HLL Courses: Vegetarian & Vegan Diets_Session 6

Once you've researched a meatless diet or you're working with a professional to slowly put things into place, it's a very doable lifestyle. Mainstream society is starting to support it more and more every day. I've been vegetarian for over a decade now, and I'm here to tell you things are much easier now than ever. Restaurants have so many more options, and there are many all vegetarian or vegan restaurants. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that eating vegetarian actually helps me effortlessly eat a well-rounded diet because the meals offered typically have more nutrients in them than their meat counterparts on those menus. The first time I went vegetarian was in high school, and the major mistake I made at the beginning of my journey, as so many do, is that I didn't research enough on what to replace animal foods with. So I wound up eating all pasta and bread, basically junk food. I was what they call a junk food vegetarian, which of course led to weight gain and decreased health. So I quickly generalized all vegetarian diets as unhealthy and swore meat was necessary in the diet. It wasn't until years later that I figured things out and correctly implemented a vegetarian diet, which made an enormous impact on my quality of life and my health. So my advice to you is to start slowly, start checking out the possibilities. Find the foods that you like that are meatless. Take out a blank sheet of paper maybe, and write breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Then fill it out and just start by trying the different foods for each category. This is so easy with Italian foods, Mexican foods, Chinese foods, and even some fast food options are available like Subway, Jimmy, John's, Chipotle. So step one is just identifying the possibilities. Step two, do a three week test drive. Do 100% vegan or vegetarian, whatever you want, and just see how you feel. This isn't a long-term commitment, just three weeks to test it out and see how you feel. At the end of three weeks, you might just feel so great. You'll want to incorporate this into your life. You'll likely lose weight, your blood pressure and sugar will be in control. Your energy will be up. And if that's the case, just keep it up for one more week after that, another week and keep going like that and just see where it leads you. All we ever want to focus on is one step at a time, one little change here, and one little change there. This can lead to a huge change over time as well. With time in changing your diet, your taste will change. Heard it before and you don't believe it. Well consider this. Have you ever switched from whole milk to reduce fat or skim milk? If so, how did the skim milk taste at first, like water? Then over time, you just got used to it, and if you ever went back to that whole milk, it tasted like cream, right? That's because your taste buds physically changed, Your fat desire dropped and you no longer craved it. The same thing will happen when you first try a vegan or vegetarian diet. You'll feel like it's a really light diet for the first week or two. Then the second week at least, it'll start to feel more normal and make more sense. The third week will really give you a good taste for the truth of that diet. And if you try a double pounder with extra cheese and mayo after that third week, you'll feel just like you did when you were switching back to whole milk, it just won't be that satisfying. As a matter of fact, maybe not even desirable. You'll just be so past that way of eating. There's a lot of fake meats on the market today, and they're not exactly something you wanna stick with long term, but through a great bridge or what we might refer to as a transition food, feel free to use these while you're transitioning and then over time wean yourself off of them. And remember, your life needs and body are constantly changing. Don't get too stuck or dogmatic in your approach to a dietary theory. Certainly if you find yourself with decreased energy or a lower quality of health, if you're finding maybe your nails or brittle or breaking or maybe you need to slowly reintroduce meat back into your life and see if that corrects the issues, maybe even a portion of what you formally ate is the answer. Even those who do eat meat and do very well eating meat are typically eating far too much. The rule is to eat about the size and thickness of the palm of your hand. And note I said thickness as well. Your body can easily digest and assimilate this quantity. You've probably heard about scientific studies of the various blood types that show those with an O blood type do better eating meat versus those with a blood type A who do better vegetarian. But this isn't a steadfast rule. I'm a perfect example. I'm an O blood type, and I do great as a vegetarian, but I'm also very careful to cover all my bases with my plant-based foods and diet. So as we always say, bioindividuality is the key. Figure out what works best for you, for your body and for your life today, and then follow your instincts if you feel like a change is necessary in the future.