A Weight Loss Diet Plan For Vegetarians

Over the years, there’s been a significant increase in people choosing to follow a vegetarian diet. What started as a spiritual and moral based approach to eating became a trending nutrition lifestyle for performance, fighting inflammation, and weight loss.

Following any program that shifts from processed food to one that encourages a fresh fruit & vegetable approach is one Better Body Sports applauds. However, before jumping into this type of diet, it’s best to have a baseline understanding to succeed at this type of nutrition program.

There are many articles that cover how to follow a vegetarian lifestyle. This article is for those who are considering and/or following a plant-based diet with the intention of losing weight. So let’s get started.

What You Will Learn in This Article

This complete guide to losing weight on a vegetarian diet covers key areas in which weight loss occurs. It discusses how being on a vegetarian diet positively or negatively affects those areas. In this article you will learn:

The answer to why everyone loses weight on a vegetarian diet.
Why people experience weight loss plateaus on a vegetarian diet.
Where vegetarians fall short of their macronutrient needs.
What types of fats you should eat to prevent weight gain
The best way to exercise if you are on a vegetarian diet.
And so much more…

Experiencing Immediate Weight Loss

You will lose “some” weight even with little knowledge or understanding of how to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. This isn’t unique to plant-based programming and is a common experience for any diet plan, including the keto diet, intermittent fasting, and Whole 30. It shouldn’t be surprising to hear friends tell you how they lost 5-10 pounds in the first phase of any chosen diet program.

This shift is based on the removal of certain food types consumed excessively for long periods of time. Weight loss is bound to occur because of the immediate shift to fewer calories and easier to digest food choices. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean results will continue up to the point of reaching weight loss goals.

The Challenges of a Vegetarian Diet

There are specific challenges to this type of meal plan that, if gone unaddressed, will compound over time. What starts off as a weight loss program ends up having a rebound effect leading to weight gain. This happens for reasons that include poor behavioral choices, nutritional deficiencies, and a misunderstanding about how weight management works.

With that said, following a vegetarian or vegan diet can help you to lose that stubborn belly fat. Done correctly, this weight loss will occur until reaching an adequate body fat percentage. You can create an aesthetically pleasing physique with the right food pairings, nutritional supplements, and calorie intake.

Why Counting Calories Matters

It can be challenging to consume calories during the initial phase of a plant-based diet. The removal of saturated fat foods that are replaced with fibrous plant foods provides more bulk to the gut making it hard to get the amount of macronutrients needed. There is definitely a transitionary period and learning curve for understanding how to eat plant-based calories.

Once you master the skill of eating enough on a plant-based diet plan the opposite problem occurs. Now it becomes easy to create calorically dense meals that, eaten excessively, lead to unhealthy weight gain. Therefore, initially counting your calories through both phases of this nutrition plan is helpful in maintaining the right amount of energy during this fat loss program.

Forgo monitoring your calories and macronutrients through this process, increases your risk of feeling sluggish, losing muscle, lack of focus, and having overall weakness. Temporarily counting your calories will give you a baseline understanding of what you need and how close you are to reaching that target. You can use free macro calculators such as MyFitnessPal or for more features, the My Macros+ app is a good option.

Identifying Protein Based Proteins

You often hear people say that peanut butter is a good source of protein. It is this type of thinking that causes trouble when following a vegetarian diet. Fact: Only 17% of the calories found in peanut butter are in the form of protein. While this food type contains protein, it is definitely not a protein source. There is no way around it, food pairing is the best way to increase daily protein intake when following a plant based weight loss program.

Getting the correct amount of protein is the hardest part about being on a vegetarian diet for weight loss. Even those who consume dairy products find it difficult to stomach enough milk, cheese, and yogurt to reach a balanced protein intake. Vegan based diet plans make it harder as removing dairy products eliminates many of the complete sources of protein that we have access to.

Both vegetarians and vegans can use food pairings to increase their total protein per meal. Using the peanut butter example, make a peanut butter sandwich that also includes a higher protein bread with chia seeds or hemp seeds. By combining proteins, you get both a complete amino acid profile and increase the amount of protein consumed.

Plant Based Protein Supplements

What originally supplement companies developed so as to bring down the cost of protein led into a major industry push. The market now offers brown rice protein, pea protein, and many other supplements based on plant foods. These are helpful additions for those not consuming protein from any type of animal product.

Keeping Carbohydrates Under Control

Want to try the most difficult diet in the world? Then try the ketogenic vegan diet. The reason it is so hard is because carbohydrates are essentially unavoidable on this diet. Whether it is vegetarian or vegan, consuming excessive carbohydrates creates big problems for weight loss. Having this be the primary source of calories increases insulin resistance over time and slows the metabolism through continuous muscle loss.

The best way to keep carbohydrates under control is ensuring you eat enough protein and reach your required fatty acid needs. You will be quick to find comfort in a carbohydrate if either of these fall short.

The Right Fatty Acids For Continued Fat Loss

Who doesn’t love nut butter? It doesn’t matter if you are a meat eater, lacto-ovo vegetarian, pescatarian, or vegan, we all agree that nut butters taste great. Almond butter, peanut butter, cashew butter, and the other creamy treats are both delicious and nutritious. The problem with these products is they contain a large amount of omega-6 fatty acids. The average American consumes approximately 10 times the amount of the omega-6 fatty acid as they do for the omega-3 fatty acid. We do not recommend this imbalance since it is not optimal for heart health nor reducing inflammation.

So if this is disproportionate for the average person, then most vegetarians are even further out of balance. This is not good news for those who hope for weight loss success. Inflammation increases fluid retention, adding weight to the scale. This disheartens the dieter who isn’t seeing the progress they want. Additionally, inflammation makes it harder to exercise and increases the likelihood you will choose bad foods to feel good.

It is important that a weight-loss diet plan for vegetarians include adequate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids from foods such as flax, seaweed, algae, chia seeds, and hemp seeds. There are options for getting EPA and DHA into your diet, but it requires being intentional about their intake. If these foods do not suit you, then find a plant based Omega 3 supplement to fortify your diet.

Preventing Vitamin & Mineral Deficiencies

Many people following a vegetarian diet end up vitamin and mineral deficient. This happens for a few reasons and avoidable if steps are taken to ensure they are consumed and absorbed. These deficiencies are bad for your health but also encourage weight gain, as they disturb metabolic function creating other health-related issues.

Pay careful attention to these vitamins and minerals if following a vegetarian or vegan diet:

Vitamin B12
Vitamin D
Iron
Zinc
Calcium

Once you’ve found foods that provide these essential nutrients, ensure the body properly absorbs them. In animal products, we find these foods in protein sources that include fatty acids. In plants, it is more likely that we find them in low-fat foods.

Dietary fat is important for the uptake of vitamins and minerals. To solve this problem you can use healthy fat such as olive oil to coat vegetables and salads. This helps improve the uptake into your bloodstream preventing them from becoming a waste product.

Exercising On a Vegetarian Diet

While the origins of vegetarian diets paired well with forms of yoga exercise, now we have professional bodybuilders, athletes, and mixed martial artists choosing this type of nutritional lifestyle. The heavy demands on these individuals require serious nutritional monitoring to ensure they get enough of each macronutrient to recover from brutal training sessions.

You’re probably not preparing for your next fight, game, or have plans to step on stage. However, you may be ambitious to build your aerobic and anaerobic capacity through cardio and strength training. Performing both high intensity exercise and weight training is the most effective way to burn fat through exercise.

With this point being made, there are important considerations for exercise if following a vegetarian diet.

Weight Training on a Vegetarian Diet

As mentioned, when following a vegetarian diet, it requires more effort to formulate a protein rich nutrition plan. Even more protein is required for muscle recovery when performing resistance exercise. So if weight training is important, how do we incorporate it into our vegetarian lifestyle?

The best way to approach this is by looking at the research into how frequently you need to strength train for long-term benefits. While most bodybuilding magazines suggest you lift weights 4-5 times per week, 1-2 is all it takes. Several weekly lifting sessions give you most of the health and fat loss benefits weight lifting provides.

By lifting weights on Monday and Thursday, you give your body the time it needs to recover, while working out enough to build muscle and encourage fat loss. A larger population than those who follow a vegetarian diet should adapt to this training schedule, but it is most applicable to the plant-based lifestyle.

Cardiovascular activity on a Vegetarian Diet

For cardio, there isn’t as much of a difference between meat eaters, vegetarians who include dairy products, and vegans. There are two primary factors to consider:

A little bit goes a long way: There’s no need to become an endurance runner to get the fat loss benefits of cardio. Whereas long distance running helps you lose the most weight, high intensity exercise is the best for losing body fat.
Burning calories stimulates the appetite: My friend once said “I do cardio so that I can eat more ice cream.” She was joking but hit on something important. The initial portion of exercise creates the endorphins that prevent emotion based hunger cravings, but past this point, burning calories increases your appetite. Burning 400 calories on a treadmill isn’t helpful if you consume 800 calories because of the effort.

Cardiovascular activity is good for your brain health, improves heart function, and encourages metabolic waste disposal. As with most things, going too far with cardio has a counteractive effect. Here, we should exercise with caution.

Nutrition is a Personal Choice

Now that you know the ins and outs of a weight-loss diet plan for vegetarians, I’d like to offer a friendly reminder.

At times, the talk about nutrition for health and fat loss is as polarizing as politics. It’s important to keep in mind that both weight loss and nutrition is a personal journey. While there’s frameworks and principles that apply to all, our individual journey requires nutrition and healthy living to have a personal approach.

If at this point you’ve decided that a plant based weight loss plan is right for you, then remember it is not right for everyone. Share your successes and encourage people to make healthier choices, but be careful not to become opinionated thinking that your lifestyle should apply to all.

Starting Your Plant Based Weight-Loss Diet plan

Let’s recap some of the important points about how to lose weight while following a vegetarian diet.

Don’t confuse initial weight loss on a vegetarian diet with long-term success.
Following a vegetarian diet is a fat loss solution, but only when addressing the potential problems it creates.
Tracking calories and macros is great for understanding how your nutritional lifestyle has changed.
Getting enough protein requires more planning and monitoring than other types of diets.
Carbohydrates become a vegetarian’s worst enemy if not kept under control.
Fatty acids need the right ratio. This requires careful attention to the omega-3 fatty acids.
Take extra steps to ensure you consume and absorb the vitamins and minerals traditionally found in meat.
Weight training is necessary but shouldn’t be excessive when on a vegetarian diet.
Cardiovascular activity is there to support your fat loss journey.
A healthy diet is one that fits your own personal needs for optimal living.

Stick to these principles and you will find that following a vegetarian diet can lead to long term success.

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