Among my circle of vegetarian friends, several of them still face obesity problem. Yes, this sounds unbelievable because by choosing vegetarian diet, they should be able to balance their calories. Why would it backfire on them?
Well, I found out that despite what they eat, calories in and out still count a lot in weight control. Following a vegetarian diet doesn't guarantee 100% fat loss success, not without proper planning. So, how to plan out an effective vegetarian program for weight loss?
1. What is Your Daily Calorie Needs?
If you don't know about your own calorie needs based on your body size and other factors, very easily you'll eat more than what your body needs. So, go find out about your daily calorie needs first before anything else. Google "calorie counter" and choose one from the list that lets you enter some info about yourself and automatically calculate the daily calorie needs for you.
2. Daily Calorie Needs Vs Daily Calorie Intake
Let's say as a woman you need 1500 Calories per day. Logically, you need to consume 1500 Cals from a vegetarian diet. However, to make your fat loss more efficient, you can lower the intake by 10% (150 Cals) or up to 15% (225 Cals), but not more than that. That's because when you lower your caloric intake by too much, your body will respond by slowing your metabolism to conserve energy. You wind up burning less fat than you should. And you could feel weak and sluggish the whole day.
3. Macronutrient Ratio in Your Vegetarian Fat Loss Diet
Keep in mind that no matter what vegetarian diet you plan to eat, you must always have more carbohydrate than protein and fat. The carb, protein, fat ratio can go like this:
- 7:2:1
- 6:2:2
- 5:3:2
- 5:2:3
- 4:3:3 (some athletes apply this ratio prior to competition)
Our body (especially our brain) is designed to run predominantly on carb due to the faster rate at which carb converts to glucose. So, if you eat a high-protein diet, you'll get headache frequently because protein converts relatively slower to fuel your brain activities. By the way, protein is primarily required and reserved to help repair damaged tissues, not to serve as energy. Same goes for fat. Fat is present to primarily help protect and cushion our organs from shock. It keeps us warm too. So, keep your fat content lower than carb.
Tip: Please vary your macronutrient ratio every now and then to prevent weight loss plateau.
4. Stay Away from Refined Food
Refined or processed food always contains various additives such as artificial colorings and flavorings. To make it worse, processed food is always infused with lots of refined sodium and sugar. These stuffs make your body acidic and toxic, which in turn causes metabolic sluggishness. It may not always be possible to completely keep clear of processed food depending on where you live and work. In that case, keep processed food to the minimum where possible.
The one food you can easily change now is your home cooking oil. Use unrefined coconut oil for cooking, and flax oil or olive oil as salad dressing. These fats are good fats for your body. They aid in weight loss, unlike other refined cooking oils like corn oil, peanut oil etc.
5. 5 Meals a Day
More smaller meals spreading over the day stabilizes your glucose levels and keeps you metabolically active so as to stay in fat-burning mode. Ideally, you should have 3 main vegetarian meals (in a relatively smaller portion than what you normally had) plus one snack in each interval between the meals, like this: Breakfast - Snack - Lunch - Snack - Dinner. And, get enough soluble and insoluble fiber in your vegetarian weight loss diet.
6. Water
Keep your body hydrated. You need water to flush out waste. Waste stuck in your body makes fat loss more difficult. In short, more waste out, more fat loss. As you increase your fiber intake, so should you up your water intake accordingly, otherwise, you can easily suffer from constipation.
7. Work Out
You'll lose fat big-time if you insert exercises in your vegetarian fat loss plan. But step up the intensity level gradually if you have not been working out for at least 4 weeks. Doing so can help minimize injuries. Start off with a simple exercise that you can do, and persevere for at least 5 consecutive sessions. Thereafter, it'll probably become a healthy habit of yours. Then add more other exercises or raise the intensity level to achieve greater and faster fat loss.
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