Want To Eat Less Meat? Don't Attempt To Change Your Diet Without Doing This 1 Thing.

Have you thought about eating less meat and incorporating more plant-based foods in your meals? You’re not alone. Some 37% of Americans polled in one recent study said they want to cut back on red meat.

Some people are looking to make changes for health reasons. Others cite wanting to do their part to protect the environment. Regardless of why we might be interested in switching to a more plant-hearty — or even fully vegan — diet, it can be tricky to figure out exactly how to do it. In fact, over 70% of respondents in the same survey said they worried it would be “difficult to learn how to cook or prepare healthier alternatives for the swaps they’re making.”

So what’s the first step? And what are some of the biggest pitfalls that might trip us up as we dip our toes into this new world?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked celebrity vegan chef Priyanka Naik when she recently dropped by our studio.

Listen to the full episode by pressing play:

“The baby steps to living a more plant-forward life is just minimizing your non-veg intake,” the TV host and author of “The Modern Tiffin” told us.

The most important step we should take? Go slowly.

Immediately removing all animal products from our plates can make us resent our decisions and ruin our chances of being successful before we’ve even begun this new way of eating.

“Don’t go cold turkey.… That just does not work for people, especially if you didn’t grow up in a culture like mine where you grew up vegetarian,” she said.

Instead, Naik recommended gradually minimizing these foods.

“Let’s say you would [usually] eat meat every day. Instead… cut it down to just four times a week, and from there, two times a