Can anyone give a newbie vegan some advice?

Where to start!

I'd love to spend ages giving you a million recipes, but I'll leave that to someone else (or ill give them to you later ). I'd rather comment on how to explain to people.

One thing I find odd is that people ask us why we don't eat meat while we rarely ask them why they ARE eating meat.

Anyway..you need to have a FIRM understanding of why you are doing it. Is it for ethical reasons, ecological reasons (lowering your carbon footprint), personal health reasons or because you don't want to contribute to the massive overuse of antibiotics (and thus the rapid evolution of scary antibiotic resistant microbes!)?

For me, it's all of these. But for the sake of explaining to relatives/other questioners, just choose the thing that resonates most with you. Use one or two examples of your argument eg. the cramped nature of housing of all factory farmed animals, the slaughter/treatment techniques used on animals (eg. chickens dunked into electrofied water or that male chicks are ground-up alive because they are seen as useless... it sickens me to just think of that).

If it's for ecological reasons you could talk about how much water animals use compared to just growing the grain and eating it ourselves.. or how being vegan is more eco-friendly than driving a hybrid.. etc etc

Lastly, if you get the argument "well you're not going to make a difference", just say it works exactly the same as democracy, except it's voting with your knife and fork. Over a million aussies are at least vegetarian.. so 1 in 20 is a pretty big vote. That's almost twice the vote that the Greens got in the last election.

Lastly, remember to be gracious and remain calm. No one likes a scary, intimidating vegan. I'd be nice to recruit more, rather than scare them off lol.

Enjoy your totally cruelty-free meal times. Welcome aboard!

Hello
Haha well I've already started getting creative with my recipes!
There are endless amazing vegan recipes out there its crazy!

Exacccctly right! It dosnt make any sense does it ?!

Oh gosh , endless reasons - I am strongly against the way animals are exploited and used as machines just for human consumption, ( both in the egg, dairy and meat industry)
As every other vegan would be of course!

Also to reduce my carbon footprint, ive always loved the environment and will do as much as I possibly can to do my bit!
and I just feel (being an animal lover) vegetarian did not do myself justice- So i felt changing my lifestyle completely and not using or consuming anything associated with living beings was the way to go

Oh gosh I know exactly how you feel- Okay I understand you
I will remain calm and not loose my focus, last thing I want is to make a bad impression on vegans!
Well I am the only vegan in my family (unfortunately) and have to put up with what they consume, sickens me each time they consume an animal, consume dairy eggs.. etc...

But I must say they have greatly reduced the meat,chicken and fish they consume- I always give alternatives to animal products- I guess thats a start to changing my families mind?!

Thankyou so much for your advice ! - I will definately be telling more people how great a vegan lifestyle is !

No problems!

It's great to see that they are consuming less meat and animal products because of you. I have to keep it in the forefront of my mind also, but we have to remember the best way to change people is through education. Eventually, if your family understands all the benefits (mention the China Study.. largest nutritional study ever done) they are likely to be on board with you.

When more people work together, its easy. It's only when you are trying to do everything yourself, like cooking, buying new products/clothes etc that it is hard. Just imagine if your whole family was vegan. Everyone keeps up to date with new products that come out, new restaurants and you can share the shopping duties knowing that someone wont fill the fridge with eggs and dairy. And when it comes time to cook..the more ideas and hands on deck, the better!

Keep up your positivity and research

Hey That's awesome news! I'm sure you'll find the transition to vegan living easy as. You can find some tips here which might help http://www.unleashed.org.au/change_the_world/go_veg/how_to_tips.php

Oh, and I hope you like talking to unqualified nutritionists ... because you're going to meet a lot of them when you tell people you're vegan  

Congratulations! I won't give you any advice because you seem like you've got it figured out. All I'll say is that while it may feel overwhelming and like it's a huge change, it's so easy. Your body will thank you for it.

oh yes.. the unqualified nutritionists! ... even the semi-qualified and even entirely qualified nutritionists may have a dig. You might want to keep a copy of the China Study with you as your silver bullet or get really good at remembering facts, figures and working on your public speaking haha. It will definitely strengthen your character!