What are the first steps to going Vegan, or "strict vegetarian"?

I've been a lacto-ovo Vegetarian for a year and a half, and I feel like it's time to make the switch.What are the first steps to going Vegan, or "strict vegetarian"?
I was lacto-ovo until I decided to switch to vegan about 2 months ago.



Here's some advice (aka..what I did? hope it helps):



FIRST--drop the products with the most abundant sources of animal by-products first, such as: milk, yogurt, eggs, cheese, and desserts/candies with eggs and milk. As alternatives, if you find it difficult, there is soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, vegan cheese in most national grocery chains, rice chocolate, fake eggs, etc.



SECOND---While I immediately cut the previous from my diet the first day I said I was switching to vegan, I still had no idea what "secondary" foods weren't vegan...and there are a lot of snacks, chips, desserts, candies, etc that are not. What I did, to slowly get used to it, was just go around reading nutrition labels whenever I bought food, or if I had non-vegan food that I still needed to finish. I bought a lot of things out of the snack machines (academic buildings....starving student) and had assumed they were vegan and then discovered they were not, but I still ate them initially.



Doing this helped me get used to 1. reading labels on EVERYTHING and 2. moderately switching over and getting used to not being able to eat what I did as a vegetarian. It also helped me to remember what foods contain animal by-products, so in the future if I were to wonder if a certain food was vegan, I wouldn't have to ask who is cooking it because I'd already have a good idea from past experience and reading so many labels.



I don't know how you feel about alternatives to milk...it may be a little difficult if you aren't used to different tastes. I haven't had regular milk in years, simply because I didn't like the taste so I went to soy, so that made the switch to vegan a little easier for me.



Definitely don't forget to take vitamins either...vit. B complex is pretty vital, as is a multi...maybe even some vitamin cWhat are the first steps to going Vegan, or "strict vegetarian"?
First step is to drop the dairy products and eggs, and make sure you are eating vitamin B12 somewhere in your diet every day, either through fortified food or a supplement. Here's a guide from Vegan Outreach http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/ and from the vegetarian resource group http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/vegan.htmWhat are the first steps to going Vegan, or "strict vegetarian"?
the whole lacto -ovo thing kinda worked for me but it was not what i expected
Step one: quit eating animal products.