How to Reintroduce Meat After Being Vegan or Vegetarian

Eating meat again after being vegan or vegetarian is a controversial topic. People who have made the commitment to being vegan or vegetarian because of ethical reasons don’t like to hear about people who aren’t thriving on such a strict diet.

After following a 100% strict vegan diet for 3 1/2 years, I realized in 2014 that I needed to expand my dietary choices and figure out which foods really would nourish my individual needs. I wrote this post on why I am no longer vegan.

The truth is, being vegetarian or vegan isn’t right for everyone, and can lead to nutritional deficiencies and even disordered eating patterns.

I wrote a comprehensive article with the top vegan diet dangers that you might be interested in reading. One of the vegan health risks can lead to irreversible health damage. 

Read on to the end of this article for more information on my experience going from vegan to eating meat again.

One study showed that 84% of vegetarians return to eating meat again.

There are obviously vegan diet risks and benefits. Once you realize that you aren’t thriving on a vegetarian or vegan diet, you’re then faced with the choice of discarding everything you’ve come to believe, making that mental shift, and adding meat back into your diet.

I get how difficult of a decision this is to move away from a vegan diet. The vast majority of my audience and friends were incredibly supportive when I made my announcement about not being vegan anymore, but there were a few people who were unkind and cruel showed a disturbing lack of compassion and humanity.

So, in order to offer support to those who are going through this tough transition, I’ve come up with eight tips for how to reintroduce meat back into your diet after being vegan or vegetarian.

And, just to be clear, I’m not trying to convince anyone to eat meat or to stop being vegan or vegetarian.

This post is for the many, many people who have reached out to me asking for help because they’ve realized they need to try adding meat back into their diets. Along with these tips, I offer kindness, compassion, and empathy for a very tough decision. 

A person transitioning from a vegetarian or vegan diet back to an omnivorous diet might want to introduce fish first, then poultry, and then red meat.

If you have been vegan and are adding animal products back in, eggs might even be a better first choice before fish. It’s a very individual decision and there’s no one right way to start. Even listening to your cravings might be the best rule of thumb.

I understand that some people may choose to stay away from red meat for good, but for others, red meat provides the nutrients that they’ve been lacking on a vegetarian or vegan diet. By all means, don’t fall for the pack of lies that fake meat is comparable to real meat. Fake meat is, in fact, a highly processed, unhealthy food. 

Read my article on the potential dangers of plant-based meat.

Red meat from grass-fed, organic sources is an incredible source of healthy vitamins like B12, minerals such as zinc and iron, beneficial antioxidants like glutathione, and essential fatty acids such as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

In fact, adding meat back into your diet may help reverse one of the biggest dangers of vegan diet which is B12 deficiency.

And, of course, meat is a very bioavailable source of protein, with all sources of animal protein providing complete sources of protein.

Start your reintroduction of meat slowly, and with one protein at a time. This means trying 1-2 ounces of cooked animal proteins a day. Or, if you are really having a hard time, try eating 1-2 bites of lean protein per meal.

This approach can help reacclimatize your body to digesting protein again and it can also help alert you to any allergies or intolerances to foods as eggs and shellfish are among the top food allergens.

Over a period of days or weeks, you can start to eat more variety of animal proteins and in greater quantity with each meal. Be sure to listen to your body and maybe even keep a symptom journal to note your changes in energy or other symptoms that resolve or occur after you eat.

If you’ve ever experienced or heard about the “heavy” feeling that can come with eating meat after being vegan or vegetarian, then you might benefit from taking some digestive enzymes or betaine HCL with your meal.

Eating meat after being vegetarian can take some time for your body to adjust.

The most likely reason for that heavy feeling you get after eating red meat is compromised digestion. Or, maybe you ate too much of it at one time.

Those meat-digesting enzymes were taking a break when you were vegetarian or vegan, and your body might need some help.

Low stomach acid is not uncommon. Your functional medicine practitioner can run tests to determine if you would benefit from taking enzymes (find a functional medicine doctor near you). 

If you suspect that red meat is affecting your gallbladder, you may need to supplement with bile salts. It helps if you use a slow cooker to prepare your meat.

You might like this recipe for Slow Cooker Tri Tip with Root Vegetables, for example. Slow cooking your meat will help break down the proteins more making it easier to digest (see all my tips for how to eat clean without starving yourself).

Or, for another red meat option, you could opt for bison instead, which has less fat and may be easier for your digestive system to process. See my article on the health benefits of bison or my recipe for a Ground Bison Bowl.

If you have continue to have stomach heaviness or other digestive issues after eating meat again, you may need to take it slower. Reduce your portion size or try a different protein.

You may also need to consider adding more probiotic sources to your diet to help your system. See my list of the best foods with natural probiotics and also check out my article with the best gut healing foods.

Let’s be honest, the most flavorful cuts of red meat contain more fat.

If you find yourself grimacing at the taste of red meat, it may mean that you’re choosing too lean of a cut. An example is switching from consuming 99% lean ground beef to one that has an 80/20 ratio. The fat in meat adds flavor and helps make the meat tender and appealing to consume.

There’s no need to fear the fat if you’re consuming organic, grass-fed and grass-finished beef. In conventionally raised beef products, toxins generally get stored in fat tissue.

But in organic, grass-fed and grass-finished beef products, consuming some of the fat is actually quite beneficial. You’ll get an added dose of conjugated linoleic acid, plus the fat will help you absorb all those essential vitamins and minerals that are so plentiful in red meat.

See my guide on how to find grass-fed meat near you.

Conventional feedlot beef is not a good choice for a myriad of reasons. Both vegan and paleo communities agree that factory farming is unethical, unnatural, and horrible for animals and the planet. There are quite a few companies that source their meat from organic, grass-fed and grass-finished farms.

Outside of buying from local farms, you can now order online and have frozen grass-fed meats shipped directly to your door. 

You may need to purchase an extra freezer for your garage to help store all the extra meat, but you’ll certainly save money and have control over the quality of your animal proteins by buying from trusted sources.

Sarah Ballantyne from The Paleo Mom wrote an informative blog post debunking the “unhealthy” myth that surrounds red meat consumption. She cites studies that have shown that red meat may cause cancer.

And while it’s possible that red meat does contribute to the formation of cancer, eating red meat with plenty of vegetables mitigates your cancer risk.

There’s really no need to worry about red meat being unhealthy if you’re eating clean most of the time and consuming plenty of vegetables.

The idea that eating meat always causes disease is one of the ways proponents of a vegan diet use fear to grow the movement. Choosing cleaner, less processed sources of meat and not charring it helps mitigate your cancer risk as well.

Additionally, in 2019, a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine “found low- to very low-certainty evidence that diets lower in unprocessed red meat may have little or no effect on the risk for major cardiometabolic outcomes and cancer mortality and incidence.”

So, this is further evidence that meat is not bad for humans.

Even with the understanding that red meat is part of a healthy, balanced diet, people with a history of eating disorders or disease may struggle with the idea of eating red meat again.

As stated above, red meat is not an unhealthy addition to one’s diet when done right.

However, obsessing about restricting certain foods, such as red meat, could be unhealthy and may trigger some people to go back to their disordered ways of eating.

This interesting study encourages the use of “real food” meal plans over restricted diet meal plans for people recovering from eating disorders.

Getting help with this transition to eating meat again could include anything from working with a specialist to simply learning from informed people who have a balanced perspective. This article also provides a great balanced perspective on how the vegan talking points aren’t actually correct. 

Here are some other tips for what to do if you have orthorexia.

The truth is, humans evolved eating a much more varied diet than most of us eat now. The variety is what provides us with the macro- and micro-nutrients our bodies need.

I am guilty of eating the same foods over and over again, but I’m trying to get into the habit of ordering different types and cuts of red meat and other animal proteins when I order online.

It’s also a good idea to try different cooking styles when you’re getting back into the habit of eating meat again. In fact, I remember feeling very overwhelmed by how to cook meat without drying it out when I was adding it back into my diet.

Be sure to check out my articles on the safest cookware material for your kitchen, plus the safest cooking oils and a picky eater list.

You can also try using animal-based protein powders to help add more protein to your diet. I have a list of the best best non-whey protein powder that might be helpful.

And, as a last resort, you can even try something like cricket protein to help get more high quality protein into your diet.

Leaving veganism or vegetarianism is a huge life change; many people say that veganism is less of a diet and more of a lifestyle. For me, the experience of moving away from a vegan diet and vegan lifestyle meant re-building my identify and finding new communities to join.

The paleo and primal communities are filled with ex-vegans, including Mark Sisson and Chris Kresser who have each created empires around conscious food choices.

A simple search on Facebook for “recovering vegans” will result in groups of people who have gone through this experience and have experienced vegan health risks.

Life transitions as big as this are always made easier with the support of others.