Balanced vegetarian diet to lose weight and take care of your health

We tell you how to follow a vegetarian diet, how to start it, what to eat and how to organize your menus. We include a downloadable menu in pdf and jpg to make it easier for you to follow.

A vegetarian diet is one that is composed of plant foods (fruits, vegetables, vegetables, legumes, cereals, nuts …) and that may or may not include some foods of animal origin as long as they do not involve the death of the animal, such as milk and derivatives , eggs or honey.

Types of vegetarian diet

Lactoovovegetariana. In addition to plant-based foods, it includes dairy and eggs.
Ovovegetarian. The only food of animal origin that it includes are eggs.
Flexitarian. It is basically a person who eats food of plant origin but who, occasionally, can eat any food of animal origin.
Vegan She does not eat any food of animal origin.

Vegetarian and vegan are not the same

The vegan diet is on the other end of the lactoovovegetarian or the flexitarian, since it does not admit any food of animal origin, not even honey. Many times, vegans also try not to use anything that has animal origin or in their clothing, hygiene products, household cleaning, etc.

And among those who are vegans, there are those who define themselves as raw vegan, that is, they only consume products of plant origin and their food is never cooked at a temperature higher than 42-45º.

Why go vegetarian

The reasons for eating a vegetarian diet are very varied. According to The Vegetarian Resource Group, these would be the main reasons for their subscribers:

About 82% of people who declare themselves vegetarian claim health reasons.
75%, for ethical reasons that have to do with the environment and animal rights.
31% is due to the taste of the food.
26% are for economic reasons, since a well-planned vegetarian diet is usually cheaper than the traditional one.

Health benefits of a vegetarian diet

As long as the vegetarian diet is well planned, it has many health benefits:

Helps you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. And there are many studies that show that overweight and obesity are linked to many diseases such as cardiovascular disease or cancer.
They serve to keep cholesterol levels under control. According to the American Heart Association, both the vegetarian and vegan diets reduce total and bad cholesterol and are therefore helpful in preventing heart problems.
It is beneficial if you have diabetes. According to various studies, plant-based diets reduce blood glucose levels and also decrease insulin resistance, which helps prevent or control diabetes.
Improves osteoarthritis and arthritis. The aches and pains of these ailments can be alleviated thanks to a vegan diet rich in whole grains according to the University of Michigan (USA).

What is the best vegetarian diet

The important thing is not if the vegetarian diet is lacto-ovovegetarian, ovovegetarian or vegan, the important thing is that whatever type of vegetarian diet you have decided to eat, it is always well planned, so that there are no nutritional deficits.

In other words, even if the pizza, pasta or sponge cake does not have any ingredient of animal origin, if we only eat these dishes, it will not be a healthy diet. As the nutritionist and popularizer on vegetarian nutrition, Lucía Jiménez, explains in her book Vegetarians with science, “there are vegetarians who have toast with margarine and jam for breakfast with a coffee with oatmeal drink, at mid-morning they have Oreos, which are vegan, yes , with another coffee, they eat macaroni with fried tomato and a chocolate soy dessert, in the afternoon some canes with corn quicos and olives, and they dine on vegetable sausages with potatoes ”, but no matter how vegetarian they are, they are not following a diet fury.

For a vegetarian diet to be healthy and balanced, it must be based on eating a wide variety of raw and cooked fruits, vegetables and vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes.

What to eat every day if you follow a balanced vegetarian diet

For you to make a diet of what you should eat daily if you follow a vegetarian diet, keep in mind:

Vegetables. 2-4 servings of about 200 g, ideally half be raw and the other cooked.
Fruit. 2 or 3 pieces a day (1 of them you can take in homemade compote without sugar).
Cereals. 4-6 servings (one serving corresponds to 1 slice of bread, 30-40 g of rolled oats, 60-80 g of raw rice or whole wheat pasta, quinoa, millet, etc.).
Proteins 60-80 g heavy raw legumes (chickpeas, lentils, beans, soybeans …), 1 cup of edamame, 120 g of tofu, tempeh, seitan, 30 g of nuts, and if you follow a lacto-o-vegetarian diet you can take 4 to 7 eggs a week, and dairy products (a serving is 60 g of fresh cheese or 30-40 g of aged cheese or 2 yogurts or 1 glass of cow's milk).

How to plan well menus for a balanced vegetarian diet

An easy way to plan a balanced vegetarian diet is to use the Harvard plate and the protein quarter plate include legumes, tofu, tempeh, textured soy, seitan, egg, or dairy.

Vegetarian diet - downloadable printable menu

* For mid-morning or afternoon snacks, have a piece of fruit, yogurt or vegetable yogurt with a handful of nuts (30 g), a hard-boiled egg, whole wheat bread with an ounce of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit (20 g of each), toast with tahini, etc.

How to supplement meat in a vegetarian diet

There are many ways to do it. Here we give you alternatives to very common dishes:

Hamburger and sausages. Substitute for hamburgers and sausages made from legumes, tofu or seitan. You make them by mixing legumes or tofu or seitan or textured soy with vegetables, etc. And then you shape them with a hamburger mold or plastic wrap in the case of sausages.
Meatball . You can make them with chickpeas, like the typical falafel, or variants of this recipe with other legumes.
Bolognese sauce. Instead of pork and / or beef, use textured soy. It is soaked, drained when it has softened, and cooked like minced meat.
Lasagna and gutters. In addition to also resorting to textured soybeans, look for other ways to fill them, such as with spinach with raisins and pine nuts, roasted vegetables with chopped nuts, etc.

Beware of ultra-processed vegetarians

Take a good look at the labels of the foods you buy, no matter how much they say on the package that they are vegetarian or vegan. There are vegan sausages that are water, vegetable oil, starch, flavorings and colors and little else, which does not make them a healthy food as if you make them at home with tofu or textured soybeans and vegetables.

The vegan cheeses are another food with which you have to look far. Good vegan cheeses are very expensive because they are made from cashews and other nuts or are based on soy derivatives such as tofu and soy drink or yogurt. Instead, you see many versions on the market that, like sausages, are just water, oil, starch, and colorings. Nothing to see.

For vegetable patés, in general, more of the same. And vegetarian or vegan pastries have the same problems as normal pastries: bad fats, a lot of sugar, etc.

Fresh food is always better and you make your burgers, cheeses, patés, etc.

And what about yogurts and vegetable drinks?

If you buy them in the supermarket you will see that almost all the yogurts and vegetable drinks available are very rich in added sugar, when ideally they do not contain sugar or sweeteners, but although there are, they are more difficult to find. The "lesser evil" are those that contain less than 5g of sugar per 100 ml.

How to become a vegetarian?

If you decide on vegetarianism, the recommendation of the experts is usually that you adopt this type of diet gradually. For example, nutritionist Victoria Losada, who runs the New Black Nutrition is vegetarian blog, recommends introducing “one completely vegetarian day a week (or vegan, depending on the goal). In this way, you will realize that it is not difficult, it does not imply thinking too much about the preparations (…) and most important of all: you will gradually get used to your body, to eliminate the habit of consuming animal protein ”.

Losada explains that “it is not necessary to eliminate all types of animal protein at once. You can start with red meat for at least 2 weeks, then with pork, followed by chicken, and finally fish and shellfish ”, and not necessarily in this order. What is important according to Losada is to take the time to transition and that you have about a month to get your new way of eating.

If you don't take dairy and eggs, you have to take supplements (and depending on how many you take, too)

Supplementing with vitamin B12 is mandatory when you do not take foods of plant origin, because this vitamin cannot be obtained from vegetables and if you drink eggs or milk, it may also be necessary to supplement, so you should consult a doctor or nutritionist specialized in diet vegetarian.

Also, consult with your nutritionist, because depending on your case it may also be necessary for you to take vitamin D, since although it is a vitamin that is synthesized when the sun's rays affect the body, many times the exposure to which we are subjected is not enough to reach the necessary levels and by not taking dairy and other foods that contain it such as fatty fish, it is difficult to get enough.

Ecological, local, seasonal food …

When the decision to follow a vegetarian diet is ethically motivated, it is not about what is eaten, but about the origin of the food that is eaten and how its production impacts the environment.

Why choose local and seasonal foods? Because they have been harvested at their point of maturity and retain their nutrients almost intact when they arrive at our house. In addition, they are usually cheaper and are produced by local producers. And, although being able to consume strawberries in winter may seem like an advantage, in reality, resorting to foods only in season makes our diet more varied.

Why ecological? Because in its production neither pesticides nor chemical additives are used and they help protect nature and also health.
And why do they have a low carbon footprint? The carbon footprint is the measurement of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated during the manufacture and transport of any product. CO2 has a direct impact on the environment, climate change … Therefore, consuming food that has a low carbon footprint is important. That is, it is not the same to consume organic apples imported from a country 300 km from ours than apples from an orchard less than 100 km from the market where we buy them, so there are other aspects to value in addition to organic production. .