Transitioning to a Plant-Based Diet

I've been wanting to write this blog post for a few weeks now, but it felt like such a task to go over the last 7 weeks and put everything down in writing, hence why I ended up posting absolutely nothing. Story of my life.
 
I just really wanted to write down my personal experience of the first few weeks of going plant based. I decided I'll write a different blog post about all the reasons why I decided to finally make the move and how I got there, as well as all the resources that helped me learn more about this lifestyle.

So let's start! I decided to go plant based almost 2 months ago now - feels weird writing it down, I didn't realise it had been that long! A few things pushed me over the edge (I was a vegetarian for a year prior to that..), at the time I was ill with another random (minor) infection, and felt tired and sluggish, that week I got my hands on the 'What the Health' movie and that was truly the tipping point. I couldn't ignore all the facts and science behind going vegan. It was just way too obvious and I had nothing to loose (again I'll cover more of that in another post!)

Overall I found the transition to be quite easy. I think being veggie made it all much easier. I had the task cut by half, having to 'only' give up dairy and eggs. It felt quite daunting at the beginning, learning how to read labels and avoiding what had become 'staples', replacing them with all sorts of alternatives, I think that was the biggest headache at the beginning.

But I tried to focus on whole plant based foods, rather than going for processed products. I've only started experimenting with fake meats, nut cheeses and tofu in the past couple of weeks (will have to update you on that in a little while, once I've found my marks!) 

One of the best advice I got was to focus on a handful of recipes at first. Find 5 recipes you love, that you can make easily. Once you've got those 5 base recipes, use them as your got to's - when it's Monday night and you have no idea what to have for dinner for example..

From those 'base recipes' you adapt and tweak them and make them slightly different week after week so it's never boring! You also learn new recipes along the way and before you realise it you've got a whole array of go to week night dinners, packed lunches and easy breakfasts.

Here are a few of my go to meals :

- Marinated Portobello mushrooms (in tamari, liquid smoke, paprika, chilli powder..) with sweet potato mash and a kale salad or roasted mushrooms on and in everything, salads, on top of sourdough..