Weight Loss Advice for Vegetarians

Weight Gain

We all gain weight for slightly different reasons. Some of us over-eat; some of us eat small portions but of very-high-calorie-foods; some of us eat too much fast food; some of us eat for comfort; some of us don't exercise enough. Probably most of us gain weight because of a combination of all these reasons!

Weight Loss - Needs Calorie Deficit

While gaining weight can happen for all sorts of reasons, weight loss happens for one simple reason only: the number of calories we eat is less than the number of calories we burn. Without this calorie-deficit we can't lose weight.

Weight Loss Should be Mainly Fat Loss

Weight loss is not exclusively fat loss. Up to 25 percent of weight loss is typically water and lean tissue. That said, our main effort must be to lose fat rather than (say) water. And when it comes to losing fat, please note that the maximum amount of fat we can lose is about 3 pounds per week.

Huge Weight Loss is Simply Water Loss

Many weight loss products - like fat-diets and diet pills - claim to provide huge weight loss when all they REALLY offer is WATER LOSS. Remember this next time you read about a diet pill or diet that claims to help you "Lose 10 pounds in a Week!"

Fast Weight Loss Leads to Fast Weight Re-Gain

Starvation diets can help you to lose weight fast (for a very short time). But losing weight is the easy bit - keeping it off is the difficult bit. That's why most fast weight loss is swiftly followed by fast weight gain. Point is, artificial diet-plans (eg. liquid diets) or very-low-calorie diets are NOT SUSTAINABLE. Furthermore, they can play havoc with our appetite and metabolism. So they usually leave us heavier than before.

Weight Loss Doesn't Come From a Bottle - No Matter What the Label Says!

Weight loss rarely comes from a bottle of pills, and research on long term treatment of weight loss suggests that pills are no magic formula for weight control.

Slow Steady Weight Loss is Best

Slow, steady weight loss - eg. 2 pounds a week - is nearly always the most effective way to lose weight for good. That's why most dietitians and nutritionists recommend it.

Slow Steady Weight Loss Helps us Develop Good Eating Habits

To achieve lasting weight loss we typically need to swap our bad eating habits for good ones. But this takes time. So any short-term diet won't give us enough time to change the way we eat, and when we stop dieting we simply revert to our bad eating. But a diet that contains enough calories to offer no more than 2 pounds of weight loss per week DOES give us time to develop healthy eating habits. So we lose weight AND keep it off.

To Lose Weight We Need Good Nutrition

In order to lose weight and stay slim we need to follow a healthy balanced diet that provides our full intake of nutrition. Why? Because a healthy body is an EFFICIENT body. It digests food efficiently, it burns calories efficiently and loses weight efficiently. This won't happen if our diet program is unhealthy or unbalanced.

For Healthy Weight Loss Follow the Vegetarian Pyramid

The best way to lose weight and stay healthy is to look for a weight loss plan that follows the Vegetarian Dietary Guidelines as illustrated in the Vegetarian Food Pyramid. This ensures you receive proper nutrition and makes weight loss faster and more reliable.

Exercise Boosts Weight Loss and Helps Weight Maintenance

Physical activity increases the number of calories your body uses and promotes the loss of body fat instead of water, muscle and other non-fat tissue. Following a weight-loss program that helps you to become more physically active and decrease the amount of calories that you eat is most likely to lead to successful weight loss. Research shows that people who include physical activity in their weight-loss programs are more likely to keep their weight off than people who only change their diet. See also: Weight Loss Exercise

Exercise Boosts Weight Loss Health

The human body loses weight best when in good physical and mental health. Regular physical activity is important to help you lose weight and build an overall healthy lifestyle. In addition to promoting weight control, physical activity improves your strength and flexibility, lowers your risk of heart disease, helps control blood pressure and diabetes, can promote a sense of well-being, and can decrease stress.

Weight Loss and Control is For Life

The weight-loss program should also help you keep the weight off by making changes in your physical activity and eating habits that you will be able to follow for the rest of your life. Thus any fad diet or high protein diet is unlikely to be a viable weight loss option in the long term.

Weight Loss and Unrealistic Expectations

One of the reasons that people fail to maintain their weight loss is that they have unreasonable expectations of what will happen once they've lost weight. "When I lose these 40 lbs., I'll be happy, my spouse will like me more, work will be easier and the world will be a better place." When such expectations collapse, weight gain often follows.
See also Weight Control for Vegetarians
Sources include: The Weight-Control Network (WIN) part of the National Institutes of Health, under the U.S. Public Health Service. Anne Collins Diet and Weight Loss Information
Vegetarian Diet