Vegetarian Diet Helps Combat Obesity
Published: August 30, 2020
I’ve never met any obese vegetarians or vegans. I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m sure they do, some vegetarians and vegans diets tend a little too much toward the veggie burger and fries type of meal, to really call themselves healthy, but on the whole I’ve never met a vegetarian or vegan who was much bigger than just fat. I’m sure they are out there.
There can be massive differences between a vegetarian diet and a healthy vegetarian diet. Same goes for vegans. And for meat eaters. There is a big difference between someone who eats steak and chips and McDonalds’ Big Macs every day and someone who eats white meat and salad and a boiled egg for breakfast.
A healthy vegetarian lifestyle consists of eating mainly fruit and vegetables and some good fats, nuts and seeds. And whilst the fear strikes in the hearts of many of you, there is a lot more to it than a dish of limp salad and a handful of seeds, counted from the packet.
The problem with the standard American diet is that it relies too heavily on processed unnatural convenience foods containing too many substandard ingredients that have a toxic affect on the human body. Ketchups, burgers, potato chips, oven-ready fries, cakes, cookies, ice creams, soda pops… you name it, but anything we seem to consider ‘tasty’ tends to not be good for us. And we tend to crave the bad stuff. This is by no means a coincidence. These foods are engineered and augmented in order to delight our taste buds, impact on the parts of our brain that control hunger, pleasure and satiation and to make us crave them more, buy them more, eat them more and then buy them again.
This makes the humble banana or cherry tomato feel very inadequate. But it is these natural foods that have been engineered by nature to feed us. A combination of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds is all the human body needs in order to function and function well.
Our bodies are on the whole robust and can take a trouncing from the illness inducing foods that we ram into it for a quick fix, to combat stress or to cheer us up when we are feeling melancholy. But what we really need is the good stuff. And the longer we go without the fake foods that manufacturers have made so cheap and convenient for us and the more we reward our lovely bodies with good quality fodder, the less we will crave the ugly stuff. And the thing about the ugly stuff is that it makes us ugly. It contributes to overweightness along with giving us oily complexions, dermatitis, cellulite, digestion issues, constipation, asthma, allergies and a host of more serious illnesses ranging from cholesterol issues, diabetes, cancer and morbid obesity.
Once you start eating a healthy vegetarian diet and feeling the benefits you will start to wonder what you ever craved in the faux foods. You will understand that the manufacturers only care about profits and don’t care a jot for the health of its customers. You will begin to see a Big Mac and fries as filthy addictive non-food and avoid fast food in favour of life-giving natural foods that feel good inside your body.
When you are overweight and hooked on processed foods with augmented flavours you will feel limp and miserable at the thought of commencing a healthy vegetarian diet. Persist. Add salad, raw fruit and raw vegetables to your diet gradually and your taste buds will begin to change. Go to a raw food restaurant where everything they prepare is vegan and either raw or cooked at very low temperatures and see how tasty the dishes can be.
Exceptional raw food chefs have created raw vegan desserts including ice creams that taste as good as the real thing but are virtuous and actually contain ingredients that are good for you. That’s right – guilt free desserts.Kate Moss coined the phrase ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. Actually, nothing tastes as good as healthy feels.
If you are interested in finding out more about the impact animal proteins have on the human body, read about it in The China Study written by Dr T Colin Campbell.
Images: personaleuphoria.blogspot.com, envirochild.org, angelaharris.hubpages.com
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yrba
04. Oct, 2011
Never heard of or seen a plus-size vegan or vegetarian?
Just google it, you will find many.
Second, weight loss is NOT a good reason to promote or adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet. You have good posts criticisizing pressures that cause eating disorders. Well, weight criticism of people of ANY size IS the primary common denominator between people with EDs.
And an enormous percent of people with EDs are vegetarian or vegan. So much more so than the general population that either is now considered one possible indicator of an ED, if other ED factors are present, or if the vegan or vegetarian diet was undertaken for the purpose of weight loss.
There are many good reasons to consider such ways of eating - for HEALTH. Weight loss is neither necessary for health for almost everyone, nor a sound reason to cut out animal products.
Doing so is considered by many dietitians to be a disordered reason for not eating animals.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201009/eating-disorders-the-dark-side-vegetarianism
There is even a questionnaire written back in the 1990s to determine whether one’s vegetarianism is eating disordered in nature or not. I saw it in Frances Berg’s book, Women Afraid to Eat. I haven’t been able to find the questionnaire online yet, but hopefully it is online somewhere.
Bottom line, please don’t promote or practice vegetarianism for the purpose of weight loss. If it’s for ethics and it is part of your family’s way of life - how you grew up, according to that questionnaire, that’s one thing. But if it’s for weight loss, that’s a different story. Ditty if it’s for “health,” which for a lot of people is just a way of kidding themselves that it isn’t about weight loss. If you’re sure it’s for health, i.e. concern re: saturated fats to prevent heart disease, and it’s approached gradually and with care, while really listening to one’s body and working to *maintain* one’s current weight, that’s another.