Making the decision to stop eating meat and to become a vegetarian is a major life decision. It can also be very beneficial to your health. If you are going to leave meat behind and become a vegetarian, you should understand that it might not be as easy as you think.
Becoming a vegetarian should be a transition rather than something that you jump right into. If you want to make the transition easier, there are a few tips that you should follow.
Tip #1: Go At Your Own Pace
It is not good for you physically or emotionally to completely change your diet overnight. Since becoming a vegetarian is such a huge diet change, it should be done slowly. You should make the changes slowly week by week.
There is nothing wrong with taking a month or longer to phase meat out of your diet. When you start, try eating vegetarian for two meals each week. During the second week, you can increase it to three and four meals a week. You should slowly increase the number of meals that you eat vegetarian until you have phased out meat completely.
Tip #2: Take Meat Products Out of Your Diet in Stages
When you start giving up meat products, you should do so in stages based on the meat group. You can start removing meat products from your diet at your own pace, however, there is a certain order that you should start removing particular meat products from your diet.
- Red meat
- Chicken, pork, and other white meats
- Eggs
- Fish
When you give up meat in this order, it is healthier and it can make the transition easier.
Tip #3: Eat
When you stop eating meat and are strictly eating vegetables, you will quickly start to lose weight without even trying. To keep from losing too much, you need to eat. You don’t have to stick to steamed vegetables and salads for dinner.
There are plenty of fun and delicious meals that you can eat as a vegetarian. If stick healthy vegetables only, you are going to get “too clean” too fast. This can be bad for your help. Eating too little will make you feel weak, starved, and cloudy. If this happens, you will blame it on vegetarianism when the real culprit is under-eating and a lack of calories.
Tip #4: Limit Your Sugar Intake
If you consume too much processed sugar, it can make transitioning to vegetarianism difficult. Processed sugar attacks your nervous system. When you start eating just vegetables, your body can go through a stressful time because it will actually go through a detox period.
The last thing that you need is to have an overabundance of processed sugar attacking our nervous system. Rather than eating vegetarian baked goods and ice cream, you should stick with apples, oranges, and raisins. These foods are naturally sweet and they contain no processed sugar. As you body get accustomed to being a vegetarian, you can start adding more sweets to your diet.
Tip #5: Drink Plenty Of Water
When you start eating vegetarian, it will be much easier on your digestive system. As your body is transitioning, it will start doing work that it was not able to do when you were eating meat, including releasing the toxins that have been stored in your body for so long.
When your body starts releasing the toxins, you are going to need to drink plenty of water so that you can flush this filth out of your body. If you don’t drink enough water and release these toxins, it can make you feel pretty awful. Drinking plenty of water will make the transition much easier.
Eating vegetarian can be a difficult adjustment. As long as you know how to make the transition easier, you will feel much better while your body gets accustomed to the changes. In the end, you will be much happier and healthier.
