Quote:
Originally Posted by Amandaaa  (actually, on second thought, i really like Erin's ideas: Quote: |
Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina At events, I like to contact the catering manager directly and ask for a vegan meal. I make a simple request like a fruit plate or grilled veggies in just oil.
[...]
go up to the person in charge of ordering for the event and say, "Hi Mary, as you know I'm vegan. I was wondering if you were planning to order anything for this event that I'll be able to eat. If not, I'll just plan to bring my own food or eat before I come. I just wanted to find out the situation in advance. |
...i guess sometimes it is a good thing to speak up! 
and maybe if they see that there's a higher demand for vegan food, they'll start providing more options, and it'll become more widespread. ) |
I've been vegan for over a year now, and I'm still going great. It's much easier then it was when I started. I originally thought the diet would be difficult to maintain, but it's more of a slump of lessons you have to learn, and once you've learned them, you're more equipped so it's easier.
In actually done both of the things Erin's describes, and everything worked out fine. In fact, I was actually pretty pleased with a vegan meal that was made for me by a catering service at a local RSL.
So long as you're dealing with reasonable people, you won't really have any problems (or so I find). Unreasonable people who have resistance to your diet choice can cause problems, but you eventually learn to avoid them. At first you may think that they are resisting you, but their resistance is really they're own and you're just acting as someone they can project onto. It's not pleasant, but people will be people.
You'll still find them people who don't support your diet choice, but you learn to live in harmony with them more effectively with experience. Before I didn't know what *I* had to do to do this (you expect people to act the same as they always do -- reasonable -- but alas, sometimes they don't), so encountering such people was unpleasant, but now it's fine.
Be aware that
you are the one who has to make a change in yourself usually. That said, I've since found that a lot of people who were previously resistant to my vegan diet have either (A) accepted that "ok, he's serious, my protest won't really do anything so I won't bother", or (B) started to take a few lessons from me by dropping things like milk. Oh, the irony.
Do be aware that you have to take a lot more responsibility as a vegan because the world doesn't really cater to you any more, but it's part of the territory. At least it's good that most people these days actually know what a vegan is.
If I was to offer some simple advice to people going vegan, it would be this:
Enjoy the positive reports people often share about the diet, but understand that they often don't share the full story (ie. they may leave out info about their transition phase), and you won't always experience the same results they get. Be prepared to have your own unique experiences, and even if things seem difficult at first, hang in there -- you'll learn a lot from experience, so the more you stick with it, the better equipped you'll be.
Ultimately though, hold true to your intention for trying out veganism and don't let the pro- or anti-vegan hype impact your vision. Intelligently consider information from all sources, but do be aware of who is giving you the information (ie. where it came from), and try to see the whole picture instead of just the attractive (or sometimes, negative) fragments of information.