Healthy Vegetarian Weight Loss by Laura Ng

Not all vegetarian weight loss programs and plans are healthy. You probably have suffered from using them, which leads you to seeking healthy vegetarian weight loss. Losing weight and gaining health at the same time, in fact, are not difficult. All you need is just a dash of common sense and healthy habits.

Let me bring out the contrast between the unhealthy and healthy vegetarian weight loss methods to show you a clear picture of what's good for you. You'll then know how to work towards a healthy vegetarian weight loss in your diet plan.

Unhealthy Vegetarian Weight Loss - High Protein, Low Carb

This crash vegetarian weight loss diet is created from those infamous meat-laden fad diets. The principle is the same - you eat about 2- 3 times more protein than carbohydrate and when your body needs additional energy, it'll turn to your fat stores for fuel. No doubt you'll lose weight with this diet, you get a host of health problems tagging along such as headache, bad breath, loss of concentration, constipation, etc.

There are these groups of dare-devils who can't be bothered with their health. Their priority - weight loss first, health later. Meaning, they'll lose weight and suffer some health issues first, then once they achieve their target weight, they'll try to fix their health problems. By the time you reach your weight loss goal, your body could have suffered irreversible damages to some degrees, which had already happened to some people. How sad!

Health Vegetarian Weight Loss

What constitutes a healthy vegetarian weight loss? Numerous human physiological and behavioral studies / researches have proven that we need carbohydrate for prime functioning.

Especially the human brain, it needs immediate energy to power it up to process, handle, manage and control data. With low supply of carbohydrate, you can imagine how much your brain has to suffer. Moreover, our human bodies do not need as much protein as we normally think. We need protein to build new cells and repair damaged tissues. We actually need only about 35 - 45 grams for women and 60 - 75 grams for men, per day.

So, a healthy vegetarian weight loss should not compromise these basic macro nutritional needs. You need high-carb, but carb composes of good carb (natural, unrefined complex-carbohydrate) and bad carb (simple, refined carbohydrate). Good carb comes from whole vegetarian foods while bad carb comes from processed vegetarian foods.

Similarly, you have good dietary fat (coconut oil, olive oil, flax oil) and bad dietary oil (animal fat, soybean oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil).

Having said that, your diet for healthy vegetarian weight loss should encompass as much whole food as possible, with carb bearing 40 - 60 %, protein 15 - 25%, fat 10 - 15%. You can alter the percentage slightly to make your meal plans more interesting. But never make your protein 2 - 3 times more than your carb.

Oh, include exercise as part of your healthy vegetarian weight loss too. Exercise has been scientifically proven to promote health and fat loss. Bottom line - don't sacrifice your health for weight loss.