Natural, Plant-based Weight Control

But it’s still possible to eat too much fat. Nuts, seeds, avocados, and olives are all high in fat. And as we’ve already mentioned, just being vegetarian doesn’t guarantee that you’re eating a healthy diet if you’re constantly munching on fries, chips, and cookies. So while you’ve got a good head start on weight control by becoming vegetarian, you still need to give your diet some thought.

We’ll discuss meal planning and give you some great recipes in the upcoming chapters, but for now, let’s consider the basics of your vegetarian choices with an eye toward weight control.

Vegetables are, of course, the mainstay of your daily diet. Use fresh whenever possible, frozen if you have to, and stay away from canned vegetables (canned products usually contain a lot of sodium and, well, they just don’t taste very good). Steam them and squeeze some lemon juice on them, or eat them with nonfat dressing. If you insist on sautéing them in fat, use olive oil.

Fruit can be fresh, frozen, or if necessary, canned (beware of sugary syrups, though). Fruit juice has more calories than whole fruit, and you’re missing out on the fiber, so eat whole fruit whenever possible.

Grains should be processed as little as possible; go with whole-grain products for better texture, more fiber, and more nutrients. For breakfast, hot cereals are usually higher in fiber and lower in fat than cold cereals, and keep an eye on how much fat is in favorites like muffins, pancakes, snack crackers, and biscuits.

Legumes are excellent sources of high-protein, low-fat nutrition. Beans are loaded with nutrition, although, if you use canned beans, watch out for added salt. Veggie burgers and hot dogs are healthier options than their meat-based counterparts, but they can still add a hefty amount of fat to your diet if you rely on them too much. Read labels, and make processed foods a small part of your diet.

Nuts and seeds are good sources of important nutrients but contain up to 70 percent fat. While trying to lose weight, limit the amount of these to one serving each day. You can increase the amount when you’re at the point of maintaining your weight—but still watch those portions!

Dairy products, remember, are derived from milk—a substance high in both fat and sugar that is meant to fatten up baby cows. If you’re ovo-lacto, drink 1 percent or skim milk. Rice milk is tasty, and lower in calories than regular milk. Cheese is very high in fat and should only be used in very small amounts when trying to lose weight.

Fats must be used sparingly, if at all, when cooking on a weight-loss diet. Whenever possible, use olive oil, but eliminate fats by steaming, broiling, or baking foods instead of frying or sautéing. If you’re eating a well-balanced diet, you’re getting all the fat you need to keep your body healthy, so don’t add more.

Skinny Vegetarianism

Carbohydrates have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the biggest sin isn’t how many carbs we eat—it’s the manner in which we eat them. We dunk perfectly good potatoes in hot oil, or soak them in butter, or cover them with cream sauce. We spread an inch of butter on our whole-wheat rolls and cover our broccoli with cheese sauce. No wonder we’re fat!

Transitioning to a plant-based diet is about thoughtful, healthy eating. That holds true for the way you prepare the food that you eat, too. Many people think they don’t like vegetables when, in fact, they rarely taste the vegetables they eat because they’re drowning in a puddle of butter sauce. Give your food the same respect that you give your body, and enjoy it without disguising it with a high-fat coating.

Choose healthy substitutions when snacking. Instead of reaching for greasy potato chips or an order of fries, grab a handful of fat-free pretzels or popcorn. Dunk celery and carrots into hummus, salsa, or black bean dip instead of guacamole.

Lower the fat in your baked foods. Almost any cookie, cake, or muffin recipe can be made with less fat, and there are recipes for low-fat baked foods using applesauce or mashed bananas as a fat substitute. Whole- wheat pastry flour has less gluten than all-purpose flour and will make an even tender product when you’re cutting down on fat.

Learn to love the spud. As the basis for a meal, it’s hard to beat a baked potato. With less than a gram of fat, just ninety-five calories, and loads of vitamins, it’s an almost perfect natural food. But once you’ve piled on butter, sour cream, and cheese, it’s a nutritional nightmare. There are lots of things you can use to top your potato. Vegetarian chili, vegetable curry, baked beans, and steamed vegetables are all great potato toppers, low in fat, and loaded with vitamins and minerals.

Add flavor, not fat. Think about the flavors in the foods you’re cooking and consider ways to enhance them without added fat. Sauté vegetables in dry wine, use fresh herbs and garlic, and freshen up vegetables with lemon juice.

Avoid the dairy trap. Ovo-lacto-vegetarians often make the mistake of leaning too much on eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products when they first start out, and these foods are all rich in fat. Go easy on the cheese, drink skim milk, and limit eggs to just two or three meals per week.

Snacking While Trying to Lose Weight

Not everything that is labeled vegetarian is low in fat. Eat the following in moderation when trying to lose weight:

Almond butter
Avocados
Coconut
Falafel
French fries
Hummus
Olives
Packaged vegetarian meals
Peanut butter
Potato chips
Tahini

There are lots of snacks that fit into your vegetarian eating plan and are great for weight loss diets too. When you want something between meals, reach for one of these:

Bagels
Bean soup
Fresh fruit
Fresh vegetables
High-fiber cereal
Nonfat crackers
Pita bread or chips
Potatoes–baked, broiled, or grilled
Pretzels
Rice cakes
Whole-grain rolls and muffins

Breaking the Diet Cycle

Every day, every week Americans struggle to stick to their diet. They monitor what they eat and how many calories they burn in a constant effort to achieve a certain weight. Let’s face it. Diets are unproductive, unfulfilling, and restrictive. As soon the diet ends, they ultimately put the weight back on because they never addressed the core issue, and the cycle of dieting repeats itself.

Who wants to live like that?

According to The Food Revolution by John Robbins, the relative sliminess of vegetarians was made abundantly clear in a chapter discussing weight loss. An experienced doctor who performed liposuction procedures told Robbins that more than one thousand liposuctions were performed on any given day, every day of the week. That’s a lot of fat! But what’s even more astounding is that the doctor also told Robbins that, out of all the operations he had performed, he couldn’t remember operating on a vegetarian—ever. What does that tell you?

Our society has a tendency to focus on the outside of the body instead of on the inside. But being beautiful starts on the inside and permeates outward, and that starts by paying attention to what you eat and how you eat. There is no fad diet out there that will work over a long period of time, and quick-fix diets always end in disaster when you gain even more weight back than you lost in the first place. Do yourself a favor and break the diet cycle. It doesn’t matter how many weight-loss programs you sign up for or how many diet books you read; becoming a vegetarian is the best thing you can do to break the cycle.

Healthy Doesn’t Always Mean Skinny

Body types are often dictated by genes. Some people are naturally small and slender, others are destined to be thicker of build. If you’re a woman, this may mean that you’re a little heavier in the thighs or that your general build is athletic, even if you’d prefer to be lithe. The truth is, there’s little you can do about that. And you may have a genetic tendency to be overweight, which is passed on from your parents and grandparents.

Eating well and exercising will get you into better shape no matter what your body type, but you may never be truly thin without starving yourself. If you’re fixated on a specific number on the scale but you can’t reach it no matter how much you work out and how little you eat, it may be time to accept that you’re where you’re supposed to be.

That’s not to say that, if you have either a moderate amount of weight to lose or a lot, you should give up and accept your overweight state. If you come from a family of overweight people, genetics is only a small part of the picture. Do you have the same eating habits as your parents? Were they sedentary, spending all of their free time on the couch and eating fatty snack foods?

By developing healthy eating habits now, and exercising, you can break the cycle and become the best you that you can be. There are no guarantees where weight loss is concerned, but a low-fat vegetarian diet can get you to where you’ll be healthier and happier, whatever your weight.