Are you thinking of turning to a vegan diet to lose weight? Well, you’re not alone in this decision! Switching to a vegan diet is one of the best things you can do to achieve that happy and healthy body. By going vegan, you’ll only consume the vitamins, minerals, and all the important stuff that you only need. Vegan meals are tasty and prepared with a lot of science and care involved. There’s no waste or guilt involved, and it’s totally friendly for the environment. With that said, if you want to be healthy via the vegan way, read on below!
Don’t Forget Your Proteins
Going vegan doesn’t mean you should ditch protein. Protein is essential in one’s diet to help your body repair and create new cells. It’s essential for growth and development. Protein is also essential to stay full longer, which is vital since losing weight would make you bound for hunger pangs once you start losing weight.
Consider adding the following vegan protein sources to your diet to get your protein boost throughout the day:
- pulses
- tofu
- quinoa
- chia seeds
- nuts
- seeds
- oats
- brown and wild rice
- buckwheat
- lentils
You can also get your protein boost from vegan protein powders. Some selected brands on the market even feature weight loss properties to give you that push you need in addition to your training.
Do Meal Preps
Whether you have a busy schedule or not, preparing a meal in advance is a lifesaver. When your hunger strikes, just taking your prepared meal in the fridge or freezer is better than succumbing to your cravings and ordering takeout. Meal preps are food that’s already been planned out. It means that the calories in each meal have already been decided and balanced throughout the day. So, it relieves the stress of thinking and cooking a meal at the last minute. It also stops you from grocery shopping every week or month.
Meal preps are perfect so that you can focus on exercising at the gym or home and just trying to lose weight.
You can look up recipes online or in cookbooks with ingredients that you can easily find in your local markets, with no added oil. Ensure that the food you create is appealing to you. Don’t just pick a recipe because it looks healthy. You should enjoy the food you eat while trying to lose weight.
Time Your Meals
There’s a saying that you should eat breakfast like a king, and scientifically, it’s because the calories you eat during daytime are more likely to be burned off because of diet-induced thermogenesis or the energy required to digest food.
During daylight, our bodies, including vegans, use energy to mix together glucose molecules from the food we eat into chains of glycogen to store in the body or muscles throughout the day. It would help if you timed your meals to take advantage of your body’s inner workings.
Buy Whole Grains
Ditch that white bread and purchase whole-grain bread instead. Avoiding loading up on simple carbs like white bread is a great way to stay healthy in your vegan diet. Opt for whole grains foods like oats, quinoa, and wild rice.
You can also swap out the pasta you use. Choose pasta that’s made from 100% whole wheat or whole grains. Making this swap makes increasing your fiber intake much easier as well.
Be Aware of Vegan Treats
One of the disadvantages of living a vegan life is the scarcity of snacks. There aren’t many delicious options when going out on a grocery run. Thus, you may be tempted to purchase every vegan treat.
However, just because a decadent-looking “vegan” cookie is on the shelves doesn’t mean that it’s healthier and more delicious than a non-vegan cookie. To compensate for the lack of butter and eggs in a vegan recipe, some manufacturers may add mostly vegetable oils and more sugar instead.
Ingredients like these don’t help with your waistline. Avoid the mistake of thinking that a treat with a vegan label to it is much healthier than its counterpart. It would help if you always looked at the ingredients list to ensure that you lose weight.
If you can’t go on a day without snacking, consider making snacks yourself. There are numerous healthy recipes on the Internet that have fewer calories than how they would be typically prepared.
Add in Healthy Fats
When creating a meal plan, ensure that you add healthy fats to your diet. It can help you lose weight in a much healthier manner. Healthy fats include the following foods:
- avocados
- nuts (rich in satiating mono- and polyunsaturated fats)
- olives
- chia seeds
- coconut
Avoid Processed Foods
Another reason why you should read the label is because of processed foods. Even if they’re vegan, it’s best to avoid these foods altogether. Just like regular junk food, “vegan” junk foods have the same increased use of saturated fats, sugars, starches, and additives. These increase the risk of poor health outcomes.
It can harm your body and lessen the possibility of losing weight. Just because it has vegan on the label doesn’t mean you should add it to your grocery cart. Be mindful of what you buy and stick to vegetables instead.
Get Moving
Due to your plant-based diet, studies have found that vegans have an increase in VO2 max, which is the amount of oxygen people use during intense exercise. So, if you’re working out to lose weight, the increase in oxygen intake would lead to better endurance at the gym. As a result, you can work out for long periods and reach that fitness goal faster.
Exercising can also enable you to get better sleep which is a must if you want to achieve a healthy weight. Consuming vegetables and exercising is a great and maybe even faster way to lose the pounds you want to shed.
Eliminate Harmful Oils
Another way of losing weight efficiently is getting rid of harmful oils from your meal plan. Many get confused about what oils to add to their diet and what to avoid because there’s a lot of heated debate regarding this topic. So, if you want to follow this tip, it’s best to do your research beforehand.
The top four healthiest cooking oils in the market are the following:
- olive oil
- avocado oil
- sunflower oil
- coconut oil
On the other hand, the top unhealthiest oils are:
- corn oil
- canola oil
- cottonseed oil
- rice bran oil
- grapeseed oil
- soy oil
- safflower oil
You can even ditch the oil for your meals. When cooking, think for a second if oil is necessary. If not, you can instead use vegetable broth or water for sauteing on the stove as an alternative to oil. You may also use an air fryer so that you won’t have to use any or too much oil.
However, when you’re following recipes, removing oil from the recipe might change the taste and texture of the food. So, to amend that, you can use mashed bananas or applesauce as an alternative or just look for oil-free vegan recipes for baking.
Final Thoughts
Get rid of the notion that vegan processed foods and refined carbs can lead to weight loss because it can lead to the opposite: weight gain. Ensure that you follow the things mentioned above to reach your target weight.