Glamour on a budget - Mattie Roberts

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Vegetarian Diets
August 17, 2006

Several readers have sent in questions regarding vegetarian diets as a way to lose weight. If you apply the same basic rules (burn more calories than you eat) you will lose weight. Having had my collegiate run-in with the vegetarian...and vegan...lifestyles I can say that it was the fattest I had ever been!

As a matter of fact, some of the fattest people I have known were vegetarians -- I also know a few thin ones, but they are tremendously disciplined about their caloric intake and get plenty of exercise. Just because you shun meat does not mean you will be thin. Many veggies that I know fall into the carb/fat/sugar cycle of lots of oils, butter and cheese mixed in with carbs like pasta, bread, potatoes and loads of sweets. They misguidedly think that a meat-free diet is automatically a healthy one. The truth is that it's really easy to get fat on any diet. The exception would probably be strict veganism...no animal products of any kind...only things that grow out of the earth are consumed. Not for me, thanks.

The other downfall of the vegetarians I have worked with is that they tend to go a bit gentle on the workout front. Yoga and meditation are fabulous, but you really need to rev up your heart with some good old cardio and weight-lifting if you want to get lean.

So if eating meat is not appealing to you, by all means cut it out but keep track of your overall caloric consumption. Calories still count even if they are coming from non-meat sources. You will have to make a much more concerted effort to balance your meals if you go this route. It's not enough to simply say, "I don't eat meat", then eat everything else under the sun. And make sure you keep your protein and calcuim levels as high as possible with legumes and dairy -- if you swing that way.