Talk to me about going veggie/vegan as a meat/cheese lover.

[TitsalinaBumSquash]

This isn't a thread to troll or to bring out string options one side or another.

I'm currently a big meat/dairy consumer but I'm 33, overweight with health conditions as long as my arm and getting worse. My main worry is heart disease, my Mum died on the table during her 4th heart surgery and I have the early stages of AVI that I have been told will need replacing at some point but my lifestyle will very much depend how much time until it's necessary.

Everything I have read points to diets with animal products are the big problems in health, especially when it comes to cardiovascular and rheumatoid conditions.

I'm seriously considering if I could go vegetarian and maybe then move in to a vegan diet.
I was veggie for years as a teen and I was alright, vegan seems scary though, my joy in life is cheese (I know it's sad)

I don't really know what I want from theirs thread tbh. Just a chat. I'm really worried about what I'm doing to my body especially as I get older and my health gets worse. I have 4 children who I need to be around for. I hate how scared I get when my heart starts beating too fast and hurting, I'm in chronic pain due to hyper mobility, lupus, fibromyalgia and Elhers Danlos, thankfully I'm managing without painkillers. I have allergies that are getting rapidly worse and more of them. I have gyne/dermatology issues that are making me miserable.

Could a change to a cleaner, whole food, plant based diet help this? I'm desperate here!

Wow, that's a lot of health conditions to have to put up with.

If you are worried about missing cheese. Could you still have it fir a while but use good quality, strong cheese so that you have less of it and try to cut down the amount of times you have it each week to two or three times?

If you haven't already been referred to a Dietitian, I would really recommend asking for one. I saw one after being diagnosed with an allergy and it really helped me.

I was an absolute cheese MONSTER. I ate it off the block and had it grated on absolutely everything. But it's like anything, you just get used to it really quickly. I don't miss it at all, in fact the smell is horrible to me now. Don't bother with vegan cheese it's all vile. Maybe try a phased approach if you think it's too big of a change all at once.

I can talk lots about this! Have a look at the Forks Over Knives film and website. www.forksoverknives.com

I was also worried about heart disease as there is a strong family history of this in my family.

My experience (anecdote not data obviously) is that my joint pain from hyper mobility improved significantly after going whole food plant based (WFPB) and I am now able to run again. Could be more to do with the weight loss than anything inherently joint-friendly but either way, I am fitter and thinner than I was on a standard diet.

A lot of the recipes are very American but once you have learned to cook this way you can improvise. If you have children I strongly recommend Dreena Burton's books, especially Plant Powered Families.

I went from an omni diet to WFPB and it has significantly improved my life. I know I sound like an evangelist, but I am happy to talk meal plans and replacements with you at any time. Some of the Forks Over Knives ones are dishearteningly complicated but you can do easy and WFPB to start with.

The other thing I would recommend is getting some spices in, especially if you're used to getting your flavour from dairy.

We like this curry. You can add a can of chickpeas at the end and cook for an extra couple of minutes if you like.

It's very tasty and no dairy in sight

It's a case of adapting, there are ways of making things creamy / cheesy without cheese. For example, make a "cheese" sauce using vegan milk, extra stock powder, nutritional yeast powder, I use garlic to add flavour. Cashew nuts are excellent for creaminess in various things - make your own cashew "cheese" easily (have a google and try it!). Vegan supermarket soft cheeses are really good e.g. garlic cream cheese tastes great. You can make a vegan "ricotta" successfully using mashed tofu with various additions (garlic, nutritional yeast, maybe some vegan cream cheese). Not all the supermarket vegan cheeses taste brilliant but you get the odd ones that do work ok, it's a case of slowly working your way through to try them. Also don't think of it as "deprivation" - find a way of pimping out your food in a vegan way e.g. use extra chutney, vegan mayo is fab, vegan potato salad etc - find ways to add fun to the plate without cheese. It is a case of finding and trying recipes! Some of the vegan supermarket pizzas are pretty good too! e.g. goodfellas etc. I recommend the Sainsbury's vegan greek style feta style cheese - in a salad you don't really notice the difference. Keep trying and sampling and you will find some that you like.

Also if you can manage just a month or so without it, you will find your taste buds change then the smell of cheese just becomes rank! You need to give yourself a break to allow yourself to adapt. Try a month for starters then see how you feel about it. You might be very surprised.

I recommend a book called how not to die. It's written by a doctor who has done a lot of work on nutrition it makes for interesting reading and tells you the best foods to eat to improve your health (rather than what to avoid). I think he has a book called how not to diet too with recipes in. Or his website (nutrition facts .org is great). I really responded well personally to trying to include more healthy foods rather than cut out foods. You find out which things are the best to eat (if you're going to eat veg may as well make it the most effective stuff)

I was a cheese addict, especially cheddar. I went vegan 8 years ago, went totally cold turkey on cheese for a couple of weeks. Found my sense of smell improved significantly after giving up dairy and went right off animal products. My love of cheddar was replaced by vegan cheese, which is so much nicer now. Violife epic cheddar replacement is really good! I have basically found replacements for everything now, even squirty cream!

Oh, and I definitely had some health benefits, e.g. my pcos went away.

I can talk at length about this as I'm a real meat monster but regularly cut it (and cheese) out of my diet and switch to a plant diet for months at a time. In fact am about to start again given these past few weeks have been very meat/cheese/crap heavy.

Honestly I love it, experiment with really tasty recipes and find myself feeling so much lighter generally.

Definitely go to forks over knives website and check out the information, also loads of easy recipes on Pinterest.

I love salads but don't live on them, I will usually keep eggs in my diet as I work out a lot.

I don't have any health concerns myself but have a large history of cancer/heart disease on both sides of family so I tend to err on the plant diet for most of the year.

The biggest thing is cutting out the processed food and alcohol, once you get past those you find your tastebuds change and you crave the healthier food on your plate.

I used to dream of moving to France and living off crusty bread and melted Brie, now I can take it or leave it!

Maybe start by trying Veganuary for a month in January and see how it goes. My sister is a vegan she said it's so much easier now that there is a huge market for it, takeaways and restaurants are really on board with options these days too. She did Veganuary 4 years ago and has been a vegan ever since. She used to love steak, and babybels! I never thought she'd even manage a full month

Oh and the biggest and most immediate change I had was going from using my ventolin inhaler nearly everyday to not using it for a month! Even when exercising hard.

I noticed after about a week when I realized I hadn't taken it out of my bag for 5 days.

Meat is inflammatory so the change was noticeable straight away.

Thank you all so much for the replies.

DH and I are doing Veganuary and will then see how we feel.
I will read about the people mentioned up thread and we have watched a documentary on Netflix with the Dr that did Forks over Knives.

DH's father has just had heart surgery and is now going through stomach cancer and prostrate cancer so he's also terrified of what lays in our future if we don't get a handle on how we currently eat.

I am going to do a shop tomorrow so will make a good list and get stuck in.
Thank you.

I agree with others don't bother with vegan cheese although we had a lovely Mexican spicy one on Nachos recently.

Can you go vegetarian and then seriously cut down on your cheese In-take?

Going vegetarian is a good step in the right direction then you can try using some vegan swaps and see whether you like the difference. I live in a household with vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters! The meat eaters are very happy and don't notice some vegan swaps at all (eg cream and creme fraiche in cooking) and are happy with some swaps but refuse others.

Good luck OP.

Applewood smoked vegan and the mexicana vegan ones are about as decent as you can get for vegan ones, don't expect them to be exactly the same but I was pleasantly surprised. I think you can get both at Asda or maybe Tesco.