Reflections on a failed Veganuary

The first quarter of the year is often littered with expectations for change. I wonder how many of us have stuck to those New Year’s Resolutions we so firmly believed could be sustained for once, who managed to complete dry January (without the free pass for that birthday party, the late New Years do and a much needed girl’s night), and if anyone really feels better for any of it! One of the most popular resolutions of recent years has been participating in ‘Veganuary’: a month of no meat, no dairy, no animal products at all, and no hope of completion unless meticulously planned and approached with great vigour. 

The Veganuary Challenge was created by Matthew Glover as part of the UK non-profit organisation, ‘Veganuary’, with the aim of helping people to consider the impacts of their food choices on a number of platforms and encourage them to switch to more ‘compassionate’ choices going forward. The challenge boasts that a vegan lifestyle can be a step towards ending animal farming, protecting the planet, and improving personal health. With such grand promises and rewarding results, both on a personal and societal level, why do so many people fail to maintain these changes for a month, let alone a lifetime? This article will seek to breakdown what makes the prospect of going vegan daunting for so many of us and what changes you can make to set yourself up for a successful rebound. 

1. Set a specific goal

The first step when approaching any change should be understanding why you feel the need to do it. Regarding Veganuary, the challenge establishes three reasons why people should take part, but not every individual will resonate with each of those reasons. Pick one. Whether you want to go vegan for your health, the environment, animal cruelty or just to see if you can do it, choose one aim for yourself and stick to it! Research the reasons why you are giving up animal products and consider if the results will be a personal reward or a step towards social change beyond yourself. Understanding why you are taking something on and who will benefit from it is a crucial first step for long-lasting change. Setting a specific goal and investing yourself in it is more likely to produce motivation and drive than simply doing the challenge because ‘it’s the right thing to do’.

2. Think about why you failed

Switching to a vegan lifestyle encompasses a range of daily changes. This multitude of opportunities for setbacks is part of what makes Veganuary so intimidating for many. But just as the reasons why you should embark on the challenge should be specific, reflecting on the reasons why you struggled should also be broken down into clear cut, definite categories. Was your diet mundane and bland? Did you incorporate enough variety into your meal plan? Did you enter into the challenge with an ‘all or nothing approach’? Did you choose vegan foods which exceeded your monthly budget? Were you hungry and craving protein? Establish exactly which hurdles you couldn’t overcome (but also which ones you triumphed over), research how to tackle them and equip yourself appropriately. Whether this means cooking vegan meals from scratch rather than eating out, investing in a vegan cookbook or researching forms of plant-based protein, a more tailored approach to addressing failures is crucial. 

3. Breakdown the steps to sustainable eating

After establishing why you want to try a vegan lifestyle, be it for a month or longer, and reflecting upon why you struggled in the past, create a step-by-step list of changes. Consider your individual goal as an ultimate aim, with the act of going vegan being the process of getting there, rather than completing Veganuary itself being the end goal. Break down the process of going vegan into smaller sub-ultimate goals to create a series of steps for you to follow. Use the areas you found easier or were successful in before as starting blocks, whether that’s simply using plant based milk rather than animal milk or cutting out a particular form of meat from your diet, and add one more change every two to three weeks. The changes you make should increase with difficulty over time so that Veganuary becomes a process, establishing foundations first and building on top of it, rather than a haphazard, unyielding challenge. Approach a vegan lifestyle like how you would weight training; start off light and add more and more weight over time as your body grows stronger rather than trying to lift a new world record in your first session!

With the end of February approaching and Spring around the corner, many of us will be pondering what our achievement for Lent can be this year, but before taking on another crusade to abolish all animal products from sight for another month, maybe consider the period as a step towards establishing changes that may actually last for once!