Lifestyle changes are the hardest ones to make and one of the biggest lifestyle alterations that anyone can attempt voluntarily is to become a vegetarian. Often individuals find it more comfortable to become part of a support group whilst making lifestyle alterations; think of Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers or giving up smoking. Joining a support group can help the beginner vegetarian too.
The advantages of being a member of such a support group are many, but some of them are encouragement, advice and friendship. You may not need the friendship, but you might like to socialize with other vegetarians so that you can see how they deal with eating out and basically simply mixing into a society designed by and for meat-eaters.
However, whether you propose giving up your old friends or not, you may find yourself gravitating away from them after a while quite naturally. Remember the old expression: ‘Birds of a feather flock together’? This is fairly standard.
You will have concerns substituting something else for meat; you will become worried that your diet is deficient in some nutrient; you will start wondering which restaurants serve truly vegetarian food and plenty more.
Your newly found support group friends will be a immense source of encouragement and advice in this sphere. You may not like the notion of a ‘vegetarian support group’, yet you could just as easily join a vegetarian dining club or vegetarian cookery class, the effect will work out the same - you will learn and you will make new acquaintances.
If you have difficulty locating such a group by the normal methods of your local Yellow Pages and an Internet search, try going to the local community centre, where there may be yoga classes - a few of the attendees will be vegetarians that you can ask. Or go to you local health food shop and ask there Likewise you could ask at a martial arts club or a Hindu Indian restaurant. If all else fails, you could begin your own club.
If you organize your own club, find a supportive bar or restaurant that will cook your meal suggestions for that night at a reasonable price. After a time, I am certain you could build up a nice little club of twenty individuals and the landlord may let you have your own room to dine in once a month like the Masons.
If you think that this is too much in the early days, you could just set up a blog. A blog is an interactive web site, where you and others can post relevant knowledge. If you keep the name of the blog relevant to your town and vegetarianism, you ought to find that other people searching as you once did will find you, whereas you discovered no one. Once you have built up a group of local, on line vegetarian sympathizers, you could suggest meeting once a month in the flesh and take the dining notion from there. An ad in the local paper would help too.
If you want to know more about Welsh food, food in general or cooking eggs in particular, just visit Traditional Welsh Recipes