Looking for other veggies

[Juanita Patrick]

Hi! I'm new to the veggie world. I was a vegetarian for a year before becoming a vegan, which I've been for 6 months.

I'm looking for other women who are either interested in a plant-based diet or already live by one.

My younger sister is actually who inspired the change in my eating habits but she told me how she's struggled to lose weight, even still. A plant-based, high-carb diet has helped me lose 45 pounds without exercise. She complained of gaining weight.

At first I just assumed she was eating nothing but vegan junk food, but quickly realized that's not the case. She eats more veggies and drinks waaaaay more water than i do. She also exercises regularly. I decided to find a solution to this through more than just research alone.

I want to talk to vegetarians/vegans (and those curious) about the struggles they have with the lifestyle change, no matter what the complaint. And just pick your brain even if you only want to mention the things you absolutely love. Your favorite cookbooks. Whatever.

I'm open to emailing. Or just replying to comments. But i seriously want to learn.

 

[Semiola]

Congrats on losing weight, and congrats for sticking to a plant-based diet (if more people did, the Earth would be a much much nicer place).

I'm certain that you have lost a lot of muscle on that high-carb diet, but I don't know how much you weighed before or what your caloric intake was during your fat loss...

You gotta eat plenty of protein and work out to not lose muscle while you're dieting.
You need about 0.8-1.3 grams of protein per kilogram of your ideal body weight, depending how intensely you exercise. It means if your ideal weight is 60 kg and you're lightly active, then you should be consuming around 50 grams of protein per day. Note that this doesn't mean 50 grams of meat or fish. 100 grams of meat has about 20 grams of protein in it, so this means you should be eating 250 grams of meat (if that's the only thing you'd eat all day; this is just a simplification).
Since you don't eat any animal-derived foods, you should check out which veggies have the highest protein content and combine those to reach your recommended daily intake of protein:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foods_by_protein_content
This means you'd have to eat loads of veggies to consume 50-60g of protein... You could also look into buying plant-derived protein powder (e.g. made from soy or hemp) since it would probably be difficult for you to eat that much.

I'd also recommend you to cut out sugar completely and reduce the consumation of starchy foods (rice, potatoes, bananas, anything made out of flour). Those don't do anything good for you if you're not into intense exercise...

If you're on a low-calorie diet, you will inevitably lose muscle if you don't do moderate strength training. Muscle mass is important because it's the #1 element of your body burning energy (aka calories). If you merely jog every day, you will still be losing muscle mass.This will result in you becoming weak and skinny-fat.
If you're out of shape like me, I recommend this program: https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/
It's more demanding than it appears.