With the right tools and tricks, a plant-based diet is incredibly rewarding, fulfilling, and of course, delicious. For many of us though, making or maintaining the transition to this lifestyle can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re looking to go fully vegan, work through a rough patch in your vegan or vegetarian diet, or merely cut back on your animal product intake, there’s a great deal to be learned from the many folks out there who have been able to happily and healthfully maintain a vegan or vegetarian diet for years or even decades. Emulate these five habits of successful vegans, and you’ll be on your way to a lifetime of nutritious, cruelty-free eating. Advertisement They base their diets on whole foods, rather than faux meats.

Nowadays, most supermarkets are full of a wide array of highly proccessed faux meats that often bear an uncanny resemblance to the real thing. Thanks to hyper-processed proteins developed after years of lab research, these products look, smell, taste, and cook up so much like animal meat that it’s easy to simply swap them in for the chicken, beef, or pork in your diet without batting an eye.

Take a look at any of the most popular vegan food blogs or cookbooks, though, and you won’t find many of these ersatz products making an appearance. Why not? Because the majority of long-term vegans don’t eat them often, if ever.

Sure, being able to eat something familiar can be very comforting at the beginning of your plant-based journey, but centering meals on substitutes continues to reinforce the outdated idea that animal products should be a central part of our diet, and that a vegan diet is inherently missing something.

Long term vegans instead develop a love of vegetables and healthy, minimally processed plant proteins like tofu, tempeh, seitan, legumes, and beans that are delicious and nutritious in their own right. Advertisement They eat a diverse range of foods from all over the world.