My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic and lots of people ask how do I become a vegetarian? People have a variety of reasons for becoming a vegetarian, religious, ethnic, even health reasons. One of the first steps is to look at your current diet, see how much meat you are already eating, how many meals you are eating meat in and also think about what meals are you eating that already do not have meat, maybe you eat bean burritos or bean chaloopas or maybe you have spaghetti with marinara sauce or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. All of those things are meals that have protein in them and that protein doesn't come from meat so you want to start thinking about those types of things. You also want to think do you want to become just a vegetarian or do you want to be vegan? The main difference is that someone who is vegetarian may still include eggs, cheese, milk or yogurt in their diet. They are just avoiding any type of meat, poultry or sea food, whereas someone who is vegan is going to avoid all sources of animal derived proteins including eggs and dairy products. Once you have made that decision you want to start thinking about how many meals or how many days of the week you can actually start having meatless meals. Once you have got a few of those under your belt whether it is again having the spaghetti with the marinara sauce or something similar, you may want to try some different ethnic restaurants, tai food, Indian, Chinese, they often have very many vegetarian options to give you ideas of things that you may try making at home. You might want to consider trying things like veggie burgers, tofu, tempe, textured vegetable protein, those are all additional sources of protein that you can use to help cook meals and there are many vegetarian websites and recipe booklets you can get to help you with actual meal preparation. Just make sure that all of your meals are still including plenty of fruits, other types of vegetables, other types of whole grains like whole grain bread, rice, pasta and again those non meat sources of protein.
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