vegan

First I want to say welcome! Making this change is a brave one and you should take pride in having the courage to even try.

There are a few things that really helped me when I was starting out.

One was reframing how meals should be constructed. The way I've seen most people think of a meal is they first pick their protein. That becomes the "base" of the meal. Then they decide how to season and cook it, which side dishes that would go with it, etc. The trap is then "okay... vegan food is that, but take away the meat and the butter and... Uh, anything else that adds flavor? Yeah, nobody wants to just eat plain potatoes and steamed carrots, that's not a meal.

Instead, think of one vegetable as the base of your meal. Eggplant, tofu, spaghetti squash, beans, and mushroom are all good options. Then build a meal on top of that to compliment the flavors. I.e. for eggplant, you could do stir fry and rice, or fried eggplant in spaghetti sauce covered by vegan ricotta, or baked, fileted, then fried eggplant "Phish" tacos.

Another piece of advice would be to try and avoid finding 1:1 replacements for some of your favorite animal based foods for at least a few months. While fake meats and cheeses have improved greatly over the last 10 years, I don't think they will "scratch that itch" so to speak until you've adjusted your pallet to eating without animal products. One of the physiological changes that will occur will be your tastebuds. Instead, try a new vegetable you've never heard of maybe 1-2 times a week if you can, or at least a couple times per month. Depending where you live and your life experiences this might not be as true for you, but a typical American grocery store sells the same limited selection of veggies. Basically just 2-4 versions of peppers, onions, tomato, potato, cabbages, squash, and herbs which are the same no matter which store you went to (coupons are variety I guess?). I found that going to grocers from other cultures in my area, such as the Asian and Mexican grocers, I was able to find tons of foods I'd never even heard of. The sheer variety of beans alone is enough to keep you busy for a few months. This will keep things interesting and help limit cravings for your old diet.

I'd also find a few YouTubers to watch for different things: Recipes you can follow are great for seeing new ideas. I personally like Sauce Stash and Derek Sorno, but they can sometimes be less organized and might be slightly difficult to follow. Sauce Stash Chickpea Mac & Cheese is a solid and simple recipe, and Derek Sorno's wicked kitchen king oyster mushroom pulled "pork" sandwich is amazing. Two recipes I make multiple times a year and they go quite well together if you really want to indulge in comfort food.

In addition to recipes it might be good to get a bulwark against some of the talking points that come up quite a lot. You will very likely find that merely mentioning veganism as the reason why you're politely declining an offer of food from someone will sometimes cause them to immediately mock or try to argue with you about the merits of veganism. It can be good to have ways to politely correct misinformation or redirect questions back at them. I find Earthling Ed has a very good Socratic way of handling these situations and has well reasoned arguments against almost everything you'll probably ever hear.

My final piece of advice is going to be that nobody is perfect and you're going to have bad days. Maybe Burger King is the only option when you're traveling and they gave you a regular patty instead of an impossible one and you didn't realize until you were half way into the burger, maybe you find out that Jello has gelatin and that comes from pigs after you eat some, or that your favorite Mexican restaurant uses ard in their beans. Don't be disheartened, all we can do is our best any given day. We've all been through something like that and it doesn't change your intentions. You're going to be shocked at the sheer quantity of things that have milk in them for no damned reason. There's no way overnight you're going to learn all the different ways animals are snuck into your food. Just learn from these events and carry on, and try to not let it get to you too much.

Welcome again, and good luck!