10 things I wish I'd known when I went plant-based

When we decided to go plant-based, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. We didn’t know anyone else who ate this way, the kids thought we were nuts, and we were 100% flying by the seat of our pants.

I’m a reasonably capable, resilient person and I really hate to be “bad” at things so I knew we’d figure it out eventually. And we did.

But there were definitely a few WTAF moments along the way. 😯

Here are the top 10 things I wish I’d known when we first went vegan. Hopefully this list will save you a few headaches, a lot of frustration and maybe a meltdown or two at the grocery store.

10. Vegan does not necessarily mean healthy.

This one was on me 🤦‍♀️. I did all the research, but for some reason I still thought that going vegan would miraculously mean that everything I ate was healthy. And then I was introduced to the world of vegan junk food and realized there’s a lot of unhealthy plant-based foods out there. Chips, Oreos and fries are all vegan. None of them are healthy. Vegan is great, but whole food plant-based is where it’s at if healthy is your main goal.

9. Beware of misinformation.

I swear if you go to ten different websites you’ll get ten different answers to the same question. The first few months were a bit of a shit show while I navigated alllll the conflicting information and tried to find consensus. We made this decision about three weeks before the world shut down due to Covid 😷, so at least I had lots of free time to do research in the early days of our plant-based adventure. Eventually I found a few resources that I trusted and stuck with those if I had questions.

8. You’ll probably need to eat more than you’re used to.

This one makes total sense now, but it just didn’t cross my mind at the beginning. Most of the things we eat as part of the standard American diet (SAD) are calorie dense, meaning you get a lot of calories from a small amount of food. For example, a large fry from McDonalds 🍟 has about 500 calories. Whole plant-foods are a lot less calorie dense so you need to eat a lot more of them to get the same number of calories. You’d need to eat 17 cups of broccoli 🥦 to get to 500 calories. [Side note: Please don’t eat 17 cups of broccoli if you are new to this way of eating. Your digestive tract is probably not ready for that much fiber all at once and it will likely be unpleasant for everyone involved 💨.]

7. Your tastes really do change.

I had heard this many times before, but I was still unconvinced. Until it happened. We had one meal left from our weekly meal prep and I was not excited about it: Thai-spiced Cauliflower Steaks with Quickie Peanut Sauce. I was trying to keep an open mind and try new things, but I had left this one for last because I was convinced I wouldn’t like it… I didn’t like Thai-spiced anything, cauliflower OR peanut sauce. No way I’d like it.

Except I freakin’ LOVED IT 😍. This is the meal that changed my life and made me a true believer.

6. You will likely have some unexpected health benefits.

I went into this expecting things like lowering my cholesterol, blood pressure and triglycerides. I even lost a little weight at the beginning, even though that wasn’t my goal. What I wasn’t expecting was changes to my menstrual cycle and hormone health.

⚠️TMI Warning!⚠️ Skip to #5 right now if you don’t want to hear period details.

My whole life I had suffered from irregular, heavy, painful periods. They lasted for 7-8 days, the cramps were brutal and I won’t even go into the gastrointestinal issues that went along with it every month. I endured years of infertility and multiple miscarriages before I was finally diagnosed with PCOS in my mid-30s. A few months after going plant-based, my periods were lighter, way less painful and were coming every 28-29 days like clockwork. For the first time in my life. At age 47. I did end up having an endometrial ablation after an adenomyosis diagnosis a couple years later, but my perimenopause symptoms have still been minimal. Ask me again once I hit full blown menopause, but so far? Whole food plant-based foods for the win!

5. Planning will be even more important.

Unless your intention is to eat mostly processed vegan food, you’re simply going to have to plan more 📋. Truly healthy, whole food plant-based food needs to be planned and prepped, but it only has to be as time consuming and as complicated as you want it to be.

Batch cooking (aka meal prepping) has been a game changer for us 👩‍🍳. Having healthy food prepped and ready to go in the fridge that just needs to be thrown together for dinner makes it so easy to stay on track. It’s like making your own healthy convenience food. (If you've never been a meal prepper, check out the Clean Food Dirty Girl Meal Prep Club. We joined shortly after we went vegan and they make it sooo easy to eat healthy!)

4. It’s not all or nothing. Perfection is overrated.

I really wanted to set myself up for success, but I knew from past experience that if I made one “off-plan” choice, there was a good chance I’d say F-it for the rest of the day and eat a bunch of crap. Because I’m a recovering perfectionist and my brain likes to tell me perfect is the only option 🙄. So I planned "cheat" days. One planned day where I could eat whatever I wanted really helped keep me on track the rest of the time because I knew I’d have a chance to eat whatever I was craving. And I was the perfect cheater on those days 🤣.

Then one day I realized I didn’t really need the cheat days anymore. If I happened to eat something that wasn’t plant-based, it was pretty easy to just put it behind me and make a different choice the next time I ate. It happened slowly over time, but now I know all is not lost if I eat something I didn’t intend to eat. It’s the exception, not the rule, and I’m ok with that. (Now to start working on all the other perfectionist tendencies in my life…)

3. Focus on everything you’re adding, not what you’re taking out.

It’s really easy to get stuck in the “I can’t eat that” mindset, especially when you first make big plant-based changes, but don’t let yourself get stuck there. Start by adding in some new plant-based options and reducing the things you’ve been eating without completely removing them. Eventually you start to crowd out what you don’t want and replace it with all the things you do want 🥳.

There are SO MANY MORE PLANTS to eat than there are animal products. I eat so much more variety now than I ever did before we went vegan and don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

2. Other people have a lot of opinions about what you eat.

Like SO MANY opinions 😱. I confess I remember thinking I could never be vegan and that vegan people must be a little crazy (because cheese), but I don’t recall ever actually TELLING anyone they were crazy. But wow… people have a lot to say when they hear you are plant-based. I felt like I had to defend my food choices around pretty much everyone, and didn’t really understand why other people cared so much about what I was eating 🤔.

Now I don’t mind it and try to use it as an opportunity to educate people about all the benefits I’ve experienced, but at the beginning it was tough. I wish I’d had a cheat sheet of how to respond to some of the most common questions and comments.

1. Find your people. Support is key.

As far as plant-based eating has come in the last ten years or so, it’s still not exactly mainstream, and the more people you have that support you, the easier it is 🤗. We didn’t know anyone in real life, but I found an amazing, supportive online community that answered all of my questions with kindness and shared in my excitement when I found something new that I loved. It’s been almost five years and I’m still there, only now I get to help others the way they so graciously helped me. I can’t emphasize this one enough… find your people.

So, there you go.

10 things I wish I’d known when I went plant-based. All of these things seemed surprising and sometimes overwhelming at the beginning, but I don’t even think about them anymore.