Don’t cut out crowd out
I’m not going to lie this was a teaching from a book about eating a fully plant based diet. I remain ‘almost vegetarian’ these days but lived fully Vegan for 7 years. No meat, fish, dairy, eggs or honey. What the hell do you eat ? A lot of people think.
I’ll always remember reading a book and it bringing to light the idea that often when we change (in this case our diet) we think about what is not there. As if Veganism is a plate of salad or steak and chips without the steak. Although I didn’t stick with the diet long term due to some other practicalities I can honestly say I never ran short of what to eat.
The idea here was to … crowd out what you ate before. I got books of Vegan recipes and moved from recipe to recipe and ate so much stuff to the point that any non vegan food just became totally irrelevant.
At the start for several months I remember when I’d pass different food places I’d deliberately not look at the menu as I had this inbuilt assumption I’d be craving different meat products. Over time though when I finally did look I didn’t even feel remotely tempted. I had literally just crowded out eating meat.
If you have made a decision to change something it is often a thing where we focus on the loss and there’s always something to be said for having empathy to deal with the grief but if you have ignited the part that actually wants to change and there is a feeling of empowerment associated with this it can be effective to anchor this new state to start to swamp out what was before with new stuff.
Again here you can feel the grief of what was lost but ultimately take it away by being the person you are now becoming. This more compelling, aligned, and integral you.