If you didn’t read last week’s post, this is the part 2 to that story.

BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, has a free 5-day habit program where you are paired with one of his coaches. When I signed up for the free program in June 2020, I was able to get a little tidbit of information on the coaches available. One of the coaches on the list was vegan, so I selected her.  A perfect fit! After the 5-day free program, I hired Coach Alice to help me get back on track to veganism.

Alice helped me break things down.  I felt I had become somewhat of an expert by now on habits as I had had so much success with other habits, I introduced into my life but I could not figure out how to ‘Tiny Habit’ becoming a vegan.

At this point, I was flossing regularly and doing cardio, two things I had not done much of my entire life, so I felt fairly proud of myself.  I was also keeping the house clean, which sounds like nothing, but I learnt that if my house isn’t clean, I won’t cook so one of my first habits was to work on keeping a clean house so that I could come home after work and whip up a dinner instead of feeling overwhelmed at the fact that I had to clean up last night’s dishes, cook a meal and clean again.  Keeping my house clean, kept me away from ordering take out.

I had tried to ‘tiny habit’ veganism on my own, but it felt like a really hard problem to solve.  More complex than flossing and doing cardio.  I could not find the ‘right’ habit recipe that would stick.

My habit coach asked a bit about my process.  I told her I was selecting 7 new recipes a week and doing all the cooking and that felt overwhelming.  I also shared that it felt overwhelming to make a new recipe each night, especially not knowing if it would turn out and if we would be eating dinner or throwing out dinner.  I also shared how hard I was being on myself and that the whole process was so frustrating and overwhelming I didn’t have much to celebrate.  If you know BJ Fogg, then you would know that emotions create habits and celebrating your habits is a huge part of success.

Her first suggestion to me was to involve the family and to make it easy for them.  She suggested we each pick two recipes to make per week and of those 2 recipes, one of the recipes should be a familiar one.  She also said I could physically hand a vegan cookbook to my husband and Cousin Clint and ask them to select what recipes they would make for our meals.  This suggestion gave me so much relief.  I could do this.  This would work.

She knew I was already in the habit of creating a weekly meal plan and that I completed my meal plan by Wednesday each week so I could go shopping before the weekend.  Her suggestion was to bring the family into that plan and simply ask they write down their meals and groceries by Wednesday night. We eventually purchased a subscription to AnyList which is an app that allows you to share lists with family members via the cloud. This was a huge lifesaver in that we all have access to modify the list and at anytime if we stopped at the grocery store on the way home, we could pick up additional items on the list. This app is inexpensive and completely worth it.

Alice’s suggestion worked like a dream.  My family was more than willing to support me and they were both actually happier to have a say in what they ate. I no longer felt overwhelmed and alone.  While we didn’t do 100% vegan in the beginning, we all aimed to do our best.

Looking back on my meal plans from that year is quite interesting to see the transition.  We had way more vegan meals each week on the menu than I recalled.  Some meals were vegan, but with a sausage on the side which made it easy for me to skip the added meat. Once we had a strong repertoire of new family staple meals, we ditched all animal products in the home. It was a natural progression that felt easy thanks to Tiny Habits. It took me until April 2021 to feel comfortable announcing I was going vegan. With 10 months of practice being plant based, making new recipes and a list of tried and true meals, I felt ready and knew I could do it. Once I had the meals sorted out, I knew going fully vegan would be easy. I do wish I was one of those people who could go vegan overnight, but I’m just not.

I share this to share another perspective. To showcase that you do not have to decide right now to go all in, you can start incorporating new meals into your life now and start learning and see where it takes you. It is more important to me to do things in a sustainable way than to go all in and completely abandon ship never to look back. I had to go at a pace that felt right for me and I have no regrets taking the time to set my own sturdy foundation.

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂

p.s. Paprika Recipe Manager app is another fav of ours. I paid a one time fee and am able to store all of our fav online recipes in one spot. I can easily modify ingredients and directions. The app strips the recipe of all ads and simply stores the picture, original link to the recipe and lists the ingredients and directions. This app became a lifesaver to help keep track of all of our new fav recipes and the modifications we make to them.