How to Lose Weight with a Vegetarian Lifestyle & Maintain Your Ideal Weight for Life by Laura Ng

There are 2 types of vegetarian lifestyle - one will make you lose weight and then maintain your ideal weight for life, the other will cause weight gain and impair your health over time. Obviously, you're leading the latter vegetarian lifestyle. If not, why are you reading this?

It's no surprise nowadays to see more and more overweight vegetarians. "I'm a vegetarian, but I'm overweight!" That doesn't sound right but it does occur. You can reverse the situation easily if you're willing to. Here I offer you 5 tips to help you lose weight as a vegetarian. There are a lot more vegetarian weight loss tips to pursue, but I suggest that you learn to pick up these 5 habits first before you advance to the next level for more fat loss.

1. Vegetable Helps to Lose Belly Fat - Up It!

Don't take veggies completely out of your meal plans just because they don't taste as delicious as grains, legumes, nuts and seed, and other vegetarian foods. Now, other than their cancer-fighting abilities, vegetables are one of the best foods for effective fat loss. Let me explain.

Let's say you eat spinach that carries 50 calories, due to its fibrous complex-carbohydrate structure, your body may use up 75 calories (from your energy reserve - fat storage and glycogen) to digest the food to get its energy value (50 calories) and nutrients. In other words, you lost a net 25 calories while breaking down spinach.

The more vegetables you consume, the more calorie deficit you create, and the more fat you'll burn, particularly on belly fat. Now you know why vegetables are so important in fat loss. Those who eat tons of veggies don't grow fat easily. Those who don't, grow fat (are you one of them?).

2. 5 - 6 Vegetarian Meals Burn More Fat

Split your breakfast, lunch and dinner into 5 or 6 smaller portion size meals. For example, breakfast - morning snack - lunch - afternoon snack - dinner.

This is a typical vegetarian diet for effective weight loss. If you take lots of veggies and other nutrient-dense food, you should not feel the need to eat the 6th meal (supper). But if you prefer 6 vegetarian meals for weight loss, go ahead. But make sure your 6th meal contains light calories like a small bowl of oatmeal since it'll be close to your sleeping time. Eating too much can affect your sleep quality.

3. Keep to this 70%-Satiety Rule to Block Unwanted Calories

Don't eat too full in every vegetarian meal, especially your lunch as it can make you feel heavy and clumsy. It might couple with intense sleepiness as more blood will gush to the digestive system to help digest the big chunk of food you just took, resulting in less blood carrying oxygen to your brain.

Hence, practise this 70%-satiety rule. I guarantee you'll feel a lot better by keeping to this satiety level starting today, and you won't feel sleepy and sluggish so easily.

4. Water Helps to Lose Weight - Water Can Kill Too!

Adequate water consumption can boost your metabolism and burn fat. On the contrary, drinking excessive water can cause water poisoning and eventually lead to brain damage or death. You shouldn't follow the general rule of drinking 8 glasses or 2 liters of water as parroted by many others out there.

The best way to see if you need more water is check your urine color. If it shows colorless or pale yellow, that means you already got enough water. However, if it looks yellow, then that's a sign indicating you need more water. Proper hydration of your body promotes fat-burning. This works for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. So, no more, no less is the key.

5. How a Vegetarian Should Sleep for Effective Weight Loss?

There's no hard-and-fast rule as to how many hours you should sleep for optimal fat-burning response. Different people require different number of hours of rest to feel recharged. If you need 7 hours, so be it. Don't mimic another person who needs only 5 hours to get rejuvenated. You'll get worse.

Try to turn in before 11 P.M. as studies show that our bodies go into repair mode between 11 P.M. and 2 A.M. You'll feel revitalized when you get more cells and tissues repaired. Your fat-burning engine will operate at its best once you get the quality sleep you need.