Change Eating Habits with Success.

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Changing ones eating habits is a resolution that many people make. Especially when it comes to going vegan and doing something good for the animals, you know why you want to do it. However, it is often difficult to do in a largely non-vegan society. Right now, the non-vegan option is still the easier and more common one. For changing eating habits it is necessary to leave the familiar behind. Find out how to do that now.

What Influences our Eating Habits?

Personal eating habits develop over the course of a lifetime under a variety of influences, likes and dislikes. Eating habits and eating patterns that are formed at an early age, especially by family, are deeply ingrained in us.

Memories – both positive and negative – that a person associates with a food or meal lead to the topic of diet being emotionally charged. Someone who has fond memories of a particular meal will find it difficult to stop eating that meal because it contains ingredients of animal origin. These may be childhood memories, when you met your partner, or what your beloved mother liked to eat.

Simply put, the longer the eating habits last, the harder it is to change them. For these reasons, changing eating habits is especially (but not only) difficult for people over 50. No matter how convinced you are that a vegan diet is right for you. If the change is big and goes against everything you have been doing for years, it can feel costly and like you are losing a big part of your life. But it does not have to be that way! Change can be fun, losses do not have to be serious, and anyone can change their eating habits. Our top strategies will help you with that!

Strategy 1: Reflect on Your Eating History

Our own eating biography often makes it difficult to change our eating habits. Habits determine our lives to a considerable extent – between 30 and 50% of our daily actions, to be precise. A habit is a behavior that is developed and consolidated under the same conditions.

The first thing you can do to become aware of where your eating habits come from is to ask yourself the following questions

How did I become this way?
Where do my daily eating habits come from?

The following specific examples can help answer this question:

Do you follow your parents’ eating patterns?
Did you get into the habit of eating certain foods more often during your school time?
Do you frequent certain restaurants at work or with friends?
Have you had any bad experiences with vegan products?
Do you have certain (non-vegan) recipes that you can prepare by heart?
Do your (grand)children have a favorite meal that you prepare on a regular basis

Once you know why you eat the way you do, you can better understand your actions and move on to step 2.

Strategy 2: Recognize When Eating Habits Are Triggered

Think about when you habitually eat non-vegan foods and when it might be difficult for you to eat vegan. If you are aware of these situations, you can prepare for them. So make a list of the eating habits you would like to change.

Is it the habit of grabbing sausage, cheese, and butter from the refrigerator in the evening?
The monthly get-together with your sister that includes a piece of cake?
The afternoon off when you sit in a café and enjoy a cappuccino?

Now that you know when your eating habits are tempting you to eat non-vegan, you can start thinking about how to change them.

Strategy 3: Create New Habits

The solution is not to give up everything. You do not have to skip dinner altogether, stop meeting your sister, and have no more quiet rituals for yourself. What can you do? Associate a new behavior with the old event. The new event should meet the same need as the old eating habit.
So think about how you can implement these eating habits without products of animal origin, or what need you want to satisfy and what else you can do to satisfy it. Here are some ideas for the examples above:

Dinner:
There are several options here: Change the meal completely and have a vegan lasagna, for example. While some people might love it (finally something different and so tasty!), others might find it too much of an effort. After all, it only takes a few minutes to get bread and sausage out of the fridge. Cooking a whole lasagna, on the other hand, takes much longer. If this takes too much time for you, it is a good idea to cook something in advance.

The easier option is to make a sweet or savory porridge, a lentil salad with rice, or a tortilla stuffed with tofu. The least change is required if you stick to the “sausage” and “cheese” bread. After all, there is now a wide range of vegan alternatives. Try a variety of vegan spreads! There are many on the market, or you can make your own, for example a tomato and basil spread. Then add some tofu, a bean salad or textured soy, a calcium-rich mineral water, or for dessert, a cacao or protein shake in your favorite flavor with a fortified plant-based beverage.

Meeting with your sister:

How about bringing a vegan option? There are lots of vegan baking recipes on the internet or in cook books. If you do not want to bake, you can buy delicious baked goods at the grocery store or bakery. There are a lot more now than you might think. Just look around! It does not have to be a vegan “cream” cake. Speculoos and gingerbread are often vegan, pretzels, rolls with jam, nut butter or chocolate cream, and vegan pudding can be made quickly with a plant-based drink or bought ready-made.

If your sister really wants to eat her cake, you can still eat your vegan food – maybe she will get curious. Of course, you can also meet without eating and still have a good time.

Cappuccino at the cafe:

Many coffee shops now offer dairy-free alternatives. Maybe your favorite coffee shop does? If not, look around and try a new one! A new view from the window can also be refreshing. Maybe a cup of tea or a cola will do the trick? Or do something completely different to unwind. You can walk, paint, dance, meditate, cook. Find out what does you (and the animals) good!

Our Special Tips for Changing Eating Habits

Establishing new eating habits will be easier if you are well prepared.

Collect vegan recipes you would like to try.
Look for and buy vegan foods at the supermarket or online. Focus on basic foods (rice, lentils, tofu, plant-based drinks…) and special foods you would like to try (sausages, pizza, chocolate, “fish”…). By the way: The European Vegetarian Union’s new V label makes it even easier to identify vegan foods.
Learn which ingredients are vegan and which are not.
Search for vegan cafes and restaurants in your area.

You can find lots of information on this on our blog.

Conclusion: Change Your Eating Habits

Changing your eating habits is not easy when it goes against what you have been doing for years. Show yourself compassion. You did what you did because you did not know any better. It is great that you are changing now – the fact that this is not easy for you, even if it is the right thing to do, is nothing to be ashamed of. It can be challenging, but with our three-step plan, you will be well prepared. You can use it to organize your daily life so that new vegan behaviors become a habit and old patterns fade away.

It may take some time to break through old mechanisms. However, the more often you succeed, the less you will have to think about it and the less you will have to actively implement the new habits. New mechanisms will emerge that can enrich your life.

This is possible at any age!