How to Become a Healthy Vegetarian

I had been an on again, off again vegetarian for many years. That is until I became concerned about my heart health. Since I am one who believes that you should learn anything and everything about any given topic, I researched and learned what habits would improve my health.

The biggest thing I learned was to reduce fat consumption from my diet. Then I learned that meat is a major factor in fat consumption. So I decided a vegetarian diet would be healthier. Cutting meat out of my cooking and meals was a tricky task. But this turned out to be just the beginning of my problems.

Here are some of the things that I learned over the course of many years that helped me to make the transition to become a healthy vegetarian.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 
    
   fat in fast food burgers

   Find your own reason for taking on a vegetarian diet. My major reason for becoming vegetarian was my health. It is important to learn the facts about meat consumption versus the vegetarian diet when it comes to your health. At the bottom of this article I will list some sites that discuss the benefits of being vegetarian as discussed by the heart association and by cancer research.

2. 
    
   5 a day!

   It is so important to realize that when you cut meat out of your diet that you must begin to add a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to your meals in order to gain the full nutrition our bodies require, but it can be done. When I was a meat eater, vegetables held a small portion on the side of the dish. But now that I'm making healthy vegetarian meals, I make dishes that have several different varieties of vegetables in them, which makes them full of nutrition, color and flavor!

3. 
    
   more than salads

   Realize that you can't go from meat eater to salad eater and believe you've made your transition to being a vegetarian. This is how I tried to become vegetarian at first. Believe me; salads, made with iceberg lettuce don't provide much sustenance or nutrition to get very far. Not only that, you'll get tired of only eating salads quite quickly. If you eat salads, be sure to get the darker lettuce and add a variety of vegetables and fruits to it. Remember that it is recommended to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. This definitely applies when taking on vegetarian meals.

4. 
    
   frozen options too

   Remember that a variety of fruits and vegetables is the key here. Whether it's fresh, frozen or even canned, the greater the variety you have on hand, the greater variety of vegetarian meals can be make. You can go to online recipe sites to get ideas for vegetarian cooking or for dish ideas specific to certain items you have on hand.

5. 
    
   beans

   Learn to cook more with a variety of beans as well to be a healthy vegetarian. Whether you use red kidney beans, black beans, black eyed peas, lentils, or even soy beans, they all hold a great source of protein. Don't be intimidated to try them out in some of your vegetarian meals as a meat replacement.
   
   Other good sources of protein are also found in vegetables such as asparagus, cauliflower, and broccoli; in grains such as wheat, oatmeal, pasta, rice, and bread; nuts and seeds; even fruits such as oranges, fresh strawberries, peaches, bananas, raisins, and apples have protein in them. So realize that gaining an intake of protein in a vegetarian diet is not as difficult as many are lead to believe. Again, the key is in variety.

6. 
    
   meat substitutes

   It's also great to know that for those who are making the transition away from meat and towards a vegetarian diet there are many meat substitutions available as vegetarian foods. In our home, we occasionally enjoy vegetarian foods such as bacon, chicken, corn dogs, hot dogs, and burgers that are made from veggie and soy proteins. You can find some vegetarian foods, such as veggie lunch meats, cheeses and tofu in the produce section while other products can be found in the frozen foods section. However, I only use these vegetarian foods occasionally and resort more to using beans and fresh vegetables as my meat substitutions.

7. 
    
   information & support

   Gain support from others who are vegetarian. I have a friend who really helped me go from a starving salad eater attempting to be vegetarian, to a healthy vegetarian eating a variety of vegetarian meals. Those who have already achieved being a healthy vegetarian can help you understand what else you can do to diversify your diet and to overcome any challenging areas you may have in making vegetarian meals. Books and online groups are another great way to gain information and support to be a healthy vegetarian.

8. 
    
   Yum!

   Don't feel you have to be a perfect vegetarian instantly. I call myself a practicing vegetarian, because I've made many small steps to get this far. I figure that each thing I do to improve my eating habits makes me that much more of a healthy vegetarian. However, taking on too many vegetarian diet changes all at once can be quite overwhelming in many ways. So keep your changes simple and manageable with each step you take.
   
   I must say that the benefits of being vegetarian have been very well worth all the changes and the learning curves that I have encountered. May you become a happy and healthy vegetarian as well!

Tips & Warnings

• Don't make too many changes all at once. Make the transition one step at a time.
• Learn as much about healthy vegetarianism as you can, learn what foods contain the varieties of nutrition.
• Not getting enough variety of fruits, vegetables, beans and grains for full nutrition in take can neglect your body of what it needs to sustain good health.

Resources

• American Heart Association - Vegetarian Diets
• University of California - Cancer Outreach - Vegetarianism
• 101 Reasons to go Vegetarian - Health
• VegWeb - Vegan Recipes
• VegCooking - Vegetarian Cooking

[edieness]

on 8/10/2009 Excellant article on How to Become a Healthy Vegetarian.

[JeannieKerns]

on 5/13/2009 Informative article on becoming a vegetarian !

[stjohnswood]

on 4/2/2009 Very informative article. Thanks

[papaya42]

on 3/28/2009 I really like this article - an inspiring one for those who are trying to make diet changes and become vegetarians! Thanks for the advice. 5*s

[smartmoneygrrrl]

on 3/27/2009 This is a wonderful article!