraping as much cheese as I could to the side, though I drew the line at the con carne and threw that out.

I think it’s important to keep in mind the big picture and the long term, and if you don’t waste energy beating yourself up about isolated mistakes, you’re probably more likely to remain happily vegan in the long term.

I was served venison steak- two things I already dislike greatly- for supper one evening by someone who’s feelings I didn’t want to hurt. I had asked for it well, well done but it was a dinner party and my plate had been switched with another. Mine was pink to red and couldn’t even be described as warm. I gagged half of it down and excused myself. That very evening after being queasy and nauseas I decided to go vegan. Never looked back