If you're anything like me, you've been hearing about the health and environmental benefits of a vegan lifestyle for years now. Although I've been intrigued by the thought of limiting my carbon footprint and improving my well-being by eating fewer animal products, it's also been difficult to picture a life without cheese. As more of us go vegan, though, the choices in my local grocery store have expanded exponentially, making it easier than ever to embrace this healthy lifestyle. If you're ready to get on board, try these eight baby steps toward eliminating meat, dairy and other animal products from your diet.

Save It for Dinner

If you usually eat meat throughout the day, consider limiting poultry, red meat and fish to dinner only. Doing so will immediately reduce your consumption of animal products, especially if you go completely vegan for breakfast, lunch and daytime snacks.

Plan One Vegan Meal a Week

Have you heard of Meatless Mondays? After successfully removing meat and dairy from your daytime meals, try making one dinner each week that's completely free of animal products. It doesn't have to be Monday, of course, but swapping out one or two entrees a week for a plant-based alternative will boost your health and get you one step further to a completely vegan lifestyle. This step will also build your repertoire of delicious vegan recipes.

Take It One Product at a Time

Try switching just one of your normal dairy or meat staples for a vegan alternative. For example, buy margarine or a coconut oil spread instead of butter next time you go to the store or replace your typical 2% milk with a soy, almond or even rice variety. You'll get a chance to try an array of vegan products and even find some new favorites to add to your regular rotation. Next time you buy groceries, make a second swap and so on.

Add Instead of Subtract

Don't think of a lifestyle change as taking things away from your diet. Instead, try new foods and vegan favorites to naturally expand your horizons without the feeling of deprivation. Look for recipes that take advantage of fruits, veggies, nuts, grains, seeds, tofu and beans. The more comfortable you become with these staples, the easier it will be to nourish your family without animal products.

Get Enough Nutrients

Whether you primarily eat fresh produce and other whole foods or you also incorporate packaged items, check your diet against the recommended nutritional information for a person of your age, gender and health status. If you find you don't get enough of a certain vitamin or mineral, ask your doctor about adding a supplement to your daily routine.

Keep a Journal

Tracking your diet as you transition to eating fewer animal products can help you see the benefits of this lifestyle change. Have you been losing weight? Noticing more stamina during your workouts? Sleeping better? Feeling more positive? Documenting these items will provide motivation to keep going in your quest for a healthier, happier you.

Reach for Resources

With so many books, blogs and recipes at our fingertips online, it's never been easier to get the knowledge you need to go vegan. You can even order food, supplements and ingredients online, which is especially helpful in communities with limited grocery options.

Eat at Home

If your favorite restaurant is the local steakhouse and your go-to lunch is a pepperoni pizza, break the meat and dairy habit by preparing most of your meals at home. You'll save a significant amount of money while eliminating the temptation to stray from your vegan journey.

Changing your diet for the better, whether that means going completely vegan, eliminating meat or being more aware of the animal products you consume, is a major lifestyle change. These smaller goals can get you on the right track for a nutritional overhaul that's good for the Earth, too.

You've heard all the hype about meal prep, right? It's the latest Sunday afternoon craze. You plan and prep a bunch of meals and either pop them in the freezer or portion them into small containers so that you have something to eat all week. Sounds like a perfect world. If all that sounds like too much work, but you're still stressing over what to make for dinner when six o'clock rolls around, I have news for you: 

Meal prep can be as straightforward or as complicated as you want. You can easily make meal prep work for you, according to your habits, preferences, and cooking skills. Here's the super simple formula:

Start With a Grain (or Grain Substitute)

Whether you're interested in prepping more lunches or more dinners, create the foundation by cooking up some grains. If you're into rice, pasta, or polenta, start there. If you're looking for keto-friendly, low-carb alternatives, try zoodles (you know; zucchini noodles), quinoa, cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash, or something along those lines.

Cook enough of this base food to last most of the week. The key here is to season a bit, but not too specifically. You want this one grain to stretch over several different meals, all with different flavor profiles. So if you plan to have the rice with refried beans one night, baked chicken another night, and curry every day for lunch, it needs to have a generic seasoning when you first make it. Try cooking it in chicken broth, vegetable stock, or just salted water.

Add a Protein

You probably know the drill already: pick your favorite protein (or two) cook up a big batch of it, and don't season it too much at the beginning. If you've been cooking for yourself for a while, you already know what you like and how to cook it. The biggest difference between meal prep Sunday and any other day of the week is how many portions you decide to cook.

If you're having trouble deciding how many different proteins to prep, think about what you could make with just your favorite one. For example, if you like chicken, you could make a roast chicken and potatoes meal, chicken tacos, chicken soup, and so on. Then add one more favorite protein. Do you like beans? Cook them with just a little salt or broth, and you can add chili powder and cumin for taco night, meat and sauce for chili night, and so on. Get creative if you want, or stick to your same-old, same-old. Whatever works for you.

Don't Forget Your Veggies

Veggies are important! Don't leave them out. For vegetables you plan to eat fresh, such as in a salad, it's best to chop and dice only a few days' worth at a time. For veggies you want to cook ahead, think about how you can streamline the process. Could you roast some onions and squash at the same time that you're baking a chicken? Great! Let your oven do double-duty.

Bonus: Tools of the (Meal Prep) Trade

The beauty of meal prep is that you can ease into it with whatever tools you already have. However, if you want to make big-batch cooking easier on yourself, you might want to invest in a few big-batch cooking tools:

If you're anything like me, a good bowl of yogurt and granola is a form of comfort for you. It's just so satisfying! Although granola can be full of nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, it also contains a lot of calories, a lot of carbs, and often a lot of added sugar. There is hope, though!
The good news is that you can build the perfect granola bowl, no matter what eating style you follow. With a few tweaks to a classic recipe, you can enjoy this fun comfort food without feeling like you're cheating!

1. The Perfect Keto Granola Bowl

A typical serving (six ounces) of full-fat plain Greek yogurt only has around seven or eight grams of carbs, start with that. Make sure it's plain, though, because once they start adding flavors and sweeteners, it all goes downhill. The next step is to add some grain-free granola, which you can find at natural foods stores and many mainstream grocery stores. If you want to make your own grain-free granola, try using egg whites, butter, and flax meal as a binder, since you won't be adding sugar to get all the yummy nuts and seeds to stick together. Monk fruit extract works great as a sweetener in this recipe, as long as you remember that it can be up to 200 times sweeter than sugar, so don't add too much.

2. The Perfect Gluten-Free Granola Bowl

It's easy to make a gluten-free granola bowl, even if you can't find pre-packaged gluten-free granola. All you need to do is use your favorite granola recipe and make sure you use gluten-free oats, which are pretty easy to find at large grocery stores. Just make sure to read the labels of the other ingredients you use, including the yogurt. (Note: Oats do not naturally contain the type of gluten that you'd find in wheat and barley, but they can sometimes be cross-contaminated in processing and packaging. That's why you need to look for "gluten-free oats.")

3. The Perfect Vegan Granola Bowl

One of the great things about this modern age is that vegan yogurt is everywhere now. You don't have to make it yourself anymore unless you want to. Although there are several different types out there, vegan coconut yogurt is the one I see most often at the supermarket. Vegan granola is pretty easy to find, too, since dairy and honey are usually the only animal products in most brands of granola, and they're easy to spot on an ingredients list. You could always opt to make your own granola and use a different liquid sweetener, like maple or agave syrup, if your recipe calls for honey.

4. The Perfect Raw Food Granola Bowl

Because it's fermented, yogurt is generally considered to count as raw food, so choose your favorite and go with it. To make raw granola, you can combine lots of nuts and seeds with chopped dates, cinnamon, and other spices (with or without oats), and process in a food processor. Ta-da!
So there you have it: the perfect granola bowl, customized for four different popular diets!