Going Vegitarian?

ElizaGeorge

Well, flexitarian...

My husband and I want to cut a lot of the animal products out of our diet. Not all, just a lot of what we consume... Any suggestions for good food and recipes? Any tips on staying full?

SidsMom80

I'm not vegetarian, but I don't eat meat very often. I get a lot of my recipes from myrecipes.com. I made portabello and black bean quesadillas last night that were DELICIOUS!


http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/portobello-black-bean-quesadilla-50400000117311/

tinylightsbelow

Fruit and nuts are wonderful as a snack. Buy pre-chopped veggies so you can easily make stir-fries, salads and other recipes.

Fake meats are also fun to try. I like the Boca and Gardein brands pretty well; Gardein has fun novelty foods like 'ribs' and 'chicken tenders'. Boca has burgers and 'chicken' patties that are yummy.

Some blogs I love for their recipes include:
Fat Free Vegan
Vegan Dad
Vegan Yum Yum
Post Punk Kitchen
Vegan Lunchbox

Let me know if you have any specific questions!

FrayaLace

I've been a vegetarian the majority of my life, I've only eaten meat for the past two years. Even now the only meat I eat is fish and chicken. The two things you want to make sure you get enough of are protein and iron. I started eating chicken because my blood work showed I had anemia (an iron deficiency in the blood).

p.s. pintrest can be a good place for recipes, also check out any vegetarian Japanese recipes, they tend to be yummy, healthy, and low in calories.

lyssah090

I don't eat red meat as a rule because I find it harder to process, but that's totally a personal thing. I've been doing it for years and have lost the feeling of being "too full" from too much meat. Chicken and fish make me feel full, but not overly full. I use a slow cooker a lot of the time because it makes delicious food that you can forget about for most of the day.

Subs:
- Use ground chicken/turkey anytime a recipe calls for any other kind of meat
- Find recipes that you like with beans in them, such as turkey chili with rice
- Incorporate shrimp into things like pasta
- Make stir fry dishes with whatever you have in your fridge, with a little shrimp or chicken

I tend not to eat mock meats because I find a lot of it has too much sodium. I like tofu once and a while, but I find my protein elsewhere most days.

motamo

I am vegetarian. Go online to Vegetarian Times, they have the best recipes. Also, Trader Joe's sells a soy chorizo and a vegan burger patty, both are awesome! I eat a lot of black beans, lentils, and recently millett. You won't feel tired after a meatless meal. Good luck!

Zaniejane

So as not to get overwhelmed with resources i suggest that you start with the ones you already have in this thread. There is such a huge variety of vegetarian foods you can eat out there it really depends on your preferences. I personally love spicy south Asian food and often eat rice, lentils, beans and quinoa. Dal with roti is so yummy! So is Chana masala. I have a butter chicken sauce recipe with almond butter mixed in that is to die for! I make curried lentil cous cous soup at least once a week from a free app called 21 day vegan diet. I also have fallen in love with seitan and make a loaf every week. Alternately, You might want to start with dairy / pasta based dishes like cannelloni, fettucini Alfredo and lasagna. Browse the Internet, and browse mfp. There are many vegetarian and vegan groups here. Enjoy! If it feels especially daunting you could start with just one favorite meal a week.


Personally, I don't find that I have any trouble not feeling full; As a vegetarian I tend to eat more fat in my diet than I used to, which is filling.

LolaTootsie

I second the Vegetarian Times recommendation - you can sign up for their e-mail newsletter for weekly ideas. Also, several cuisines - Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian - have a lot of vegetarian dishes that are delicious and will keep you full.

grimendale

The Hungry Girl blog has a lot of good, accidentally vegetarian recipes that do a decent job of mimicing fast food and meat products for a lot less calories. My girlfriend is a meat-eater, but she loves the recipes we get from Hungry Girl in spite of not being a fan of most fake meats.

James_Bergin

Go big on South American and South Indian cuisine, not much meat to begin with in many of the decisions, and if there are, they're usually easy to substitute with vegetables (or omit completely)

As a for a particular recipe I'd suggest to get you started, spicy carrot salad.

Grate some carrots, toss them with as much green onion and coriander/cilantro as you like, and sprinkle with pepper. In a small bowl mix an ounce of soy sauce, a half ounce of sesame oil, a half ounce of sriracha sauce or chili paste, and between half or one ounce of water (or white vinegar - my preference). Douse the carrots, herbs, and onions and toss to even out the dressing. Sprinkle with a little lime juice and you're good to go. Beware, it is a bit spicy.

Almost forgot, tips to stay full:
- eat more frequently than you do now, aiming for 5-6 meals (obviously smaller than you eat now)
- get a water bottle and make sure to stay hydrated. You're supposed to drink upwards of 3 litres a day, so in the course of a 12 hour day that works out at about a juicebox full of water every hour!
- carry low cal snacks around, such as apple wedges and crackers with low fat cheese.

Hope this helps!

ParkerH47

if your thinking of doing a lot of cooking these blogs are great (just google them):

Naturally Ella
Cookie and Kate
Sprouted kitchen
The first mess

There are lots more out there too!

I'm not a pure vegetarian but I tend to eat a lot of vegetarian meals I like to have these big one pot sautés (onions, garlic, zucchini, corn, tomatoes, herbs, leafy greens - or whatever veggie combo sounds good to you) and serve it over brown rice or lentils

if your taking away meat from your diet just make sure to watch your bread and cheese intake

LizAnn925

That's great that you have decided to do this! It is also great that you are easing into it. I gave up animal products about 3 months ago and I went through HELL trying to get through the meat cravings (it's an addiction, really), but I lost 13 pounds without even trying! Anyways, enough about that.

The key is to start small. First, get rid of the red and processed meats. They are just terrible for your heart, cholesterol, and weight, so cut them out as much as you possibly can. Start with having them only once a week, and then after a while see if you can go down to once every two weeks, and so on. You will probably want red meats more than ever before only because you are cutting them out of your diet, but resist! Your body will thank you later.
You can buy some alternatives, too. If you are going somewhere where you know there will be grilling, bring some veggie dogs and ask the griller to throw them on for you. They taste great and are not bad at all for you (50 calories and 2 grams of fat for one link).

You can also begin switching out your dairy with some alternatives. I used to drink skim milk a lot, but I think soy milk and almond milk taste much better. And I heard on Dr. Oz that companies actually add sugar to low-fat dairy products to make them taste better...I guess I wasn't doing myself any good buy buying skim milk! I think you will like soy milk and almond milk too - they even have chocolate! As far as eggs go, I don't really like them anymore, but you can replace eggs in recipes with applesauce or flax seed.

With poultry, this should probably be the last thing you start to ease out of your diet. Poultry is doused in ammonia and other harmful chemicals in the slaughterhouses, and they have just as much cholesterol as a steak! I found this the hardest to get rid of, so start with 2-3 times a week and go from there.

As far as staying full as a vegetarian, you will have no problems doing this. All I can say is...BEANS! Beans are my new favorite food. They have adequate calories and edamame soy beans are just freaking delicious. Add in plenty of healthy nuts (pistachios, walnuts, almonds, etc.) and don't load up on pasta and cheese just because you're vegetarian! I've seen a lot of vegetarians gain a ton of weight from choosing the wrong foods.

What's also important is paying attention to your vitamins. You can of course do this on My Fitness Pal, but I do struggle with keeping my iron and calcium intake in check (as in not enough). Also, you have to take a B12 supplement because vegetarians usually don't get enough of it because it is completely from meat. Solve all of these problems with a fantastic daily multi-vitamin. I really like. I really like this daily vitamin:

http://www.drvita.com/p-3560-natures-plus-source-of-life-red-multivitamin-and-mineral-liquid-supplement-mixed-berry-30-fl-oz.aspx?CAWELAID=1906484642&catargetid=1920411117&cadevice=c&gclid=CLbO-fSMoLgCFfBDMgodDxwAfA

It doesn't hurt my stomach, even on an empty stomach.

Good luck!

msarro

I was a vegetarian for 7 years, though I recently switched to more of a flexitarian lifestyle. We set an artificial barrier between meat products by only buying the very best, locally sourced, organic buzzword ridden meat we can find. The way I see it, something died to produce that meat, it shouldn't be bought cheaply, or taken for granted when eaten.

I wish I could agree with the folks earlier about Vegetarian Times, but after being a subscriber for several years I found that I rarely used their recipes. I found the vast majority of them called for very specific ingredients which were difficult, if not nearly impossible to find, and with no substitutions.

I personally love most of the cookbooks from Rodale Press (the Rodale started the organic movement in the USA), as well as the ones from Moosewood Collective (a very famous gourmet vegetarian restaurant in Ithaca NY which publishes tomelike cookbooks). We use them all of the time. You can check out the moosewood recipes here: http://www.moosewoodcooks.com/blog/

Lots of Asian food (Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc) has a very heavy focus on vegetables because meat was often scarce. Southern Italian recipes will also have a lot of vegetarian recipes due to lack of arable farmland, though a lot contain fish.

Your best friends will be:
-Tofu (the old standby)
-TVP (textured vegetable protein), use it like hamburger. It's way cheaper than the "crumbles" you can buy in the store and it is way more flexible.
-Seitan (the wheat gluten meat. You can make it at home and I highly suggest you try it once. Celiacs need not apply)
-Tempeh (fermented soybeans, probably the healthiest in the list, but also takes some getting used to. Makes killer gyros)
-Beans of all varieties
-Grains of all varieties
-If you're ok with eggs and milk, love them and use them all you can. In biology there is a saying, "Like likes like." That means animals thrive the best on animal-based proteins.

Be really careful with store bought meat substitutes - a lot of them use GMO's (if you're offended by that sort of thing), ridiculous amounts of salt and sugar, and the prices are sky high when you can make the equivalent at home for a fraction of the price.

MusicLady24

I am Vegan, which is essentially the same thing. I just don't consume dairy either. I have found that eating beans and avoiding processed wheat are the keys to staying fuller longer. The thing about wheat is that, if it is not purchased in its original einkorn state, it has been genetically altered.

Wheat is a very particular plant, and genetic engineering is a major problem for this food group. Firstly, it is polyploidic in nature meaning, when you cross breed it, it takes on all of the chromosomes from BOTH parent plants as opposed to half of each or some other combination. This may not sound like a big deal, but the wheat found in grocery stores today was cross bred hundreds of times, leaving the wheat we are eating several THOUSAND chromosomes different than what our ancestors ate just a hundred years ago.

To put this into perspective, there is only one chromosome that divides man from woman, and clearly one is a big deal. The problem stems from the fact that this new dwarf strain of wheat was never tested on humans or animals before being introduced into the public as sustenance. We are now paying for that negligence.

Blood sugar levels play a large role in our body's desire to eat. If blood sugar levels become low, then our bodies obviously want to eat to bring the sugar levels back up. We feel this low in headaches, irritability, lack of focus, nausea, "brain fog" and other unpleasant symptoms. Also, causing a spike in blood sugar makes the body create more insulin which, in turn, will drop the blood sugar and make you "hungry" again.

Wheat has a VERY high impact on blood sugar levels, creating a cycle of eating, sugar high, insulin response, low and further eating. A good example of how drastically wheat affects blood sugar levels is when I did a self test comparing two slices of bread to a pint of chocolate chunk ice cream. An hour after eating the entire pint of ice cream my blood sugar level was moderate 135, still safely under the mark of 150 that results in an insulin response. However, an hour after consuming the two slices of whole grain bread, my blood sugar reached 167; 17 points over the safety mark. And the shocking thing is that I only consumed two slices. Most individuals do not even stop there.

So long story short, limiting the amount of wheat you eat each day will definitely benefit your attempts to stay full and live healthier. I certainly hope this helped, and stick with it! You'll thank yourself for going Vegetarian later down the road!

-Becca