Vegetarian Weight Loss - Tips to Breaking Weight Loss Plateau by Laura Ng

Getting stuck at a weight loss plateau can drive you mad, especially when it lasts from 2 weeks to as long as 8 weeks. How can anyone ever withstand that? I can't. But it did kill my morale for several weeks before I broke it. How did I break it? Let me show you.

Why Can a Vegetarian Hit Weight Loss Plateau?

I find that lots of vegetarians are fine with eating nuts and seeds, grains, fruits etc. But when it comes to vegetables, either they eat only certain kinds, or they don't eat at all, probably due to vegetables not tasting as good as other veggie foods.

I came across some vegetarians on forums saying that they get stuck at a weight loss plateau after losing 20 pounds, 40 pounds etc. When I probed, some told me they take very little vegetables, whereas few of them told me they totally take vegetables out of their meal plans.

Oh my, no wonder their bodies refuse to burn more fats.

Vegetables contain so much different nutrients that many other veggie foods don't carry. So when you don't take enough vegetable, you're in fact depriving your body of important nutrients.

Hence, start adding more vegetables into your vegetarian weight loss diet.

You can't take all kinds of vegetables in a day. Like all other foods, rotate the varieties and mix and match them to make your food choices more colorful and interesting.

For example, you can include vegetables in these patterns in your vegetarian weight loss meals:

Monday - broccoli, cauliflower, kale, tomato, carrot

Tuesday - cucumber, spinach, carrot, eggplant, lettuce

Wednesday - red cabbage, squash, potato, turnip

Thursday - string beans, radish, broccoli, chard

Friday - tomato, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cabbage

I'm just giving you some ideas to begin with. You're free to alter the patterns and food varieties based on season and the list of your nearby grocery store or supermarket. Just don't stick to a fixed pattern as making it fixed will stop you dead in your weight loss plateau again.

Bonus Tips to Break Your Weight Loss Plateau

Although exercise plays a supplementary role in vegetarian weight loss, it's nonetheless a vital tool to make you lose more fat further. What kind of exercise to do?

Go with interval training. Its short burst workout can suddenly boost up your metabolism which in turn will pull out more energy source from your fat storage, thereby eliminating your unwanted fat deposits.

Like food rotation, change your exercise routine every 4 weeks to achieve consistent fat loss.

Take note though. Once you start exercising, your scale can prove useless since you might gain weight due to muscle gain instead of losing weight. So, use a body fat scale (though it can be pretty inaccurate for some people) together with the old favorite of 'how you look in the mirror' to gauge your progress.