Not very long, only a couple of months. I started after Thanksgiving last year but I wasn't very strict with my diet in the beginning. Instead of just removing meat at one moment I sort of edged out of it by limiting how much I ate. This helped a lot when I had sudden cravings (I had failed a couple of times in the past when becoming vegetarian and knew that the first weeks were the hardest). I don't remember exactly the moment but I am certain I haven't had meat since New Years