“You can’t go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand-new ending.”

—James R. Sherman, Rejection

Over the past decades, we’ve each seen thousands of people successfully transition to a whole foods, plant-based diet. In this chapter we’ll share some of the most valuable strategies we’ve developed and discovered for making the transition smoothly and successfully. Some of these we created ourselves; others represent best practices we’ve learned from the remarkable community of dedicated doctors, nutritionists, health coaches, and chefs who are working to promote this important shift.

Find Your Pace

The Whole Foods Diet is not a short-term cleanse or weight-loss program—it’s a lifestyle change that we hope will last you the rest of a very long and healthy lifetime. So it’s important to take the time you need to make the transition, sustainably, in the way that works best for you. A gradual, staged transition will be the most effective path for some people, while going all in, all at once might be best for others. Different personality types require different strategies. You also need to take into account your particular health circumstances, and the kind of diet and lifestyle you’re accustomed to. Most importantly, it’s what you are truly willing to do right now, whether that is reviewing the recipe section in Part III of this book, experimenting with changing your diet one day a week, or committing to following the 28-Day Eat Real Food Plan.

If you decide to stage your transition, consider a strategy like changing one daily meal each week to a whole foods, plant-based one—starting with breakfast, then lunch, then dinner. This is the strategy Alona and Matt use in The Forks over Knives Plan: How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet, and it’s worked very well for many people. Or you might focus your first week or two on eliminating processed foods and then scale down or phase out your consumption of animal foods over several weeks.

If you decide to go all in, the 28-Day Eat Real Food Plan in chapter 14 has been designed to guide and support you through four weeks of whole foods, plant-based eating.

Either way, give yourself time to adjust and have confidence that your food preferences can change—sometimes dramatically (see chapter 11). Many people assume that they will always crave certain types of salty, fatty, sugary foods—when they think about dietary changes, they imagine a lifetime of self-deprivation, not realizing that, given time to adjust, their bodies will eventually enjoy more wholesome fare. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert has written in depth about how terrible human beings are at predicting what will make them happy in the future. We spend our lives imagining and planning for what we think our future selves will like or dislike, then when we get there, we don’t feel the way we thought we would feel. Gilbert suggests that instead of putting so much faith in power of prediction, which so often turns out wrong, we should appreciate our amazing ability to adapt to the new and unexpected.

We encourage you not to spend too much time thinking about the long term at this moment. Don’t try to plan the rest of your life on the Whole Foods Diet: just think about the next week or the next month. Pick a pace you’re confident you can stick with—where you can make steady progress. You can always speed up if you gain momentum. Ideally, you will create new habits, one ritual at a time. The goal is for the ritual of eating whole plant foods three times per day to become as solidified in your life as the daily ritual of brushing your teeth or combing your hair.

Know Your Why

As with any significant shift, it’s important to be prepared. Preparation doesn’t just mean making a shopping list or buying a cookbook. As Thomas Campbell, MD, coauthor of The China Study, writes, “When you’re thinking of radically revising something as significant as your daily eating habits, it’s worth taking stock of your head and heart before jumping into the kitchen.”1 That taking stock starts with your why.

There are many reasons for embracing a lifestyle change like the Whole Foods Diet. As you prepare to make your transition, it’s important to know yours. Perhaps your doctor gave you some scary numbers, and you need to make changes before it’s too late. Maybe you are trying to lose weight and improve your general sense of vitality and well-being. Maybe you are thinking of it as upping the odds that you will be active and thriving well into your old age. A friend, a book, or a movie may have convinced you to give it a go. You may already be suffering from a chronic condition like heart disease or diabetes and want to reverse it and get off your medications. Or perhaps someone you love needs to make this transition and you’ve decided to support him or her on this journey. You could have decided for ethical reasons that you no longer want to eat animal foods.

All of these are worthy reasons to make the shift. Embrace your reason for doing so and take full responsibility for it. Even if circumstances beyond your control have brought you to this step, it’s still yours to take or not. Take time to think about the outcomes you’d like to see—not just the bad things you want to avoid, like a heart attack, but the positive things you’ll gain. Envision what you’ll do with your longer, healthier life—the grandchildren you’ll see grow up, the retirement you’ll be able to enjoy, the places in the world you may travel if you’re fit and vital into old age. Think of the athletic goals that may be in reach if you’re able to reach an ideal weight. Imagine the peace of mind you’ll feel when you establish a sustainable way of eating that doesn’t involve constant self-deprivation or struggle. All of these benefits of change are gifts to yourself when you choose to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet. Be accountable for your choice to do so. In a few weeks, you will thank yourself!

Eat Enough!

One of the most common reasons people struggle in the transition to a whole foods, plant-based diet is that they don’t eat enough. That’s right. You’re much more likely to fail from eating too little than from eating too much. Many people start out by focusing on what they shouldn’t eat and don’t give enough attention to all the good things they should be eating. Because whole plant foods are less calorie dense than highly processed foods and animal foods, you may need to eat larger portions or more frequently than you are accustomed to. Try to include as many of the Essential Eight (see chapter 10) in your everyday diet as possible, and particularly focus on starchy vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

Listen to your body, especially in the early days of your transition. If you feel hungry again only a couple hours after eating, you probably didn’t have a big enough meal or include enough satiating whole grains or starchy vegetables. If you feel satisfied and content, stop eating, but if not, eat more. There is no right or wrong time to eat, only right and wrong foods. You can now trust your hunger signals without fear of overconsuming calories. You’re no longer in a battle with your body or your cravings—so long as the only food on your plate is real food (particularly of the whole foods, plant-based variety).

Redirect Your Cravings

How do we deal with cravings? Too often, on traditional calorie-restriction diets, people resist and resist and resist, using willpower, until eventually they give in and binge. And then they feel bad. Over time, this cycle causes weight gain.

Ignoring cravings doesn’t work very well—in fact, it tends to inflame them. As Mark Twain said, “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” Don’t panic when cravings hit. Take a deep breath, then be mindful of your cravings in order to learn what particular flavors you need to include in your new diet. Challenge yourself to include them in a healthy way! This does not mean substituting broccoli for chocolate and brown rice for burgers and French fries. This does mean making veggie burgers with baked potato fries. Or mixing unsweetened cocoa, dates, avocados, and almond milk together to make chocolate pudding. The same goes for pizza, pasta, lasagna, cookies, cakes, and so on. A healthier version exists for almost all foods.

Longing for corn chips and guacamole? Make some easy, oil-free tortilla chips (see technique, here) or replace the chips with some crunchy raw vegetables. Missing your favorite ice cream? Blend up frozen fruits with cashews or unsweetened plant milk (see Raspberry Nice Cream, here), and add unsweetened cocoa if you crave chocolate. Wishing you could grab a soda on a hot day? Blend some frozen berries into a puree, then add sparkling water. It’s perfectly natural to crave the foods you’ve been accustomed to eating all your life, especially at first. This is why it’s important to build your transition around the foods you love—but in new, healthier versions.

Crowd Out

One of our favorite terms from the world of nutrition is “crowd out.” It simply means this: fill up your plate, and your stomach, with the good stuff and there won’t be much space left for anything else. Again the focus is shifted from what you shouldn’t eat—“cutting out”—to what you should eat. As Kathy Freston suggests in her entertaining and highly informative The Book of Veganish, “think of it as swapping foods out rather than ‘giving things up.’ It’ll be more fun that way! After all, you’re eliminating certain foods from your diet in order to make room for a whole new world of delicious veggies, whole grains, and other veganish treats.”²

A simple strategy for crowding out is to eat a big salad as your first course, or a big bowl of fruit at breakfast. Fill up on greens, veggies, or fruit before you move on to more calorie-dense foods.

Plan Ahead

Another important piece of advice is to make these healthier foods in advance. Don’t wait for the craving to come on—that’s not the time to start fixing things in the kitchen. Have these foods readily available whenever cravings hit. You may not know exactly what you will crave, but you can probably predict your patterns.

Doug Lisle and Alan Goldhamer explain that humans have evolved to conserve energy by taking the path of least resistance, and choosing the easiest option. Unfortunately, in contemporary America, the path of least resistance generally leads away from health and longevity. This is why it’s so critical to plan and create strategies to make healthy whole food choices easy. Remember how the Blue Zones were built on “nudges and defaults”—with the healthiest options being the most convenient ones?

If you follow the 28-Day Eat Real Food Plan, we’ve made this part easy for you. Working with a professionally designed meal plan and recipes means you’ll always know what to buy, what to cook, and what to eat—and you can be confident you are getting a rich variety of whole foods to nourish your body and meet its needs. However, we hope you’ll keep going beyond the twenty-eight days and make this a lifestyle. At some point you’ll feel confident enough to create your own meal plans built around your favorite meals and recipes (see here for guidance on how to do this).

Don’t Let Your Deal Breakers Derail You

We all have certain foods or drinks that we love above all else, and these are often the ones that come to mind the moment someone suggests a diet change. “You mean I’ll never be able to have X again?” we ask. Too often, the idea of never having X again becomes a dietary deal breaker—a reason not to change at all.

For this reason, we follow the old saying “Never say never.” Sure, if your favorite food is a highly processed, calorie-dense snack, or some form of processed meat, we don’t recommend that you include it in your diet regularly. But it’s also not worth derailing your entire transition. Turn deal breakers into allies by allowing yourself an occasional indulgence. The key is not to let them become a slippery slope back to old eating habits.

When you think about your favorite foods, ask what exactly it is that you love about them. One thing we’ve noticed is that they are often connected with meaningful occasions—pizza with buddies, ice cream with grandchildren, waffles at brunch with best friends, pizza on that long-anticipated trip to Italy with your sweetheart. Sometimes these meaningful events—family celebrations, a holiday dinner, or a special date night—are not the worst moments to indulge a little, so long as they don’t become the rule. Of course, try to choose the healthiest version of the food available at the time, but more importantly, do it consciously, take responsibility for your choice, and don’t tie yourself up in knots of guilt.

Granted, this can be tricky territory. Some find it easier if there’s a clear line between what’s in and what’s out, with no gray area. It’s up to you to know yourself and be honest about what will work for you. If you have addictive tendencies, and you know that you find it hard to know when to stop, you might be better off to ignore this strategy and keep things black and white. If you’re facing a life-threatening illness, like cancer or heart disease, you may not be able to afford much deviation from a whole foods, plant-based diet. If you crave salty, fatty, or sugary foods, you may find it helpful to leave those out of your diet completely for a period of time until your palate has adapted to the subtler flavors of real food (more on this in chapter 11). However, if you want to make the transition but you’re worried about never having that favorite food again, take the never out of the equation and see whether it helps you move ahead.

It’s far better to change your diet while making room for your deal breaker than not make the change at all. We encourage people to write their deal breakers on a piece of paper and then take them off the table. Don’t worry about it anymore. Focus on all the other meals and occasions, and after some time you may be surprised to discover that your deal breaker is not nearly as important as it used to be. In the end, what matters is what you do most of the time, not the small exceptions you might make for a special moment.

Eating Well When Eating Out

Eating a whole foods, plant-based diet at home can be a challenge at first, but once you have your systems in place it will quickly become much easier. The next frontier, for many people, is eating out. It’s not always easy to eat well at restaurants, but it can be done, especially if you plan. Here are some tips to navigate meals away from home:

Choose the restaurant. Make sure you have a say in the decision if at all possible. If you’ve done your homework on local restaurants, you should be able to suggest several options for your dining companions to choose among.

Know your best bets. A traditional American steak house might not be first in line. Asian restaurants in particular often have many plant-based options and are usually happy to make rice and steamed vegetables with oil-free sauces, with a little direction. Mexican restaurants offer rice and beans (but choose whole beans over refried ones, which are often cooked with lard, and soft, not fried, corn tortillas). Add salsa fresca, sliced avocado, and a couple of corn tortillas and you have a satisfying Whole Foodie meal. Try Thai, Indian, or Ethiopian food. If you do visit a meat-oriented restaurant like a steak house or seafood place, see what you can do with salads and vegetable sides (often baked potatoes are available). Or, if you eat animal foods, this might be the time to eat your 10% (or less) portion.

Plan ahead. When possible, look at the menu online before visiting, or give the restaurant a call and ask whether it can accommodate your needs.

Crowd out before you leave the house. If you’re not choosing the restaurant—for example, if a friend invites you for a birthday dinner at a place you know has very few options—fill up first with a green smoothie, some leftovers, or a quick and easy whole foods, plant-based meal, then order a salad at the restaurant with balsamic vinegar as dressing. And if you choose to indulge, at least your full stomach will deter you from eating too much.

Be aware of hidden ingredients. This is particularly important if you’re trying to eat 100% plant-based foods. You’ll want to ask about chicken broth in vegetable soups, lard in beans, butter in rice, and fish stock or fish sauce in many Asian dishes.

Get creative. You may feel uncomfortable asking a chef to create something entirely new for you, but it’s OK to get creative with what’s already on the menu. You might be surprised how many chefs, when asked nicely, will be happy to help you meet your dietary needs. It is often easier to tell them what you can eat instead of what you can’t, so feel free to give a little more guidance if you feel comfortable doing so. Ask for vegetables steamed rather than sautéed. Order a combination of sides and appetizers if there is no plant-based entrée. Be sure to check out the sides that come with the entrées—sometimes these are not listed under “sides,” but the waiter will happily bring them if you ask. Or see if there’s a sauce on another dish—a marinara, for example—that you could request with steamed veggies or a baked potato. When ordering a salad, ask for dressing on the side or request a bottle of vinegar or a lemon wedge so you can dress it yourself without oil. Soups can sometimes make great sauces.

Don’t be afraid to ask! The staff might say no, but even if they do, you’ve made them better aware of the needs of people like you. Not only are you standing up for your own health, you’re also doing a service to others. The more a restaurant gets asked for healthy, plant-based options, the more likely it is to start adding them to the menu.

Do your best. You may not be able to perfectly adhere to your diet outside your own kitchen, but if you don’t eat out often, rest easy knowing you’ve done what you can and you’ll do even better the next day when you cook for yourself. If you eat “off the plan” because that was the best you could do, it’s not a big deal. But it’s important to know yourself and be honest about your motivations. If you feel deprived and choose to eat out as an excuse to satisfy your cravings, while justifying it to yourself as your only option, then you may need to reevaluate how you’re approaching the changes you want to make. Maybe you’re going too fast. Maybe you’re not eating enough. Maybe you need to expand your repertoire and find better ways to satisfy cravings with healthier versions of the foods you love.

Prepare Your Family and Friends—But Don’t Try to Convert Them!

When we talk to people who are contemplating making a significant diet and lifestyle change, two of the most common concerns we hear are “What will my friends and family think?” and “How will I manage in social situations where everyone else is eating foods I no longer choose to eat?” Food plays a central role in social gatherings, whether it’s a Sunday roast dinner with family, burgers with the guys after the game, pizza with the kids, or a weekly brunch with girlfriends. People bond over the shared pleasure of eating, just as humans have done since the dawn of time, and we fear that if we change our eating habits we’ll damage those bonds.

These social connections, besides being a source of joy and happiness, are essential to well-being. A meta-analysis of 148 studies shows that the quality and quantity of individuals’ social relationships are linked not only to mental health but also to morbidity and mortality.3 So if you’re changing your diet and lifestyle in order to improve your health, the last thing you want that change to do is damage your social connections. It doesn’t have to, provided you take care in how you tell your friends about your lifestyle change.

The good news is that plant-based diets are becoming more common and socially acceptable. Your friends might not bat an eyelid when you tell them what you’re doing. They may be supportive, surprised, confused, or disbelieving. Worst-case scenario, they may make fun of you or try to change your mind.

Dr. Popper has valuable advice for these moments. “People make it much harder for themselves by thinking they have to convert everyone around them,”⁴ she says. Although it’s understandable that you might want them to, your family and friends don’t have to make the shift with you. You can invite them to join you, but if they don’t want to, don’t waste your energy being an evangelist. Focus on changing your own habits (and sustaining your newer, healthier ones) and you may naturally inspire others around you to do the same. People don’t like feeling pressured or shamed.

Anticipate that some people may feel threatened by your choices, even if you’re not trying to convert them. Doug Lisle explains that when people hear that someone else is doing something different and “healthier,” they experience it as a threat to their status. You may not be criticizing their choices or overtly saying that yours are better, but nevertheless they feel judged (or judge themselves when they see your new choices) and can take your changes personally. Lisle warns that this may manifest itself in their trying to undermine you and tempt you to eat something you’ve said you don’t want. Or it may lead to ridicule, sarcasm, or teasing. Understanding where these behaviors come from won’t make them any more fun to deal with, but it will help you to avoid exacerbating them and give you the strength not to succumb to peer pressure.

Changing your own diet and lifestyle is one thing, but where many people balk is at the idea that we have to change our families too. “How am I ever going to get my kids to eat kale?” “My kids are picky enough already—they’ll just stop eating!” Matt and Alona deal with these questions every day—as parents and as the authors of Forks over Knives Family: Every Parent’s Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy Kids on a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet. Their advice? “At least half the battle is overcoming the false perception that the whole food, plant-based diet is hard and centered on lousy food. The best way to do that is to experience the reality, which is that living this way is all about delicious food shared and eaten together.”5

Here are a few of their favorite tips from Forks over Knives Family to create Whole Foodie homes:

“Learn together and have fun—Take the burden off yourself to be the sole purveyor of information about whole food, plant based living by bringing in outside sources and inviting your whole family to join the discussion.”⁶

“Try the gradual approach and be flexible—Many people successfully implement the lifestyle when they take it slowly.… Success with the gradual approach depends on maintaining an open attitude toward the people in your family you’re bringing along.”⁷

“Establish new family habits—To reinforce the idea that you can implement new, better habits together, introduce some that you all agree to observe—like picking a vegetable or two you’ll eat this week.”⁸

“Find a pace that’s comfortable for you and your family—Your goal is to make changes that last a lifetime, so carefully assess and be mindful of what personalities in your house can accommodate. Don’t let that hinder your personal goals, if you want to move faster for yourself.”⁹

Get Support

If you live alone, or if your partner or family is not making the transition with you, it is essential that you find support on the journey. Almost every one of the doctors and nutritionists we spoke to while writing this book cited support as a factor that is critical to the success or failure of this kind of transition. It makes all the difference when you have other people to talk to about the changes you’re making, the challenges you’re facing, the strategies that work for you, and the new favorite foods you’re discovering.

You might get this support from a medical professional, a health coach, or a nutritionist. You might also seek out a support group in your area—through your doctor, community wellness program, church group, vegetarian society, or similar resource. You can also try online support groups, of which there are many. Or you could create your own.

If you have like-minded friends who live close by, extend this support into the practical realm by arranging to share dinners on a rotating basis. If you’re already cooking for yourself it’s simple to cook for a few more, then you receive the benefit of a couple nights off when friends cook for you. You don’t have to eat together for this to work—simply prepare the food to be delivered or picked up.

It’s important to tell your family and social circle about what you’re doing and why, in order to enlist them as allies. Dr. Popper recommends making two requests of family and friends with whom you regularly eat. “First, please don’t encourage me to eat these things that are no longer part of my diet. And second, if you see me reaching for them, call me on it.”10

Recruit Your Doctor to Your Team

Before you begin your transition, talk to your healthcare provider and tell him or her what you are planning to do and why. If you are on any medications to manage a current condition, you should talk about how these might be affected. Switching to a whole foods, plant-based diet can have highly positive effects in a short time, so your doctor may need to adjust the dosage of your medications accordingly (especially medications to lower blood pressure and blood sugar) because you could quickly become overmedicated. Request a full blood workup before you begin so you can monitor changes in your cholesterol numbers and other important indicators of success. If your doctor is not supportive of your choice and seems reluctant to work with you on it, you may want to consider finding a more sympathetic ally for your journey. Your doctor does not have to become an expert in plant-based eating, but it is important that he or she is encouraging and does not try to convince you that it is unhealthy. Most importantly, find a doctor who knows how to manage medical conditions (if you have any) while also supporting a whole foods, plant-based diet. We have yet to encounter a patient who could not follow a whole foods, plant-based diet because of some medical contraindication. However, once in a while we hear from patients who were told by their doctor that a whole foods, plant-based diet was unsafe for their medical condition. Before conforming to what that doctor says, it would behoove you to get a second opinion from a physician familiar with supporting patients on a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Food Journaling

For some people, keeping a food journal can be useful during the transition to a new dietary pattern. Its purpose is simply to keep you mindful of what you eat or help you and/or your doctor identify areas that may need tweaking if you do not get the health results you think you should. Write down exactly what you ate, including snacks and beverages, and also write down how you feel before, during, and after. How hungry were you before you ate? How satisfied were you afterward? What other feelings do you notice? You may also want to make a note of how you feel at the beginning and end of the day. Are you exhausted when you fall into bed? How well do you sleep? Do you wake feeling rested and energized, or sluggish and groggy? Lastly, note any physical sensations such as digestive trouble, heartburn, or headaches.

Look back over your journal once a week and see what you can learn for the future. If you become stuck with weight loss, you feel constantly hungry, or you have sensitivity to certain foods, your journal can help you decode the problem and come up with a strategy. It may also help you notice when you’re comfort eating, and identify unmet needs so you can find better ways to respond. If you binge in the late afternoon, it might be because you’re experiencing caffeine withdrawal as you move further away from a morning cup of coffee. You might be trying to satisfy that craving with food, but cutting out the coffee and the resulting withdrawal might be a better solution for some people. If you work with a nutritionist, health coach, or doctor, this journal will be an important tool to help that person help you.

Keep It Simple!

If you thrive on novelty and love to be creative in the kitchen, by all means entertain yourself with elaborate new meals. But if you’re pressed for time, or simply have other priorities, you don’t need to become a gourmet chef or eat overly complicated meals to be a happy, healthy Whole Foodie.

When you find something you like, eat it often. We sometimes eat the same meals on weeknights for several weeks until we get bored and then we change it up. We tend to be more creative on weekends. Cycle through your favorites and just try something new when you feel the need for a change. You may decide to eat the same thing for breakfast every day, and rotate through three lunch options and five dinners. If they work for you, that’s perfectly fine.

Ease is something we could all use more of in the midst of our busy lives. So don’t make your diet overly complicated, especially when it’s new. Get the basics right, learn to cook a few meals you love, and eat plenty of them. Don’t worry about the minutiae of how this or that food should be eaten. If you worry about whether you should eat kale raw or cooked, or whether potatoes should be boiled or baked, you can find plenty of people online who will argue passionately one way or another. Our advice to you is: just eat whole plant foods! Choose the way it tastes best to you and enjoy it. Once you become accustomed to the whole foods, plant-based lifestyle, you may choose to study the details of creative food preparation techniques but when you’re just starting out, keep it simple.

CHAPTER 12

Making the Shift

Proven Strategies for Successful Transitions

Find Your Pace

Know Your Why

WHOLE FOODIE HERO

Eat Enough!

Redirect Your Cravings

Crowd Out

Plan Ahead

WHOLE FOODIE HERO

Three-Stage Eating

Don’t Let Your Deal Breakers Derail You

Eating Well When Eating Out

Forks on the Road: Whole Foodie Travel Tips

Prepare Your Family and Friends—But Don’t Try to Convert Them!

Transitioning with Your Family

Get Support

Recruit Your Doctor to Your Team

MY WHOLE FOODIE STORY

Food Journaling

WHOLE FOODIE HERO

Keep It Simple!