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LoMish · Kate Spade

Lo Carb and Vegetarian?

boobaby · Kate Spade

I'm vegetarian and I can't even imagine what I would eat on a low carb diet. I have one friend who is/was vegetarian and she succumbed to eating fish in order to lose weight. This is not an option for me (and maybe you, too) because I will not eat meat or fish. I haven't in 16 years and I don't think I ever will be able to. So maybe just cut back on carbs and stay with whole grains, etc.

erin · Chanel

maybe change the type of carbs you eat? like whole wheat pasta, whole grain bread, etc?

seitan is very healthy and high in protein. (it's almost pure protein) it's a nice way to get in your daily recs...

Drew · Gucci

Hey, I'm a dairy eating, seafood eating veggie, and even with all that I couldn't do low/no carb. I tried Atkins, and for the only time (maybe three years ago) in my ten years of being a veggie, I actually ate meat just so I could do the diet. I hated it, but must say if you can follow it to a t, then you will lose weight successfully. The problem with low carb is that WE NEED/WANT carbs and avoiding them can only be done for so long IMHO.

Edited to add: I only did the diet for about two months before I couldn't stand it anymore. I hated eating meat, and the instant I went back to my veggie diet I felt a million times better.

-- Edited by Drew at 13:57, 2006-02-08

greendiamond · Marc Jacobs

I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian now for 12 years, and I have done the low-carb thing. It wasn't pretty.

First of all, you can't go as low as Adkins would like you to. I had to struggle to keep my carbs under 50 grams. And, I have high cholesterol (damn heredity) so eating a lot of eggs and cheese wasn't an option.

Basically, you need to drink several protein shakes a day to get enought protein in to make up for having had 50 carbs. If you are like me, that's difficult all on it's own. The best proten shake I have found is Nectar's Fuzzy Navel. It's a bit pricier than some brands (not too high end though, their are much more pricey ones!) but it's not chalky and isn't too bad. I also was eating a protein bar a day. They have some saturated fat, so go easy. The best tasting ones I found were oddesey peanut caramel or some similar flavor. They were good. I have since discovered protein pudding (Stallone's company makes it) and I enjoy the chocolate.

You could do eggwhite omlettes.

Unfortunately, all meat substitutes are too high in carbs for a low carb diet. So, the bottom line is, it can be done if you are willing to sacrific taste, texture and variety.

-gd