If you’d like to learn more about how to cultivate the mindset of plant-based, I feel like I could help here because I made the transition without too much fuss. I’ll cover what I’ve done that made it easier to go this route. Plant-based is different from veganism in that you still eat some animal-based products, but much of your diet consists of plant-based foods.
The lion’s share of what you eat is fruits and vegetables, which for some people can be easier than going full-blown vegan. You can start out plant-based and slowly go more vegan with time if that’s what you want.
I’ve been plant-based for about a year now, and I honestly haven’t had all that much difficulty doing it, but some people may struggle with it more. That’s why I’d like to speak about the mindset that makes it easier to transition to a plant-based diet.
Key Takeaways
Discipline Matters Less Than Having Fun
Instead of coming at the plant-based lifestyle with a mindset of discipline, I’d advise a different approach—fun. Having fun will change your relationship with the plant-based lifestyle from a negative one to a positive one. While discipline may be necessary to a degree, it isn’t the end all, be all.
Discipline will never give you the mindset you need to sustain this long-term, and if you do, you won’t love it. I’ve never once practiced discipline going plant-based—everything I’ve eaten, I either enjoyed it or I didn’t eat it.
Think of the tasty vegan foods you’d eat at a coffee shop. Does it require discipline to eat them? That was probably even what subconsciously inspired me to become more plant-based was those delicious vegan foods I kept eating at coffee shops, along with this desire to become healthier.
When I first started, I ate a lot of vegan sandwich wraps and vegan pizzas, or I’d eat vegan quesadillas. I would purposely hunt for plant-based foods that would be fun to eat. If you have fun, you’ll stick to it because you won’t feel like you need to push through negative emotions.
Atomic Habits author James Clear speaks about how you start a habit. You start with something easier and less difficult because it requires less discipline to stay consistent.
For example, if you want to do pushups daily, you start with a single pushup. That might sound absolutely outrageous (it did to me), but over time, the habit takes root, and it requires less discipline to evolve into something more serious like eventually aiming for 50 pushups per day.
I’ve experienced this firsthand where it looked impossible in the beginning and over time, I couldn’t believe how far I’d come because I kept evolving the habit into something bigger.
“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”
— James Clear from Atomic Habits
Don't Give up if You Fail, Just Relax
The plant-based diet is hard to fail at because it allows you to eat animal-based products to an extent, but most of what you eat should be plant-based foods.
Sometimes, they call this the flexitarian diet. Going plant-based gives you a friendlier mindset as a beginner because it gives you permission to fail. You don’t need to perfectly eat vegetables to succeed at it.
If you go full vegan and you eat meat, for example, you will feel depressed because you failed. With the plant-based mindset, you can eat meat and still come back to eating plants without failing. Failure is fine as long as you keep coming back to the plant-based lifestyle.
I would argue that goes for veganism, too, if you’re just learning it. Don’t worry about failure. Keep trying until you can do it without eating meat. No judgment because it's harder for some than others.
This allowance of failure is important because you may have never tried this lifestyle before. Failing is a natural part of the process, and if you beat yourself up too much over it, you might give up altogether. When you fail, it isn’t permanent.
Some of the most harmful mindsets that create a rigid and inflexible mindset include:
Connect Yourself to a Well-Intentioned Purpose for Going Plant-Based
Having a purpose behind your plant-based diet will give you the mindset to succeed.
I like being plant-based because it improves my health. In a study published in the European Heart Journal, researchers looked at 30 randomized trials with 2,372 participants between 1982 and 2022. What they found was it lowered the risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, obesity, depression, high blood pressure, and frailty in older adults.
You can use the plant-based diet to connect yourself to a higher purpose to ease following through with it and get through the hard times you might experience with it. Enjoy the process as much as you can.
What can life [I] offer me [life]?
— Unknown
FINAL THOUGHTS
The right mindset for the plant-based diet sets the foundation for you to succeed over the long term. I would argue a mindset of fun for the plant-based diet sets you up for success because it starts your relationship out as something positive.
You’ll last longer doing it than with discipline, and you’ll have more fun. I know not everyone’s experience will be the same, but try having fun with how you do it to make it easier. That’s the best mindset if you want to keep it going.
After having gone a full year on the plant-based diet, it hasn’t been impossible to keep going. Taking a fun approach changes your relationship to the plant-based lifestyle from one that requires stony discipline to one where you form a more positive relationship. For me, that mindset has been essential in helping me to stick to the plant-based lifestyle.
