I want to become a vegetarian,,, whats a sample of a whole days worth of meals, what do u eat in a day?!
id like to slowly cut out meat from our diet, without him realising,,, i just wanna know what meals u eat in a day if your a vegetarian,, whats your breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks
will we lose energy levels if we cut out meat? do we take iron tablets?
please, any advice would b great xxxxxxxxxx
Answers: id love to eat healthier and i know vegetarians do,, i need to lose weight and become healthier,,, my husband had heart disease that runs in his family and hes on his way there slowly cos of his high cholesterol ect
id like to slowly cut out meat from our diet, without him realising,,, i just wanna know what meals u eat in a day if your a vegetarian,, whats your breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks
will we lose energy levels if we cut out meat? do we take iron tablets?
please, any advice would b great xxxxxxxxxx
I'm not vegetarian, but I don't eat any meat or dairy, just fish.
What I do though, that has helped my health and digestive system, is separate protein and starches. It takes different enzymes to digest protein, and different for starches, that 's why eating them together slows down digestion.
Well, this is what I usually eat every day:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with tahini (ground sesame seeds, great source of good fat, and calcium). With honey, and tbs of flax seeds (source of essential fatty acids, calcium, and iron).
Lunch: Big glass of carrot and celery juice. (lots of vitamin A, and C, and also calcium, and magnesium).
Then either beans, chickpeas, lentils, tofu of fish, for protein, and raw salad, or cooked veggies.
Snack: Wallnuts, and almonds, or any kind of nuts.
Afternoon: Fruit, and fruit juice.
Dinner: Vegetables (broccoli, leeks, cauliflower, carrots, spinach... anything), and rice(brown only), potatoes, millet, pasta, or whole wheat bread.
Snack, rice cakes, whole wheat cookies, chocolate soy puddings, soy milk, honey and nuts... basically nothing made from white flower, and white sugar.
You don;t have to stop eating meat, You can just cut down to twice a week or so. But don't have any junkfood at home, stop eating fried foods, and refined sugars, and flours, and eat lots of veggies, and healthy food. Get your fat from good sources like olive oil, flax seed oil, salmon, and nuts and seeds, instead of butter and animal fat. I think that would be a great start.
Feel free to email me for meal ideas, healthy recipes etc...
Good luck, and congratulations for deciding to eat healthy.
About supplements, you won't need any iron if you eat lost of dark leafy veg, lentils, nuts etc. And you can get all the protein you need from beans. Also, I have a lot more energy now, than before I started eating this way, even though I was just a teenager.
Edit: Ha ha, Cutemum you're so cute!!
Here's what I ate yesterday. Hope this helps.
Breakfast: Eggs, toast w/ orange marmalade, & juice
Snack: Peach and Yogurt smoothie(homemade) spring water
Lunch: Veggie Dog w/ veg. baked beans & diet coke
Snack. 1/2 a pb & apple sandwich w/ milk
Dinner: Black bean, mandarian salad w/ spinach, crusty whole wheat bread w/ little fat free margarine. Diet coke.
Dessert: Lowfat Edy's Pumpkin Ice Cream
Hope this helps some. Keep in mine I'm like 5'1" and weigh about 109lbs.
I live on my own and have a professional very busy job, so my diet is quite special, here's my normal weekdays diet:
Breakfast: Quaker + wholeweat bread + marmolade
Lunch: fruit salad (tons) and vegan wine
Snacks: Bread or corn tortillas or nachos with hummus or other vegan spread. Or tofu with pineaple or tofu with soysauce (or tofu alone he he).
Dinner: Pasta w/vegetables or curry with rice or any vegan recipe + vegan wine + vegan cake or any vegan dessert
Execpt for the wine, tortillas and nachos everything is home made (even the bread).
On weekends I only change the lunch by cooking a more elaborated recipe from a book or the web.
Good thing about vegan diet is you can eat as much as you want without adding weight to your body, so eat generously.
Breakfast
- Cup of tea
- Multigrain bagel with cheddar cheese and tomatoes
- Apple
Morning Snack
- 6 dried apricots
Lunch
- Bowl of veggie soup and a breadstick from the university cafeteria, or a slice of veggie pizza
- Diet coke
Afternoon snack
- handful of cashews or almonds
- Water with lemon
Dinner
- Glass of red wine
- Curried broccoli, chickpeas, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and sweet potato over brown rice
- A mango and a piece of chocolate for dessert
Remember, you don't have to become a vegetarian to cut down on the cholesterol. You can try to work more fish into your diet, or simply reduce the amount of meat products you're eating - a stir fried meat, say, rather than a steak.
I don't need iron because I eat breakfast cereal and I eat green, leafy vegetables. This is true for most veggies.
Good luck.
First thing we did in my family was to cut out all fast food. That took a couple of months to do! Craving hamburgers and french fries is very hard to get over!
Next was to cut back and then eliminate all red meats. And with poultry and dairy/eggs we went organic. That was for about a year or so and it was easy to do (way easier than cutting out fast food).
Then we cut out chicken, and then we were vegetarian. Cheese dishes (macaroni and cheese, cheese enchiladas, nachoes supreme - mostly Italian and Mexican dishes!) and Egg dishes (quiche, scrambled eggs, baked goods: cakes, cookies, bread, muffins, etc.) were our main entrees for dinner.
Then we went vegan after two years being vegetarian (a New Year's resolution to try being vegan for a year, and it stuck and we have been vegan/organic/wholefoods for three years now). We have switched to mainly legumes, whole grains, and complementing vegetables with grains for complete amino acid profiles (protein).
A typical day: Vegan muffin, fruit juice, a tablespoon of peanut butter for breakfast. Lunch is a sandwich made of sprouted wheat bread (Alvarado's is much softer than Ezekiel's), vegenaise, tofurky deli slices (wheat/tofu), lettuce/sprouts, and a pickle or tomato, with carrot sticks/sugar snap pea pods/applesauce and Zensoy's chocolate vegan pudding cup. Dinner is goulash made with elbow noodles, pasta sauce, mushrooms, shredded red swiss chard (a green), cut up tofurky Italian sausage, and sauteed caramelized onions on top. Delicious desserts are apple pie, or gluten-free Red Bob Mill's brownie mix (made with no eggs or cow milk).
I am no longer a vegetarian. I had a lot of deficiencies, so I went back to eating meat.
Here's a typical day for me when I was a vegetarian:
Breakfast: Cereal with milk, or a bagel with cream cheese.
Lunch: Broccoli Cheddar Quiche with salad and a muffin.
Dinner: Curried Garbanzo beans with Basmati rice.
You don't need to take iron supplements unless you don't eat complete proteins during the day. You have to compliment beans with corn or rice or other grains in order to get a complete protein, or at least eat those things within several hours of each other.
first you will need to decide what level of vegetarian you are going to be.... there are vegetarians that don't eat red meat but eat fish and poultry and products from animals such as milk, cheese, butter and eggs. then there are those that will not eat red meat or any product from those animals but will eat fish and poultry... then there are those that will not eat red meat, fish, or poultry, but will eat products from them milk, cheese, butter, eggs. then you have those that eat no red meat, poultry, or any products from those animals....
you can cut down on how much meat you eat without totally eliminating it from your diet too....
Right! Not so hard, Been born vegi, I advise wight loss has nothing to do with being vegi or non vegetarian. Now, if you like your chicken so much then replace it with Aubergine and mushrooms. Meet can be replaced with either soya and all green beans available in supermarket. Pasta and rice will get you the carb you need and all the dry pulse is equally good for dinner. People ask me how do you survive being a vegi, well to me is not even question to be honest. [ tip: you could get lot of option to shop if you visit Indian grocer or shop]
Read This True Story!!!
Many people have asked me why I eat a vegan diet, so I'm long overdue for a post on this topic. But before I dive into it, let me first say I'm not interested in trying to convert you to veganism. While many vegans are conversion-happy, for me this is a personal lifestyle choice, not a religion. In any event I've noticed that people tend to go vegan when they're ready for it, not because they're beaten over the head with statistics and health knowledge. As the saying goes, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." So take this article as an insider's report on my path to a vegan diet rather than conversion rhetoric.
Going Vegetarian...
After eating animal products for most of my life, during the early 90s, I started reading health books as part of my novice-level interest in personal growth. My initial changes including adopting a low-fat diet and exercising regularly. I switched from low-fat to skim milk, favored leaner meats, and reduced high-fat products like cheese and butter. I also reduced my sugar intake, switching from regular sodas to diet sodas. I took up running as my primary exercise and would run about 25 minutes per day, sometimes longer. Overall I'd say I was in fairly good health - no major health problems or serious illnesses. I never smoked in my life, and I shunned alcohol too except on rare occasions.
Eventually I got curious about the vegetarian diet after reading about it in a nutrition textbook. I read that vegetarians supposedly live longer, need less sleep, and have lower risks of many major illnesses like cancer and heart disease. That sounded attractive, but I really didn't want to be a vegetarian for the rest of my life. I figured that was a bit too extreme and probably unnecessary. I had a vegetarian friend during my late teens - a skinny Indian guy - and I found it funny that he could never eat pepperoni pizza. But he did seem fairly healthy and intelligent. He would regularly whoop me when we played poker together.
In June 1993, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to try going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days just to see what it was like (no animal flesh but dairy and eggs OK). At least then I'd know, and I could be done with it. I'd been through enough habit changes to know that a new mindset always looks different from the outside looking in than from the inside looking out. So I wanted an insider's perspective on the diet. Otherwise, I'd risk going my whole life without knowing what it was really like. I was 22 years old, so I figured I might as well have this experience now. I fully expected to return to my previous way of eating after the 30 days.
I was surprised at how easy it was to go vegetarian. I thought it would take a lot of discipline, but it really didn't. I just made obvious substitutions: cheese or veggie pizza instead of pepperoni, pasta dishes, rice dishes, stir fry veggies, etc. If I did this today, it would be even easier due to all the vegetarian products now on the market that weren't available back then. I acquired one vegetarian cookbook (which I still have) that helped me with a few recipes, but mostly I found that cutting out flesh was painless.
I didn't have any withdrawal symptoms or detox effects (no headaches or back pain or anything like that). I wasn't overweight when I began this experiment, so I don't recall losing much weight, but I did notice an increase in my overall energy level, and I felt more energetic during my morning runs. I also noticed I could concentrate better, especially during meditation or while doing programming work. These increases weren't huge, but they were noticeable.
At the end of the 30 days, I had adapted well to the habit, and I found it so easy that I couldn't think of a compelling reason to switch back. After putting off my return to carnivorous life for several months, I eventually concluded, "Well, I guess I'm a vegetarian." I gradually lost my appetite for animal flesh, so those old foods no longer appealed to me. I had no sense of deprivation because I was eating what I felt naturally drawn to eat. It took no discipline to stay vegetarian, since I was simply eating what naturally appealed to me. Over time the thought of eating animals became repulsive to me, not from a moral standpoint but from a gustatory one - I no longer wanted to put dead flesh into my mouth.
When I met Erin in 1994, she wasn't a vegetarian. In fact, her diet was pretty poor, consisting of large quantities of fast food. But eventually she decided to try going vegetarian for 30 days too - without even telling me - and her experience was similar to mine. After 30 days she simply didn't want to go back.
Going Vegan...
During my vegetarian days, I occasionally considered eliminating all animal products and going 100% vegan. From what I'd read up to that point, I was convinced that the vegan diet would be healthier for me than a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. I also went to Tony Robbins' firewalk seminar in 1996 and learned about the Fit for Life diet, a book I later read. Tony is the most energetic person I've ever seen, and he was pitching a mostly vegan diet. I became curious about how a vegan diet would affect my energy level.
Erin and I were learning Tae Kwon Do at this time, and I was becoming interested in distance running, so the high-energy promise of the vegan diet appealed to me. I'd already seen an energy boost after going vegetarian, so it wasn't hard for me to fathom that going vegan would be even better.
As you can see, what motivated me to try veganism wasn't animal rights or environmental issues - it was simply the possibility of enjoying more energy and vitality. I wish I'd been the kind of person who'd have genuinely listened to those other arguments for veganism, but I have to be honest and admit that I wasn't. My curiosity was driven entirely by self-interest.
In January 1997, Erin and I both decided to try going vegan for 30 days to see what it was like. Both of us were convinced, however, that the diet would be too hard and too fanatical to sustain in the long run. We kept thinking about all the delicious foods we'd have to give up - the hardest ones for me were cheese pizza and veggie-cheese omelettes. But we figured we could manage it for 30 days. At least we'd know what it was like, and if the diet beat us down, we'd be comfortable concluding that it wasn't for us.
Going vegan was very different than going vegetarian. During the first 7 days, Erin and I lost 7 pounds each! We were eating abundant calories and drinking plenty of water, so where did that weight come from? Seriously, it went down the toilet. A lifetime of accumulated dairy clog came washing out of our intestines. Wow! We had heard about detox, but 7 pounds in 7 days was beyond our expectations. After the first week things settled down, and we lost a few more pounds over the remaining 23 days.
After the first week, my energy had increased massively. This was a much bigger increase than when I went vegetarian. I'd say that for the total increase in energy I experienced from animal eater to vegan, the change from vegetarian to vegan was about 80% of it. This energy boost was most pronounced during Tae Kwon Do classes - I suddenly had a lot more energy during sparring - my endurance was much, much higher. I also noticed it was easier for me to run longer distances without getting tired, and my breathing felt smoother and more effortless. Exercising became easier, and I started enjoyed that runner's high feeling much more often.
After doing 3-5 mile runs for several years, I gradually increased to 5-10 mile runs. Running felt so good that I often didn't want to stop, so it felt right to just keep going. Within a year I was doing 14-mile runs down the Santa Monica beach, and in 2000 I ran the L.A. Marathon.
Despite the increase in physical vitality, the #1 benefit I experienced was a marked improvement in my mental clarity. It felt like I was coming out of a long-term fog of brain - if you saw the movie Awakenings, it was similar to that, except that my starting point was the state we call "normal." I thought, "Wow… so this is what clear-headedness is supposed to feel like." Imagine the feeling of having totally clear sinuses after eating super-spicy food… but applied to your brain.
I noticed a significant improvement in my ability to do computer game programming, which was my career at the time. I could solve challenging problems more easily. The problems were just as hard, but my ability to tackle them had increased significantly.
Interestingly, Erin's experience was different than mine. I don't recall her having as much of a boost in mental clarity or physical endurance as I did. But she enjoyed a significant boost in her psychic sense. I didn't notice it at the time (because I wasn't looking for it), but I also experienced an improvement in my intuitive clarity after going vegan.
Once again when the 30 days were up, Erin and I found it easy to keep going, and the benefits were so obvious that we'd never want to give them up. By day 30 animal products had lost much of their appeal anyway, so we just kept eating the way that seemed most natural. Again, it didn't take any discipline to maintain the diet. And to make the initial switch we used curiosity instead of discipline. As you can see I really love the 30-day trial.
I get a lot of compliments on my depth of thought on certain subjects, and as odd as it may seem, I have to credit much of that to my diet. The mental benefits are probably the #1 reason I decided to stay vegan. I just can't go back to the fog-of-brain I used to regard as normal. People who eat animals often regard my diet as being deprived (outside looking in), while ironically I regard their lifestyle as being far more deprived (inside looking out).
While some people would regard my diet as severely restrictive, it feels nothing of the sort to me. I've been eating this way for almost 10 years now, so to me it's normal. In some ways it's a little odd eating out with people who still eat animals, since they tend to be a bit fanatical in their bloodlust for flesh… as if they're vampires or something. It doesn't bother me when people eat animals in front of me - they're free to eat whatever they want. I do notice, however, that people often feel uncomfortable eating animals in front of vegans. And I imagine the animals aren't too comfortable with it.
I am Vegan Shubhanshu Singh Chauhan.
vegan1983@gmail.com
For lots of meal ideas, go to http://www.vegcooking.com/makingthetrans... and scroll to "Ideas for Everyday Eating"
More meal ideas:
http://www.tryveg.com/cfi/toc/?v=07menu
http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk/v...
Two weeks of vegan meals (click on the name for the recipe): http://www.vegcooking.com/veganMenus-1.a...
If you eat a varied diet (fruits, veggies, grains, nuts, beans) you shouldn't lose energy levels or have a problem with getting enough nutrients. I take a daily multi-vitamin just to be on the safe side.
Here are some good sources of iron and other nutrients:
http://www.tryveg.com/cfi/toc/?v=08sourc...
Good luck!!
It's a good question... most people think I eat rabbit food all day. Not true!
Yesterday I had toast with peanut butter for breaky, a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch, and a teriyaki stir fry with noodles for tea.
Today I had a banana smoothie for breaky and I've made some veggie sushi for lunch. I think I'm going to an Italian restaurant for tea tonight, so I'll probably have a nice pasta with veggie sauce and some garlic bread.
Life is good! Love your veggies!
xxx
in the morning, eggs, toast, and fruit. Lunch is pb&j, and dinner is fish and potatos. And ice cream for desert. Vegetarianism has way too much hype. You have to make sure you get protien and fat and b vitamins but its way easier than most people think.
You may lose weight. Also instead of cutting meat right out of your diet, why don't you try and buy a good quality meat with little trim.
Trust me Rockmum, I need a few pages to write what I eat during 24 hours. I am such a piggy!!!
Please take a multi vitamin and iron supplement though. I want you to be healthy.
WHAT?????
breakfast: soy milk and healthy cereal. By healthy I mean no refined sugar or flour.
Lunch: Tofu stir fry with veggies.
Dinner: Veggie lasagna with soy cheese
In between I'll have veggie juices, soy milk, fruit juice, fruit, hummus and carrot sticks, vegan cookies and cake etc...
That's a sample day.
Good luck if you decide to go veggie. It'll be easier if the whole family does it too. Enjoy it. xxxxx
Vegan: What you're saying sounds great, only you're not answering the question actually. And also, may I ask why you keep posting the same answer even where it doesn't apply?
Generally vegetariasn eat more, vegetables generate vapors and gas, and are weaker in the long run- don't do it, support it healthwise but don't go V-on me. Veggie eater myself.
I can tell you it's lacking in many things and for one, we are adapted we need the taste of blood. You're human not cattle. I like you thoughts on slowly X-ing the meats but not all together, even I need a steak salad sometimes. Think of the kids!..and dog.
You'll need a protein supplement, there is no changing human physiology regardless of what seems hip and trendy at the moment.