Vegetarianism

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I've been vegetarian for about 2 years now. I've gone through different phases of vegan, raw vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian ect.

First thing I'd recommend is baby steps if your thinking of switching. The easiest way to do this is simply have 1 meal a day that consists of nothing but fruits and vegetables. For me breakfast was easy I'd simply eat 5 bananas (500 calories) and that would be my breakfast. You don't feel full in the normal sense if your used to eating meats or foods with more fat in them but after a while you get used to it. You can tell when your full even though your body and stomach may feel "lighter" to you than if you had just eaten a meal of whatever your diet is currently.

Second thing to watch out for is over doing it on fats like nuts. A lot of people want the old "I'm full" feeling they are used too on a non vegetarian diet and they gorge themselves on high calorie high fat nuts and end up getting sick or gaining a lot of weight.

Third if anyone ever tells you you can't build muscle on a vegetarian diet simply bring them here http://www.greatveganathletes.com/vegan_athlete_patrik-baboumian-vegan-strongman

You can get all the same macro and micro nutrients from fruits and vegetable as you can with a diet that includes meat with the exception of vitamin b12. You'll want to take a multi vitamin to get that or if your one of the vegetarians that still eats eggs you can get your b12 from them.

Thai restraints will be your best bet for eating out as most Thai restraints allow you to substitute tofu for any meat and most dishes are rice and vegetable based.

My wife and I became vegetarian after they found a mass on her thyroid that could have been cancer. It turned out to be nothing but it was a bit of an eye opener as we were both under 30 years of age at the time. We did a lot of research and found that that countries that ate the least amount of meat had lower heart disease and cancer rates than others. I am not against eating meat but I will no longer have it with every meal and I will only eat meat that was hunted in the wild or if I know who where and how the animal was raised before it was slaughtered. Needless to say it's very rare that I am able to enjoy a steak maybe once a year.

Let me know if you've got any more questions or you can always pm me if you'd like. I'd post more info but I'm on my phone right now and it's a bit of a pain.

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Hardlicker wrote:

It's a dog eat dog world out there.

Vegetarians eat what food eats so therefore vegetarians must be food.

I'm only joking of course. My sister is a vegetarian who doesn't like vegetables. I'm not even sure what she eats.

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@dirk your right if your not a fan of vegetables you can defiantly do withough them... I just found 1 fruit and or 1 vegetable based meal a day helped me transition from my old diet to my new one. Though when we first started going vegetarian our ultimate goal was raw vegan. I'm curious if you don't mind me asking how much fruit is in your diet or are you mainly just tofu and noodles?

Having reached the raw vegan goal I'd say raw vegan is simply a fad diet there's nothing really wrong with it except your limiting your options for food even further with no noticable health bennifits over a standard vegan diet.

For those who arnt aware vegans are vegetarians that also exclude all animal products from their diet like eggs and anything that has dairy in it. Raw vegans don't eat anything cooked (there are some exceptions with dehydrated) but things like bread and pasta are not eaten by raw vegans even though they may contain no animal products they are still heated to a point where raw vegans beleive nutrition is lost in the food and some raw vegan believe there is an immune system response in your body that takes place after consuming cooked foods though I couldn't find any solid research to support those two arguments.

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DalaiLama wrote:

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MonstaMunch wrote:

Are there any vegetarians here? I'm kind of vaguely contemplating becoming one but I don't really get how it works. Can you really feel full and healthy without eating any meat or fish? Do you spend your whole life thinking about meat or do you end up forgetting about it after a while?

It all seems so difficult. :s

You may already know the following, but just in case. . .

If you are going to omit meat from your diet, you'll want to make sure you get the essential.amino acids that your body can't make on its own. One easy way to do this is to eat complimentary proteins together like red beans and rice, or green beans and almonds. If they aren't consumed at the same time, try to eat them within 30 minutes of each other or your body may discard the protein.

Good Luck on your journey, and be careful to stay healthy.