Vegetarian Diet

Vegetarianism is not just a modern, hip health trend or a way to live out your ethical ideals, but also an enormous, successful dietary movement – that can help you to improve your health and well-being. Everyone – whether you’re a student, busy manager or someone raising a family –  can benefit from going vegetarian.

There’s more than one way to be a vegetarian. To shed some light on the different types of vegetarian diets, here’s an overview of which foods each type allows and forbids.

Have you have been won over by the benefits of vegetarianism, and are personally motivated to make the diet change? Or are you just curious and in the mood for a nutrition experiment? To get the full benefits of a balanced vegetarian diet, you should know the following basics:

• Drink a lot of water – You should drink a minimum of 2 liters of liquid throughout the day. The best choices: water or unsweetened tea.
• A colorful plate – Try to eat a minimum of 500 grams of vegetables a day, and the more colorful the better. Vegetables provide you with lots of fiber to boost your digestion.
• Fruits provide important vitamins! – However, if you want to lose weight, you’d better pay attention to the fructose amounts in each fruit. Some types of fruit are total sugar bombs.
• Sufficient protein intake – Be sure to get enough good protein. The best choices: eggs, dairy products, and legumes.
• Distinguish between healthy fats and unhealthy fats. Fat is an important component of any diet – not to mention fat adds flavor to your meals. Avocados and nuts are great sources of fat that fit easily into any diet. Although if you want to lose weight, you should be careful: fat provides about 9 kilocalories per gram.

1. It’s environmentally and ecologically friendlier than the traditional diet: Feeding livestock such as chickens and cattle requires an enormous amount of animal feed. This feed is mostly cultivated in rainforest regions, where vast areas of forest get cut down for livestock feed every year – at the expense of irreplaceable trees and wildlife.
2. A vegetarian diet is healthier than a traditional diet: Carcinoma is an umbrella term for various types of cancer. With a vegetarian diet, fewer carcinomas develop in your gastrointestinal tract due to the absence of meat – which means you reduce your risk of getting cancer.
3. Vegetarians live longer than meat eaters: Studies have proven that vegetarians’ life expectancies are higher than those of meat eaters. However, the diet should be as balanced and unprocessed as possible

Especially beginners – who rashly plunge into a vegetarian diet without accurate research or understanding of the subject—make these mistakes. The following tips will help you to avoid the most common mistakes:

• Mistake 1: you eat bland, boring meals
  Start looking around at the supermarket. Spicing up vegetables is not difficult. Take advantage of the variety of recipes on the internet and look for vegetarian alternatives to your favorite products. But try not to fall into the trap of pre-packaged meals – because the vegetarian cheeseburger is often just as unhealthy as the beef version.
• Mistake 2: you eat too many carbs to substitute for meat products.
  Do not start filling up on bread and pasta just because you have eliminated the meat from your diet. Try other satisfying alternatives – have you ever tasted tofu?
• Mistake 3: You don’t get enough iron in your diet
  Most of us get the lion’s share of our daily iron from meat. For many of us, this happens without even thinking about it. However, going vegetarian means you lose an important iron source – so you should be sure to find suitable plant-based sources. Have your iron levels checked by your doctor if you have are any uncertainties.