A Vegetarian Diet Can Help You Lose Weight, But Only If You Don't Do These Things

Eating more vegetables is a simple and effective goal to adopt if you wish to lose weight. However, it's easy to get tempted to push things further and consume a diet that is fully vegetarian. While there's little debate that a vegetarian diet can help you to achieve your goal, you may struggle if you make a series of oversights that many vegetarians make. Here are some things that you don't want to do if you're using a vegetarian diet to lose weight.

Fill Up On Unhealthy Snacks

Relying on salads and veggie stir-fry dishes as your meals can definitely put you on track toward weight loss, but only if you eat enough of these items to feel full. Some people who switch to a vegetarian diet complain about feeling hungry as a result of not eating meat; if you're in this situation, you could feel compelled to load up on unhealthy snacks between meals. Cookies, chips, candy, and other such items are often technically vegetarian, so you may feel that it's OK to eat them. However, these items are loaded with calories, fat, and sugar, and can quickly derail your efforts to lose weight.

Consume Too Many Starches

Rice and potatoes are acceptable when you're on a vegetarian diet, and the appeal to these foods is that they can help you to feel full. Unfortunately, they're also high in calories and have a high glycemic index, which means that they may make you feel hungry soon after consuming them. Even if you want the occasional potato or scoop of rice on your plate, these instances should be few and far between if you're serious about losing weight. Make sure that the bulk of the food on your plate is made up of vegetables.

Prepare Your Veggies Improperly

There are plenty of different ways that you can prepare vegetables, including methods that can support your weight loss or work against you. Breaded vegetables and those that are deep fried will technically conform to a vegetarian diet, but can also be trouble. The extra calories you get from the breading and the deep frying can dramatically boost the caloric value of your meal and make it difficult to lose weight. Similarly, coating veggies in butter or sauces, topping potatoes with butter and sour cream, and other similar approaches can all make weight loss difficult. Boiling and steaming your vegetables, as well as eating them fresh, is the best way to go.