In my previous posts I spoke about why I became a vegan, how I transitioned to a whole-food plant-based diet and what actually the difference is between these terms. Today, I’d like to tell you a bit about the challenges I personally face of following a whole-food plant-based diet and how I tackle them. It’s important to point out that I’m referring to my own personal lived experiences. For this article, I picked out my top 3 challenges of being vegan which are…

• Prejudices of other people

• Traveling

• Grocery Shopping

Prejudices of other people

The challenge

Here are only a few comments and reactions I receive from some, not all, people. It’s important to make it very clear though that I am not the kind of person who walks around trying to convince and persuade others to change to a plant-based diet. That is absolutely not me. Live and let live - that’s my motto. I only talk about my personal reasons and experiences with being vegan to people who show interest and ask me questions. So I honestly don’t understand why some people feel the need to throw unnecessary, unkind and uninformed statements at me just to make themselves feel better.

Here come a few of the most common comments I get:

• Vegan always think they’re better people.

• Animals can’t feel anything.

• But how do you get your protein in? You will never get enough protein from a plant-based diet! You need to eat meat because animal protein is better.

• Wow! You’re eating a lot! I’ve never seen anyone eating so much salad.

• Wow, you’re eating so little. You must be starving! I don’t want to live a life where I’m always hungry.

• When inviting vegans, it’s always such a hassle to prepare something.

• So you only eat salad. Is that what you call healthy? That would be too boring for me.

• Vegans only restrict themselves.

• Vegans eat too much carbs and carbs are bad.

• How do you travel or go out to restaurants?

• I would go vegan if I could afford it but it’s so expensive.

• Drinking milk alternatives is worse on the environment than consuming dairy products.

My solution

There are a few ways how I handle situations like these. Here’s what I do:

• First of all, I take a breathe and pause so I don’t react inappropriately. It is a very personal topic and if someone says negative things about your lifestyle, it hurts. This short pause though calms me down and I’m not getting annoyed, offended or upset by people sending negative vibes or simply by coming up with untrue facts, not knowing what they’re talking about.

• After the short breath, I am in a state where I don’t react emotionally so I usually either don’t reply anything to their comment or I ask them a question back.

  • For instance, if someone comments on the size of my plate, I simply don’t say anything at all anymore. It’s simply not worth my time. Think whatever you want. I learned that it doesn’t matter anyway because there’ll always be people who think it’s a big bowl of salad and veggies and others think it’s too little. I simply won’t entertain this anymore.

  • However, if someone says untrue facts, such as you need to eat animal protein because it’s better or animals don’t feel anything when they’re being tortured, I do say something. In the beginning, I explained why their statements are wrong and what science shows. But I noticed quickly that this doesn’t go through to these people. They made up their mind and won’t listen to the actual fact. However, what works is to ask them a question back. So my reply is: Really? Why is that? Why is animal protein better? What do the amino acids of animal meat have that plant-protein doesn’t provide? Or is it because what’s happening on a physiological level? Please explain it to me. BOOM! I have never come across a person who could answer these questions and explain them with scientifically proven studies. Why? Because they are ignorant and haven’t done their research properly. Perhaps you can imagine how quickly this conversation is over and that it’ll be a while until they’ll throw uninformed comments about being vegan at someone again.

Traveling

The challenge

Hands down: It can be tricky to find delicious and nutritious vegan food at airports, train stations or in countries where a vegan diet isn’t present as it is in the UK, for instance.

My solution

Theoretically there are two solutions to this:

A) Just wait and see what’s available at the airport or in the country you’re going to and eat whatever is available even though it might be highly processed (very unhealthy) or not vegan at all.

B) Do a little research online to check what the typical diet is like in the other country to see if it’ll be easy to find vegan food, shops and restaurants. And obviously simply prepare your meals and snacks for the travel time.

I for one only see one true option here: Solution B. It doesn’t take long to check out vegan restaurants, their menus and reviews online. So why waiting until you’re at your holiday destination, you’re ready for dinner but have no clue who offers a plant-based menu? The others you might be traveling with are likely to get annoyed you’re running around trying to find a nice and suitable restaurant and eventually end up in a place where you have enjoyable vegan options.

This stress factor lies completely and utterly in your corner and you can easily avoid this by a 5 minute online research beforehand.

Extra tip: I love the free app “Happy Cow” which lists vegan restaurants and shops all around the world. You can also search for places near you. Go check it out. It’s a real game changer and makes things so much easier while you’re traveling.

Ok, here’s my simple solution to the second part of the challenge: It doesn’t matter if I travel by bus, train or airplane, I will always bring my own meals and snacks with me. Since I know my whole itinerary, I can work out exactly what meals I need to prepare.

Let me give you an example for a work trip I did the other day. Hopefully a listed timeline view will help following me.

• I know that I need to leave the house at 7:20 AM to catch the bus.

• I’d be on the train at 7:55 AM and would stay on that train until 10:10 AM.

• Afterwards, I’d be on the tube and walk to the office.

• My arrival time at the office would be around 10:45 AM.

• Lunch would be provided.

• The whole workshop day would finish around 4:45 PM.

Alrighty, you still with me? ;) Here is what I prepared the night before and brought with me on the journey:

• Snacks
  I’m a sucker for a snack in the afternoon and I simply love yogurts. I always have and I always will ;) So I used a small glass container and filled it with Alpro yogurt, Huel protein powder, berries, chestnuts, nuts and Goji. And I had an apple with me.

That’s it. All in all it took me around 15 minutes to prepare all of this the night before. I took it out of the fridge in the mornings before I left the house and enjoyed my usual healthy and delicious food on the go. It’s best to use light and small containers so you can pack them in one bag. Easy, right?

Grocery shopping

The challenge

Ok, this may sound a bit petty but I wanted to share the following challenges with you so I really list everything that comes to my mind. Since my whole-food plant-based diet contains a whole lot of fresh vegetables and legumes, many beans, a lot of yogurt and milk alternatives, it also means that I need to do my shopping quite frequently and that the bags might get quite heavy. Remember, a whole-food plant-based diet focuses mainly on unprocessed, fresh foods so that means that I have to get every few days a new, big amount of vegetables. Especially as an ultra runner so I meet my dietary requirements. I don’t like going to the supermarkets and I also don’t have a car so it’s not necessarily my favorite point on the usual todo list.

My solution

If a negative or complaining thought should enter my mind, I immediately shut it down by reminding myself that there are millions of people who are starving and would give anything to buy these delicious foods. I also changed my mindset about it and combine it with a short walk. So it’s not another thing on my busy list that I need to do. Last but it least, I see it as a super mini workout, too. Making sure to distribute the weight evenly on both shoulders, here I go on a walk with some weights. Simple and straightforward;)

As you can hopefully see, these challenges are all manageable and most of them can be avoided by simply being prepared beforehand.

Making the switch to a vegan lifestyle and a whole-food plant-based diet has been one of the best choices in my life. It improved to many different aspects in my life, such as my health issues with my thyroid, my recovery and training performance and the list goes on. You can about it in my article about why I became vegan.

If you’re curious to find out for yourself if a vegan lifestyle is for you, get in touch with me so I can guide you through a sustainable and successful transition to a healthy life.

By the way, it doesn’t always have to be 100% in or out. Choosing a predominantly plant-based diet is already better than not trying it at all.