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Vegetarian for thirty years and rethinking the whole plate

Started 6 August 2025 · 13 replies · 130 hearts · read 1.6k times

BrynAberystwyth, UK · 6 August 2025
11 months ago

A question rather than an update: Vegetarian for thirty years and rethinking the whole plate

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

I would like practical detail rather than encouragement. What people actually do, in what order, and what goes wrong when they get it wrong.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

The number in the title is exact. Thirty years, counted from the diary, which is the only reason I can answer questions about myself at all.

If anybody has an arrangement that works and is willing to write it out, I would be very grateful.

43

TorrinAberdeen, UK
#1

What helped was two things I actually enjoy rather than five things I felt I should eat. The should list never survived a difficult week.

9

PietPretoria, ZA
#2

My experience is that this is entirely workable and needs a bit more planning, and the planning is a one-off cost rather than a daily one.

5

RenFacilitatorBristol, UK
#3

I am pleased with this thread. Practical, kind, no instructions, no comparisons. That is the whole brief.

18

MableBolton, UK
#4

I had to stop treating this as a nutritional puzzle and start treating it as a shopping problem, and it became much easier.

6me too 3

TanviMumbai, IN
#5

Picking up Ren’s point rather than starting a new one.

The soya question comes up here every few months and my dietitian was completely unbothered, which was a relief after a lot of internet noise.

8

MorayElgin, UK
#6

What I got wrong was relying on things that needed cooking. Everything that has worked is something I can eat without a decision.

9

IvesPenzance, UK
#7

My bloods have been unremarkable throughout, which I attribute mostly to a supplement I was already taking rather than anything clever.

6

CloverTotnes, UK
#8

What Ives described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I found the restaurant side harder than the home side. Two constraints at once narrows a menu considerably.

13

NoleneDurban, ZA
#9

Gently disagreeing with Ives, or rather adding the other half of it.

Coming back at two years to say it is completely routine now, that my bloods are fine, and that the planning stopped being work months ago.

7

AshwinBengaluru, IN
#10

Protein without it becoming a chore is the whole problem, and most of the advice assumes a plate I do not eat from.

9me too 9

BrynAberystwyth, UK
#11

You have described the bit that nobody warns you about.

10

RenFacilitatorBristol, UK
#12

Gently: three replies have suggested the same thing and the fourth has said it does not work for them. Both are useful and neither cancels the other.

21

PietPretoria, ZA
#13

Something that helped was accepting a repetitive week. The same four things, most weeks, and my dietitian was entirely content.

9