If so, when?

I've gone almost three weeks now, and yesterday while at a health food store salad bar, I got the overwhelming urge to grab some chicken for my salad.

So does this go away? When?

My first three weeks have been pretty easy. I'm just worried about consistency and longevity.

Thanks.

What was it about the chicken that you craved? Was it the texture? Flavour?
You may be experiencing a deficiency of some sort--protein or mineral. Make sure you are getting enough. Here is a link to a site with some guidelines
http://www.vegsoc.org/info/protein.html
Luckily for me I never had the meat craving 'cause I never liked the stuff anyway. Even when I was a baby I refused my baby food "meats" in favour of the veggies!

First off, congratulations for going veg!! :wayne: It will get easier, analogy/example:

Ive never been a smoker, but I had a friend who was and got pregnant and had to quit. It was a struggle for a bit, but after a few weeks she said that the stench of cigarette smoke was unbelieveable - she used to love to smoke!

I think meat is an addiction, just like cigarettes. Once that breaks, you are "cured". Id give it a couple more weeks, maybe read a copy of the China Study in the meantime. THAT will "cure" you of wanting animal products. Some here on the board would suggest watching a "meet your meat" video, which I have personally never watched, but would put images in your head that meat is NOT FOOD.

I havent eaten meat for years and, I have to say, it smells like vomit. I consider it a piece of a corpse instead of food. I cant ever imagine that I used to eat it.

Congrats on your choice to live more ethically/healthfully. And keeping coming to VB for any support/advice/venting, etc. :pibo:

Most grocery stores have fake chicken - wings, nuggets, patties, strips. There's a vegetarian option for just about anything you'd crave.

If you want something for a salad look for this...

http://www.kelloggs.com/cgi-bin/brandpages/product.pl?product=4971&company=23

My personal favorite are the Morningstar Farms buffalo wings with honey mustard. :lick:

I'd say it's different for everybody. Some people stop eating meat and never want to touch the stuff again and others continue to struggle. For me I don't usually see it as food anymore, but occasionally I'll get the compulsion to try something everyone else is eating. Not very often, and it's never been very difficult to tell myself no. I just remind myself what it is and that I definitely don't want to eat it.

It's certainly different for everybody.
I can say that it took about a year before I came to the realization that meat no longer looked- or smelled- like food to me.

my 'cravings' dissapeared pretty quickly when i started thinking about where the meat was from, eg. instead of seeing a sausage i saw a pig that had been killed so i could eat it. now i couldn't even think about eating meat.
good luck with the vegetarianism :)

I'd say it's different for everybody. Some people stop eating meat and never want to touch the stuff again and others continue to struggle. For me I don't usually see it as food anymore, but occasionally I'll get the compulsion to try something everyone else is eating. Not very often, and it's never been very difficult to tell myself no. I just remind myself what it is and that I definitely don't want to eat it.

same here i dont even regard it as food, so therefor i dont want it. i think if you watched some of the videos on the net, meet your meat and peacable kingdom that would certainly make you not want to eat it!

WHen I first went veg, whenever I thought that some chicken or something might taste "good", I just thought of the chicken as being very similar to a parakeet - or even a cat or dog. I would never eat one of those things, and it quickly grossed me out. I've been vegetarian for several years and now I have no desire for meat, ever.

I have to go a really really long time w/o eating anything before meat looks like food again, and it took me about a year to get to that point. I really have no desire to eat the stuff.

I guess my response is going to be a little illigiminate, as I have always HATED the taste of meat, but when I wasn't vegetarian (well... vegetarian w/out knowing it...) I would look as sausage or chicken and wonder, "why don't I like that?" Now I look at it and just think... gross... :spew: It took me about a year.

What plagues me is the desire to be able to walk into any restaurant or fast food joint and grab a quick, convenient meal. Of course, even before I was veg, I couldn't grab a quick convenient meal that I thought was nutritionally sound in any way, so that's nothing new.

Three weeks is a very short time. Hang in there for a few months, and find some veg*n comfort foods that make you feel good. Quorn nuggets were great for me (they're not vegan). Getting excited about new foods will help you miss the old familiar ones less, too.

I hardly ever get a craving to eat meat. The only thing that appeals to me very rarely, is maybe a coldcut sandwich, like ham or turkey. Weird, because I never ate cold cuts to begin with, but occasionally I'll see someone chomping into a wedge/sub/hero and it looks good to me. But I don't see myself ever eating meat again.

Hey, looks like we started this thing around the same time! I've been really suprised at how much I don't miss meat...or dairy. But, there have been a couple of times when I thought I might just break down and eat some chicken, but, I realized it was more out of habit than craving.

What's working for me is finding substitutes for my old favorites. Now, I'm craving vegetable sushi instead of McDonalds....and bbq fried tofu instead of honey-bbq wings. Hang in there!

yes, it takes a few months to a year, and the large variety of fake meats on the market certainly makes it easier. It took me years to become completely disgusted by meat, and become accutely aware of the differences between real and fake meats which make fake meats superior (lack of fat chunks, grease, gristle, blood, etc). Now I crave fake meats. I don't know if I could give those up.

I did lose my desire to eat meat gradually. It first I sometimes really craved meat, after a few weeks a wasn't interested any more, and even later I didn't even want it anymore.

I've gone almost three weeks now, and yesterday while at a health food store salad bar, I got the overwhelming urge to grab some chicken for my salad.

So does this go away? When?


Like many things humans do, eating is a matter of habit. The ease with which someone can change a habit varies from one person to another, and depends upon a lot of factors. I wouldn't worry about this too much. If your reasons for going veggie are solid, then you'll keep moving in the right direction whatever path you take to get there. Welcome to the club! :guitar:

I don't remember how long it took me to lose all the cravings since its been many, many years but you do lose them. Now the thought of eating meat can start my stomach turning.

I've been vegetarian for over a year and a vegan for about 7 months and I still get cravings from time to time. Some of them like Tesseract said are associated with an impulse for quick, easy comfort foods although even if I wasn't veg*n I would not yield to these for health reasons. I like to cook a lot and sometimes I think how good a piece of prime rib would taste or a piece of salmon baked in a bag with lemon and herbs. At those time I have found that associating the final product with what it was in life helps me to reject it. It has gotten better with time but I don't think the cravings will ever go away completly, nor would I want them to. If you have no impulse to eat meat, then being a veg*n doesn't cost you anything and for me becomes less morally fulfilling.

I want to vomit when I can smell meat cooking especially pork :spew:
and already as a vegan (2 months) the smell of eggs makes me feel queezy. Very recently I've noticed that I won't stir my tea with a spoon that's had dairy on, before it didn't bother me but now it makes my stomach turn. :spew:

Brain_Bliss:

I agree with beeping bird.

I had tried to become a vegetarian for "health" reasons several times before I actually became one. When push came to shove I just didn't care enough about my health to make it stick.

I knew I really was a vegetarian because it was immoral to eat meat but I just didn't want to admit it. Luckily I knew a vegan who acted as a role model for me. I watched her live her moral life year after year before I finally accepted the truth that I was also a vegetarian--just not practicing.

When I allowed myself to look at the pictures of the chickens hung up waiting for the slaughter and the piles of dead hogs waiting to be butchered (I never did allow myself to listen to the recordings of cattle having their throats cut) I finally accepted the fact that eating meat was immoral and I couldn't do it anymore. I went off the meat in steps by setting dates and by the end (fish was last) I found it a chore to eat it and actually looked forward to the approaching deadlines.

I knew I would go vegan but didn't allow myself to even consider that for another year and half (another date on the calendar) because I didn't want to overwhelm myself and quit. When the day to consider veganism came, it didn't take much to push me over the edge.

I have NEVER wanted animal products since because I have a very clear image in my head about what was happening to those animals because of ME! By the time it finally took it was because I had finally accepted that my vegetarianism was about the animals not me.

I advise you to read articles, look at pictures and watch video of the treatment of animals. But do it a little at a time. Only go as graphic as necessary to anger and sicken you--not so graphic as to allow you to turn away. When you finally know and believe what the lives of those poor animals are like, you will find it EASY.

I hope I don't sound preachy. I want to help you make it easy for you to succeed.

Good luck. You can do this! The animals appreciate it!

Yes, I did when I saw how these animals were being treated. Sad.

For me, the only thing I initially missed was chicken. Amazingly, it is getting less and less appealing and more gross. Dairy though... it is SO hard to give up all dairy products (I am trying). Well, good luck and stick with it! (it'll be worth it)!

Hello, heading into my 5th month here.

A few meat based meals still smell good to me...sometimes it will still make my mouth water.

But here's the catch. It's not the meat that I crave, it's the flavors that go with the the meat I crave.

And here is the second catch. I can apply all those flavors to veggies, tofu and faux meats. It's not instant gratification...jus got to delay it a little while till I get into my kitchen.

Keep it up!

Hi brain_bliss,
I agree with the person who said you should check you're not deficient in anything found in meat, to rule that out. There are other causes for that sort of feeling though. Maybe you've inadvertently stopped consuming addictive chemicals as well as meat. This would be broken like any other addiction, I suppose. Habit is another likely one, as people have said. It could even be positive associations you have with meat - like turkey, that's something a lot of people only eat at Christmas, so refusing it could be harder emotionally than refusing more mundane foods. Some people get a sense of power from the idea of meat. Refusing it can be seen as 'weak' in the same way as refusing to shoot deer used to be and to some people still is. This is probably rarer than it used to be, but I think it still happens, especially to males.

already as a vegan (2 months) the smell of eggs makes me feel queezy. Very recently I've noticed that I won't stir my tea with a spoon that's had dairy on, before it didn't bother me but now it makes my stomach turn. :spew:
I've been surprised by that too. I think I've actually found myself missing dairy considerably less than I did meat. Maybe it's because I genuinely believe dairy to be worse for my heath than I've ever thought meat is, or maybe it's my body getting used to being free of it, I don't know. But yesterday we ran out of all my substitutes so I had to eat quite a lot of dairy and it wasn't as pleasurable as I remember it. Veggie lasagnes used to be my favourite but then it made me slightly queasy. Almost as much as when I gave up fatty foods for my health and now things like mayonaise just seem nasty where I can't handle such amounts of fat at once.