Have you ever considered quitting veganism after you went vegan? You’d be surprised at how common this actually is. Faunalytics (1) conducted a study that found how 84% of vegans and vegetarians abandoned their diets.
About one-third of vegans and vegetarians maintained the diet for three months or less.
Still, an estimated 37% said that they planned to readopt the vegan lifestyle at some point. If you fall off track with veganism, what can you do to get back on track?
Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do.
Key Takeaways
Reasons People Give up on Veganism
Here are some of the reasons that people give up on veganism.
Many times, you may have multiple reasons for giving up on veganism:
Any one of these things can contribute to you not wanting to continue as a vegan with some of them being more serious than others.
For example, high costs can make it impossible to be vegan if on a lower income, but there are cheaper vegan foods you can buy.
Nutrient deficiencies are also another serious one where you might buy supplements to ensure that you receive all the essential nutrients that you need.
Throw Away Perfectionism: It Works against You
There’s something about when you fail in veganism that leaves more of a psychological scar than other failures. It cuts deep.
You might compare it as similar to failing a diet. One of the problems with veganism is that this lifestyle can be more restrictive than many other eating habits.
Especially if you go cold turkey on meat and look at veganism as an exercise in discipline, you may struggle to pull this off consistently.
One of the things you can do is to look at veganism as less of an act of discipline. You’re allowed to fail as you figure it out.
When I first started in the plant-based lifestyle, I would pick out the most enjoyable vegan recipes I could find.
If I didn’t like a vegan recipe, I’d never eat it again. Doing this goes a long way toward helping you to keep your discipline strong since you will struggle less with willpower.
You can fail when learning how to be a vegan. Don’t make it too hard on yourself with the discipline or with failing. Just get up and try again.
Let Veganism Become
Like many, I had a moment where I started dropping back on the plant-based lifestyle, and as soon as I did that, I saw my health start giving me a few more problems.
Not many due to my younger age but enough to notice that I was healthier on the plant-based diet.
For me, that was more than enough motivation to go back and keep the plant-based lifestyle going.
I can see that it clearly has a positive impact on my life—my relationship with plant-based is a positive one and that’s what draws me back to it.
One of the reasons that people quit veganism is because they don’t connect with it in that way.
If you view veganism as this difficult or expensive activity that only serves to restrict your lifestyle, you may struggle to keep it going. You won’t connect with it in as positive of a way as what you could.
The right mindset in veganism is critical to going forward with it and keeping it going. High cost is obviously a hard problem to get around, but if you buy straight vegetables, rather than vegan branded processed foods, this is one of the ways to lower the cost of veganism.
TIP:
Keep Going: Don’t Exclude Other Plant-Based Alternatives
If you want to be a vegan but you struggle to keep your discipline, you could try being a vegetarian or plant-based.
These choices are less restrictive than vegan, and especially if you’ve failed many times at being vegan but you don’t want to give up, vegetarian or plant-based is another way of keeping yourself going.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to living a plant-based lifestyle. For me, I’ve found that being plant-based was a little easier to maintain than being a vegan, but I’ve been a vegetarian at different points as well and a vegan.
Plant-based is where you eat some meat and dairy, but you largely maintain eating plants as much as possible. This is also a good solution if you constantly feel hungry all the time on veganism, which is a common complaint.
Never ignore this one if you get it.
It can be dangerous—people have wound up in the hospital. Then they really resented veganism afterwards, swearing off it forever, but this is all about listening to your body and what it needs.
Vegans often need to track their nutrient intake better than others to ensure that they have all their nutrients.
Also, a plant-based diet stops you from feeling excluded when you go to a family gathering or an event where no one else is vegan, so you experience fewer social pressures.
This feeling of exclusion was one of the reasons many vegans would resent their diet over time, but to get around this, it’s all about keeping the right mindset. You want to keep a healthy relationship with veganism, vegetarianism, or plant-based since this will help you to keep it going.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hopefully this article has shown you how to get back on track with veganism. In some cases, changing your course slightly could be the better option if you don’t think you’ll have the discipline to keep being a vegan.
One of the keys here is that even if you fail, keep going with it. Don’t give up or beat yourself up.
Try to form a positive relationship with veganism because one of the biggest reasons people quit is due to them developing a negative relationship with it over time. You need to have a real reason for keeping the vegan lifestyle going that matters to you.
(1) https://faunalytics.org/a-summary-of-faunalytics-study-of-current-and-former-vegetarians-and-vegans/#:~:text=84%25%20of%20vegetarians%2Fvegans%20abandon,former%20vegetarians%2Fvegans%20was%20health.
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