So you wanna go vegan. But how do you, like, do it? Do you give up all at once, overnight, snap you're vegan (cold tofu), or cut stuff out of your diet over a course of weeks (slow transition)?

Cold tofu

On this topic, I think Vegan Freak says it best:

The gist of our argument — which we explain in much more depth in the book itself — is this: to go vegan, just do it cold tofu, and stop eating animal products today. Your tastes can change in as little as a few weeks, and if you give things up right away, you’ll miss them less than if you’re always just making bargains with yourself for a little bit of the forbidden food.

Mentally, this can be very powerful. If you've made the decision to go veg, just wake up one day and stop eating animal products. That sounds ridiculously basic, but it's that easy - boom, you're vegan.

Slow transition

Of course, cold tofu might be too much to try and grapple with mentally, and may be daunting enough stop people turning vegan altogether. I know people who are now vegan who transitioned over a fairly long period of time, cutting down on and phasing out non-vegan foods every time they did a grocery shop or ate out. If the thought of suddenly being vegan feels too huge (and yeah, it can feel a bit epic), starting a slow transition and just cutting out a few things might help break it down into something that seems more manageable. (Veganism is totally manageable, by the way, but I know it can seem like it would be difficult.) So when your milk runs out, buy soy milk, when you go out to eat, go to a vegan place, that kind of thing. If you're transitioning, I would try to do it mindfully. Think each week or day about what you're going to cut out and how you will replace it in your diet, rather than letting it drag on for ages. I think if your transition drags on forever you can build going vegan up into a Big Thing that feels Impossible To Overcome, and anyway being in limbo is never fun.

Test run

This is how I turned vegan. I had been thinking about ethical food for a long time and had been quite comfortable with the low level of meat that I ate (which was actually higher than I admitted to myself, in hindsight) and the fact that I drank soy milk and had cut down a fair bit on cheese. But reading Peter Singer's The Ethics of What We Eat sent me into a tailspin. It made me think again about how I felt about the foods I was eating, and even though I had previous discounted veganism as 'not for me', I decided that I couldn't justifiably knock it 'til I tried it... so I decided to turn vegan for a month to see what it was like. I found it really easy, and when the month drew to a close I realised I had become a vegan, and that it was really quite an unstressful transition - I guess this method is part transitioning and part cold turkey. The test run worked for me because it eliminated the mental barrier of 'becoming vegan'. Although my commitment to veganism was intellectually there, I didn't picture myself as a vegan and was worried that it would be hard. (Which are both totally valid concerns.) By giving it a trial run I was able to try veganism on for size without feeling any pressure; it can be hard to overcome thoughts like 'this is forever' and 'I'll never eat turducken again!' By having an out ('Well, I tried and it wasn't for me'), my transition was pretty stress-free... By doing it for a month I could see that being vegan is not hard at all, and when I decided to commit to veganism at the end of 30 days I was already living the lifestyle so I didn't have to worry about making the switch.

Turning vegetarian first

Quite a few people pass through vegetarianism on their way to becoming vegan, but not all. Although vegetarianism isn't necessarily a step towards veganism, if you're thinking that you'll end up going vegan then dallying with dairy for a while longer is just delaying the inevitable really. Not to mention that ultimately it's probably easier to transition once - from omni to vegan - rather than twice - from omni to veg to vegan.

Image by C a s t o rcito.

This article is adapted from a larger series called How to be vegan, which you can find in full at www.lisadempster.com.au.