How to Stop Eating Meat to Lose Weight

Oust the meat to make room for yummy alternatives.

Consuming a diet with less calories is a reliable way to lose weight, including shifting toward a low-calorie plant based diet. You don't have to be an animal rights activist to appreciate that animal products have the saturated fat and cholesterol that plant foods are lacking. You can live without those things when trying to lose weight, but there's a more important benefit: since vegetables and veggie-based protein has less calories when compared to meat, you can eat the same amount of food while still losing weight.

Instructions

1. Cut out the calories from meat. Even if the leaner versions are chosen, the fat that exists in meat has a higher proportion of saturated fat. Lowering Saturated fat often leads to higher good cholesterol (LDL) levels. Since only animal products contain saturated fat, cutting out meat has the twofold benefit of getting rid of those calories while also getting rid of the saturated fat. Though Saturated fat does not have any more calories than regular fat, any fat has many more calories than the same amount of carbohydrates or protein. Plant foods, except for nuts, seeds, and oil, often have extremely low calorie counts: green leafy vegetables, celery, carrots, carrots, cauliflower, fennel, lettuce onion, and peppers are a sampling of vegetables with less than 100 calories per serving.

2. Replace meat with the right things. Replacing meat with foods that will be fulfilling and tasty, keeps the no meat regiment from feeling like a diet and more like a positive change. Since many of the foods in a plant-based diet have considerably lower calories, it is possible to eat plenty while still staying on track and staying satisfied. Many animal foods have vegetarian equivalents which are designed to taste similar while still being rich in protein and vitamins -- try MorningStar or Quorn brands. For breakfast, bake up a Morningstar Veggie Sausage Pattie, which is 80 calories, to replace the same amount of sausage links containing 117 calories. A host of vegetarian cookbooks are published with calorie counts for each recipe: pick one up for a stream of ideas to supplement your own.

3. Watch your protein vs. carbohydrate intake. A danger of steering away from meat is eating foods which are richer in carbohydrates and lower in protein: a tendency which can increase instead of decreasing weight. Cutting out excess calories is the goal, so stay conscious of those things that you eat a lot of without feeling satisfied. For many people, these are things like cookies, candy, ice cream, chips, white bread, and butter. Remove the "vices" from your diet so that your weight-loss efforts aren't sabotaged.

References

• MorningStar Farms Sausage Patties,
• USDA Nutrient Database. Smoked link sausage, pork.
• USDA Nutrient Database. Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat and skin, cooked, roasted.
• Quorn. Naked Chik'n Cutlet.
• BBC News. Rejecting Meat 'keeps weight low'
• Low Calorie Vegetables: 100 calories or less.