How to Lose Weight the Vegetarian Way by Laura Ng

Two things you must get it right in order to lose weight the vegetarian way - watch what you feed your stomach with and what you do to your body. However, because you're not eating meat, so you actually got an edge over meat-eaters such that your body doesn't need to deal with the toxins, antibiotic residues and bacteria (like E.coli) coming from dead animals. So in a way, you should lose weight as a vegetarian more easily when you apply the vegetarian weight loss tips below.

1. Skipping Meals to Lose Belly Fat?

Many vegetarians thought by skipping a meal or 2 will help them lose weight faster. Wrong! Skipping meals will only slow down your metabolism. And when you start eating after starving, your body will absorb more calories than usual to store as body fat as it fears that it might not get any food supply in future. To make matter worse, your metabolism has slowed down due to starvation, and so you can only convert little calories into energy as fuel, leaving pounds of calories to get stocked up as body fat.

2. Eat More to Lose Weight the Vegetarian Way

When you eat more meals in a day but in smaller portion sizes, you're in fact keeping your body metabolically active throughout the day because your body is getting a continuous supply of food gradually over time, instead of getting a gush of energy from food in one large meal each from breakfast, lunch and dinner.

To lose fat effectively, you should take 5 vegetarian meals like this - breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. Your meals should comprise high-fiber foods loaded with complex-carbohydrate and other key nutrients so you won't feel hungry and take in excess calories so easily.

3. Rid Sugar in Your Meal Plans for Quicker Belly Fat Loss

Imagine on one hand you're eating those vegetarian weight loss foods, on the other hand you're ingesting weight gain foods, the end result? You lose nothing.

Sugar is one of the greatest culprits that causes belly fat to grow and makes it doubly hard for vegetarians to lose weight. That explains why more vegetarians are gaining weight. It depends on what type of vegetarian foods you eat. That said, quit your refined sugar intake totally.

Tip: When you apply the previous tip and take more fibrous foods, you should be able to stop your sugar cravings instantly and lose fat more easily.

4. Your Stomach Needs No More than 70% to Lose Weight the Vegetarian Style

Your stomach doesn't like to be full. So, always feed your stomach to 70% fullness. But a common problem to many people, even vegetarians is they only realize they become 80 or even 100% full 10 - 20 minutes after they finished eating. That's because your stomach needs about 10 - 20 minutes (sometimes only 2 minutes) to tell your brain your satiety level, so when you eat, try to reduce your speed by chewing more times than you normally would. This way, you'll find yourself getting no more than 70%.

Tip: To avoid wasting food, always request for the exact portion size you need where possible when you eat out.

5. Drink Zero Calories to Achieve More Fat Loss

No beverages beat water when it comes to stimulating your metabolism and help you shed the extra pounds, regardless of whether you're a vegetarian or not.

You might not get used to changing to drinking plain water overnight. Here's what you can do - starting today, take 1/2 a glass for 2 days, then on the 3rd day you increase to one glass and so on. After 8 days, you should be able to replace your unhealthy beverages with just plain water. If you can make changes within 3 days, why not?

6. Active Rest During Exercising Speeds Up Your Metabolism

A study conducted on cycling shows that interval cycling burns more fat than cycling at a steady pace. What does it mean? When you cycle fast, then slows down for "active rest" then speeds up again, you'll rev up your metabolism. Same thing applies to any interval training.

But remember, though interval training helps to burn more fat, you'll find hard to lose weight without a proper vegetarian weight loss meal plan.

7. The Better Your Sleep Quality, the More Fat You Burn

It all comes down to getting your metabolism to run at full speed. Hence, catch quality sleep because a rejuvenated body will definitely burn more fat than a sluggish body with sleeping disorder.

These 7 tips are just appetizers for you to lose weight as a vegetarian. But they're enough to let you see some stunning results in the next 7 - 10 days.