Ok I'm gonna be harsh here, and give you some constructive advice.
Don't "cut yourself some slack." Veganism isn't some fast that you're doing. It isn't punishment. It isn't even hard.
Veganism isn't doing something "good". Since it is absolutely, entirely, catergorically, 100% unnecessary, eating any animal product is actively wrong. Where do you think all the male baby animals go? Everytime you eat an egg, some of the male chicks that are gassed died for you. Everytime you eat dairy, some of the calves taken from the mothers and slaughtered for veal died for you. The dairy/egg and meat industries are permanently intertwined, and it is impossible to separate them. Animal farming is also a major contibutor to world hunger, and global warming and other environmental calamities.
It really isn't difficult to be vegan, I've been one for 5 years. I've been in the same position as you, too, I tried 3 times before I made it. The big mistake I made was cutting foods out and not adding anything new in. When I did add something new in, it would be to try to continue my old diet, only with substitutes. But eventually I realised, there are already ample vegan meals and recipes out there, nothing has to be substituted, we already have everything we need, you just need to look. It takes about 2-3 months to learn (provided you add foods in and don't just cut things out) and then you'll never go back.
I've found that almost all vegan ice-creams taste exactly the same as real dairy. I eat one called Rice Cream which is soya-free but I can't find it on the internet.
Honey is bee vomit. It is most certainly natural.. for bees. The honey taken from their hives is replaced with a nutritionally poor substitute (honey is their food), which makes them ill. They ritually slaughter bees every two years. It isn't without death.
I haven't found any good yoghurts, although I didn't exactly look hard. The Alpro soya ones were over-sugary and really gross. Sorbets and frozen pureed fruit could be an alternative if you can't find anything. A new centrifugal force machine thingy (that I read about in a science magazine) has been invented which has the power to turn vegetable products creamy, paving the way for realistic dairy subsititutes. Posh restaurants have already started to buy them so it's only a matter of time before good replacements are a common reality.
When you eat out and ask for something vegan, they usually say no or offer you salad. This is because they automatically think vegans eat something "different" or "weird" that they don't serve, like birdseed and tofu or something lol. However, from experience a lot of places actually do have something vegan, even if they don't know it!
When finding vegan recipes, look on the internet, especially for foreign foods like south-east Asian and Indian, which have many recipes that are incidentally vegan. I haven't looked myself but apparently Ethiopian and Egyptian diets have a lot of vegan recipes. Most foreign food actually has a lot of vegan options, if you look. Most foreign food presented to us these days is geared to be appealing to typical westerners, ie meaty. Remember that most places never ate a lot of meat until recently, as it's expensive, and most places never ate dairy, as most of the world is intolerant, so you have to do your research and find real ethnic cooking and not just watered down stuff that has been altered for western tastes.
I haven't found any useful vegan cookbooks (but I only have a few). They are unhelpful because they try to be everything for everyone - gluten free, soya-free, low-calorie etc etc and the recipes end up being... crappy. I have one recipe book where all the meals seem to be below 300 calories!
By being a vegetarian you have already reduced the number of animals that died for you, just by reducing the mass of animal products that you eat, so you are already doing well. And your health will be better too, but bear in mind that the **** sapiens wasn't designed to drink the milk of the wrong species. Dairy products have been strongly linked to all kinds of health problems, including cancer and osteoporosis, amongst other serious ailments. The dairy industry would have us believe that a bodily fluid designed for the young of an enormous ruminent is absolutely vital for our health.
Keep it up, remember there are already millions of vegans in the world, if we can do it, so can you, people are all the same, the only difference is in the mind! And the human mind is the most powerful thing in the world! Mother Nature designed us to be herbivores and she makes no mistakes!
Doing what's right isn't always easy but it is always right. And very soon you'll find it easy anyway. Good Luck!
Don't "cut yourself some slack." Veganism isn't some fast that you're doing. It isn't punishment. It isn't even hard.
Veganism isn't doing something "good". Since it is absolutely, entirely, catergorically, 100% unnecessary, eating any animal product is actively wrong. Where do you think all the male baby animals go? Everytime you eat an egg, some of the male chicks that are gassed died for you. Everytime you eat dairy, some of the calves taken from the mothers and slaughtered for veal died for you. The dairy/egg and meat industries are permanently intertwined, and it is impossible to separate them. Animal farming is also a major contibutor to world hunger, and global warming and other environmental calamities.
It really isn't difficult to be vegan, I've been one for 5 years. I've been in the same position as you, too, I tried 3 times before I made it. The big mistake I made was cutting foods out and not adding anything new in. When I did add something new in, it would be to try to continue my old diet, only with substitutes. But eventually I realised, there are already ample vegan meals and recipes out there, nothing has to be substituted, we already have everything we need, you just need to look. It takes about 2-3 months to learn (provided you add foods in and don't just cut things out) and then you'll never go back.
I've found that almost all vegan ice-creams taste exactly the same as real dairy. I eat one called Rice Cream which is soya-free but I can't find it on the internet.
Honey is bee vomit. It is most certainly natural.. for bees. The honey taken from their hives is replaced with a nutritionally poor substitute (honey is their food), which makes them ill. They ritually slaughter bees every two years. It isn't without death.
I haven't found any good yoghurts, although I didn't exactly look hard. The Alpro soya ones were over-sugary and really gross. Sorbets and frozen pureed fruit could be an alternative if you can't find anything. A new centrifugal force machine thingy (that I read about in a science magazine) has been invented which has the power to turn vegetable products creamy, paving the way for realistic dairy subsititutes. Posh restaurants have already started to buy them so it's only a matter of time before good replacements are a common reality.
When you eat out and ask for something vegan, they usually say no or offer you salad. This is because they automatically think vegans eat something "different" or "weird" that they don't serve, like birdseed and tofu or something lol. However, from experience a lot of places actually do have something vegan, even if they don't know it!
When finding vegan recipes, look on the internet, especially for foreign foods like south-east Asian and Indian, which have many recipes that are incidentally vegan. I haven't looked myself but apparently Ethiopian and Egyptian diets have a lot of vegan recipes. Most foreign food actually has a lot of vegan options, if you look. Most foreign food presented to us these days is geared to be appealing to typical westerners, ie meaty. Remember that most places never ate a lot of meat until recently, as it's expensive, and most places never ate dairy, as most of the world is intolerant, so you have to do your research and find real ethnic cooking and not just watered down stuff that has been altered for western tastes.
I haven't found any useful vegan cookbooks (but I only have a few). They are unhelpful because they try to be everything for everyone - gluten free, soya-free, low-calorie etc etc and the recipes end up being... crappy. I have one recipe book where all the meals seem to be below 300 calories!
By being a vegetarian you have already reduced the number of animals that died for you, just by reducing the mass of animal products that you eat, so you are already doing well. And your health will be better too, but bear in mind that the **** sapiens wasn't designed to drink the milk of the wrong species. Dairy products have been strongly linked to all kinds of health problems, including cancer and osteoporosis, amongst other serious ailments. The dairy industry would have us believe that a bodily fluid designed for the young of an enormous ruminent is absolutely vital for our health.
Keep it up, remember there are already millions of vegans in the world, if we can do it, so can you, people are all the same, the only difference is in the mind! And the human mind is the most powerful thing in the world! Mother Nature designed us to be herbivores and she makes no mistakes!
Doing what's right isn't always easy but it is always right. And very soon you'll find it easy anyway. Good Luck!
