If you're a vegetarian...

Former vegetarian checking in...

Just make sure you eat your macros, e.g. eat enough protein and fiber, with special attention to the protein since you will eliminate meat. So long as you aren't going vegan, you can still do eggs and Greek yogurt and other high protein animal sourced items.

The most important thing will be to identify high protein, non- meat items to add into your diet, like quinoa, bans, tofu, etc. A quick Google search should bring up a big list with a lot of helpful resources.

I am a relatively new vegetarian, and I eat a lot of:

-eggs
-cheese
-milk
-beans
-Luna Bars
-Boca and Morning Star Farms products

Chances are you'll be getting more general nutrients than you would by eating meat, assuming you don't only eat junk food. The only thing meat offers in abundance more than the majority of plant-foods do is a high concentration of protein and iron, and a few other minerals which escape me at the moment. Fruits and veggies on the other hand offer a huge rainbow of nutrients that meat doesn't even begin to touch. Focus on whole foods, fruits, beans, veggies. Your protein intake might go down, but are you sure you should really worry about protein that much? I feel a lot of people overemphasize protein, when in reality it's nearly impossible to be protein deficient if you focus on whole foods.

That said, here is a (vegan) list if you're worried: tofu, seitan, beans, quinoa, whole wheat, nuts (peanut butter counts!), tempeh, lentils... Green veggies also have a fairly decent amount of protein-to-calories ratio, though they're low in calories so you have to eat a lot of them to get high numbers. Truthfully, just about everything has some protein in it, and it adds up. If you're vegetarian and not vegan, that opens up even more things which you are probably already aware of, so I wont rehash them here.

Other things to consider are protein powders, if you still feel like you need an even bigger safety net.