The Ultimate Vegan Guide-Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Celebrating Your Progress

As you continue to put effort towards being vegan, it’s wise to periodically pause and evaluate the progress you’ve made. Pausing occasionally to reflect on your progress will not only provide encouragement about how far you’ve come, it will also enable you to decide what you’re ready to do next. I recommend that you periodically ask yourself questions like these:

  • What fruits and vegetables did I recently eat that weren’t a regular part of my diet in the past?
  • What vegan foods have I discovered lately that I especially enjoy?
  • What cookbooks and kitchen items have I purchased that will help me create delicious new foods?
  • What vegan-friendly restaurants have I dined at recently?

Asking yourself these sorts of questions will help you to recognize the little victories you’ve achieved. The key to maintaining your enthusiasm during your transition to a vegan diet is to continually recognize, and celebrate, the progress you’re making.

Some of your victories are easy to miss, but are well worth noting. Perhaps you ordered some vegan multivitamins or sublingual Vitamin B-12 tablets? Or maybe you’ve recently bought some walnuts and some vegan DHA capsules? If so, you’ve already taken steps to safeguard your health over the long term, and that’s worthy of celebration.

If, after reflecting on your recent efforts, you feel like you’ve made little progress, don’t beat yourself up. Just resolve that this upcoming week will be different. You’ll take care of getting your vitamin and Omega 3 situation resolved. You’ll get ahold of a great vegan cookbook full of easy recipes. And you’ll go out of your way to try a bunch of vegan foods over the next several days, so that the next time you take stock of your progress you’ll have ample reason to celebrate.

One of most surprising things about becoming vegan is that you can accurately measure your progress from one week to the next. And what’s more, you can resolve to pick up the pace anytime you wish. You can, for instance, decide to try more foods this week than last week. If you’ve already purchased a vegan cookbook, why not put it on your pillow right now so you can browse through it before bed? If there’s a veggie-friendly restaurant in your town, how about scheduling a dinner there sometime this week? If you’re not yet eating much in the way of fruits and vegetables, you can decide right now to include more fresh produce in your diet.

You might also get into the habit of watching vegan-oriented videos on the Internet.  There are hundreds of such videos covering everything from cooking to health to dining out. To find them, just visit YouTube and type vegan into the search box.

I hope you’re starting to see the value of setting aside ten minutes a week for taking stock of your progress and making new commitments. Whether you accomplished a little or a lot lately, you can always promise yourself to take things up several notches for the coming week. Imagine how you’ll feel a week from now, when you pause and reflect on your progress, and recognize the great strides you’ve made.

Things get progressively easier as you discover new foods and learn more about being vegan. I know that at first it may be hard to believe, but you will ultimately reach the point where being vegan becomes second nature. At that point, being vegan involves no extra effort, no feelings of sacrifice, and not even any conscious thought. Whenever you’re hungry, the first food that pops into your mind will be healthful, delicious, and vegan.

Next Chapter: The Counterculture

Return to: Table of Contents

Get the updated second edition of this book on Kindle for just 99 cents, or in paperback for $8.95.

This page and The Ultimate Vegan Guide is Copyright 2010 by Erik Marcus, all rights reserved. My writing is my sole means of support, so please don’t abuse the generosity I’ve shown in making the full text of this book freely available from Vegan.com. Posting the text of this book to other websites, and copying or distributing it through other means, is strictly prohibited.

FTC: We use income-earning Amazon.com affiliate links. More.

Newsletter Signup

Our newsletter is sent out irregularly and infrequently, because we only want to hit your inbox when we’ve got something compelling to share.