I’ve had my periods of experimenting diets and healthy alimentary life styles, and for a good period of time I’ve even tried the complete vegetarian weight loss diet. Even if it has shown good results, and it promised a lot on the long run, this program is not for me. Seems a lot more like something fit for a woman. Compared to the anorexic diets women take and surprisingly appreciate, this is a heaven sent, as it’s basically all natural and is not missing lots of stuff…well except proteins, but that can be adjusted by eating fish and easy meat products, if you are willing to make a compromise.

Since I’ve been there, let me tell a bit about how it feels being a vegetarian, including goods and bads. Not everything is so peachy as convinced vegetarians claim, but it’s not by far as bad as meat-eaters tend to believe. A vegetarian weigh loss diet basically means that you will be exclusively eating aliments that are not animal based. There are variations here, some people are taking a mild vegetarian diet, and choose to eat eggs and diary products (just like I did), while others will only use it for religious reasons in different periods of the year.

In the USA, vegetarians are divided in two. The vegans are those eating exclusively vegetal products, and the vegetarians are eating fish, milk and egg along with those vegetal things. Even if the weight loss would have been more pronounced if I would’ve eaten only vegetables, it seemed like too much to me, so I choose to be a vegetarian for a while, not a vegan. But I’ve encountered many people telling me that milk form animals and eggs are not good for healthy, that they are new alimentary products (by this they mean they weren’t eaten in prehistoric times, I’m sure…) and they have been proven to have inconvenient effects on health…and so on. Others, and here I must include doctors, say that there’s no healthy diet without some milk and some eggs…opinions are as always divided.

There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to the vegetarian weight loss diet. Some pople in my vegetarian group (I’ve joined one at the time) were considering this diet out of medical reasons. Their doctors were saying that animal products have many more toxins and that there are lots of factors which target diseases in these products, including cancer triggering factors. Also, a vegetarian diet permits the consumption of aliments unprocessed, which is quite benefic to health. Other advantages I’ve clearly felt by an increased level of energy and well being are the vitamins and minerals I was eating daily.

Because I didn’t take the diet for more than 6 months, I didn’t get to suffer from any of the possible disadvantages related to it. From what others have told me, these are related to vitamin lacks, like the lack of vitamin B12, D and A and others are related to an excessive amount of carbs that we eat, coming from cereals, flour products, potatoes and sugar.

The first thing that drew me to this diet was not the vegetarian weight loss results others had but the fact that I’ve heard that vegetarians have a lowered risk of developing chronic affections. In time, I’ve realized this is just something vegetarians believe themselves, even if it’s backed by some scientific research. The thing is that the quantity of aliments counts a lot, regardless of the diet I would take. And, in additions, I’ve noticed that diseases that were until recently blamed on eat are successfully prevented today by eliminating products like alimentary preservative, sugar and over-processing of food. If we could only eat aliments clean when it comes to chemicals and if only our wives would have the time and patience to cook them healthy every time, then we would be sheltered from risks, regardless of the diet. And after all, alimentation is just one factor that causes these illnesses, but there are many others to take into consideration like bad habits (smoking, drinking, even coffee!) or lack of exercise, stress and so on.

I’ve learnt at my vegetarian focus group that the main problem of vegetarians is that they only focus on cereals and that there are newer studies which pretty much dethrone cereals… In a healthy vegetarian diet the key is diversity… We were recommended to eat, next to fruits and vegetables, a lot of nuts, seeds, roots, mushrooms, salad, spinach, olives, avocado (which I can swear tastes EXACTLY like regular butter… amazing!), sweet fruits, because natural sugar is important after all. They were not talking against eating fish or milk…they were saying nothing about these, so I’m guessing they are ok and no contra argument could be brought. If you want o lose weight, they were clearly saying that the consumption of rice, products made of flour and potatoes should not be very high.

Like everyone else, I was curious to see where my vital proteins could be coming from, if I weren’t to eat meat. I was offered alternatives like some cereals, nuts, beans, olives, mushrooms, nuts and so on. Still, I preferred to be one of those semi-vegetarians that eat fish and eggs and diary products. As far as soy goes, the opinions are not very concluding. From what I’ve understood, we can’t unfortunately consume soy prepared by the traditional Asian methods. So, it’s better to eliminate the industrial soy products that invaded hypermarkets over the years. The soy protein contained by them seems to be quite poor in quality and it comes along with lots of toxins… And there’s something else about soy. Researchers say that soy is called “the nature’s contraceptive pill”. And it’s not a pill taken by women…It works the other way. Soy is causing serious infertility problems in men. So, unless you have too many kids too handle, maybe it’s better to let the wife take pills, and not start eating soy.

In conclusion, the vegetarian diet is what you want to make out of it. Not even vegetarians are that strict. Some even claim they have vegetarian kids, but in fact they are all eating healthy stuff and not eating red meat. If you can stay away from soy, and still eat fish and milk and eggs, then you should be ok. I’ve taken this for 5 months and felt really good. I didn’t give it up because there was something wrong with it, but because there was something wrong with me, as I couldn’t stay away from meat…at least once in a while. I still feel this is a good long term idea, especially if you include fish meat and protein aliments.