Changing your diet for the better may be easier than you think.
While New Year resolutions sometimes get a bad rap for setting us up for failure – largely due to unrealistic goal-setting – many of us are still hoping to incorporate healthy habits into 2024.
The key to successfully managing this is to make transitions manageable. People hear the word “vegan” and feel intimidated by what it means for their lifestyle – “how do I go out to dinner?”, “I absolutely can’t give up cheese”, “I need meat for my iron levels”, “It’s just too hard!”
But there are many arguments for a more plant-based diet that are hard to refute – better health outcomes, less environmental damage and less harm to animals. If that sounds good to you, there are ways to ease into a diet that incorporates more fruit and veg and fewer animal products that don’t have to mean an abrupt overhaul of life – it’s called flexitarianism, which just means actively reducing the amount of meat and/or dairy products you consume.
Of course, purists will baulk at the idea of any leniency on eating animal products. But if being on a strictly vegan diet leads to abandoning the philosophy altogether because you can’t stick to it, then gradually reducing animal products is obviously still a better choice.
