Despite the fact that there are vegetarian and even vegan bodybuilders and fitness competitors, you’re probably still
skeptical that men and women can eat AMAZING food on a vegetarian meal plan and lose weight.
With permission from the author, Kardena Pauza, I’m able to share 3 awesome recipes from her Easy Veggie Meal Plans.
1) Strawberry-Mango Smoothie - 385 calories
1 cup strawberries stemmed
1/2 mango peeled
3/4 cup/6 oz Almond milk or Raw almond yogurt
4 Brazilian Nuts (Raw & Soaked)
2 tsp agave or brown rice syrup or Really Raw Honey, or 2-3 Dates
1 medium sized Cucumber
1 tsp NutriBiotic Vanilla Brown Rice Protein Powder (optional)
Add ½ Cup Water and blend together
Optional: Dash Stevia, water, ice to taste only
Place all ingredients in a high powered blender. Add several cubes of ice if desired and blend until smooth. Continue adding ice until desired consistency is reached. Pour into glass and garnish with mint leaf as option.
1/4 cup uncooked quinoa
2 Tbsp hemp seeds
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk or fresh made almond milk
1 Tbsp raisins
1 med fresh peach
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Stevia or agave nectar to sweeten
Rinse quinoa and combine with almond milk and water. Bring to a slow simmer, then cover and cook for about 15 minutes until the quinoa is tender. Stir in the remaining ingredients and place in food processor or blender and puree slightly. Ready to eat.
3) Portobello Mushroom Burger - 365 Calories
1 Portobello mushroom cap
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
dash teaspoon dried basil
dash teaspoon dried oregano
dash tablespoon minced garlic
1 oz (2 tbsp) sharp cheese or vegan cheese
1 tablespoons bottled teriyaki sauce
1 slices of Ezekiel bread
1 cup of tomato (slices)
Sea salt and pepper to taste
Place the mushroom caps, smooth side up, in a shallow dish. In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar, oil, basil, oregano, garlic, salt, and pepper. Pour over the mushrooms. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes or so, turning twice. Preheat grill for medium-high heat.
Brush grate with oil. Place mushrooms on the grill, reserving marinade for basting. Grill for 5 to 8 minutes on each side, or until tender. Brush with marinade frequently. Top with cheese during the last 2 minutes of grilling.
And remember, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to go vegetarian everyday, but in this day of “agri-business”, “factory farming”, “E.coli outbreaks”, and “industrial agriculture pollution”, there’s a lot to be said about building a better body without meat.
I hope you had a chance to download and read “10 Vegetarians Foods Not To Eat On A Weight Loss Diet” at Easy Veggie Meal Plans.
In addition, I’d like to point out some more food products that vegetarians tend to overeat when they eliminate meat from their diet.
1. Processed grains esp. wheat
Excessive consumption of processed grains such as cereals, bread, crackers, pasta, cakes, pastries and cookies lead to obesity, heart diseases and high cholesterol. There’s way too much carbohydrates in these processed foods than the body needs and any excess is stored as fat. Vegetables and fruits are better sources of carbohydrates than processed grains.
Gluten is a type of protein found in wheat and other grains. People who suffer from gluten intolerance may experience abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, fatigue, infertility, skin problems and weight gain.
Other grains that contain gluten include barley, couscous, oats and semolina.
I’m not a fan of protein powder ‘cos it contains too much artificial ingredients. I’d rather get my protein from natural food. Beans, nuts and egg whites are great sources of protein for vegetarians. Need ideas on how to eat beans? Check out my healthy dessert/snack recipe for red bean soup.
Do you often find yourself falling off the workout wagon or succumb to diet relapse, binges or just too much over-indulgence? Why do you (relapser) regain weight while maintainers lose and keep off the pounds successfully? What can you (relapser) learn from the maintainers?
Tom Venuto answers these questions in another great article, “How to Stop Bingeing, Unconscious Eating And Diet Relapse”, below.
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How to Stop Bingeing, Unconscious Eating And Diet Relapse: What the Research Says
by Tom Venuto
In a study published in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition, Susan Kayman and colleagues set out to discover the difference between women who took off weight and kept it off successfully (maintainers), and those who took off weight but eventually regained it all (relapsers). They found many differences between relapsers and successful maintainers, but one of the differences stood out like a sore thumb…
Relapsers were emotional eaters who lacked skills to respond to and cope with stress and unexpected problems.
While almost all of the women reported stressful issues or problems, there were major differences in the way the relapsers and maintainers coped with their problems.
Very few relapsers used problem-solving or confrontive ways of coping with their problems as compared with maintainers.
Instead, they were more likely to use emotion-focused or escape/avoidance behaviors for coping such as eating more, sleeping more or just wishing the problem would go away.
Relapsers reported using food to make themselves feel better when they were upset. They also attributed weight gain to unexpected or unpredictable stressful life events.
Maintainers, by contrast, confronted their problems directly and looked for alternative ways to cope with them (other than eating)
These included relaxation techniques, meditation, exercise, focusing on productive work, seeking social support, getting professional help, or talking out their feelings with other people they trusted.
This by the way, confirms previous research in the area of addiction recovery which found that a person who has made a successful behavior change will return to a previous negative pattern if a stressful situation occurs and no coping skills have been developed to deal with it.
Another big difference between maintainers and relapsers was conscious awareness (or lack of it)
70% of relapsers ate unconsciously in response to emotions.
Maintainers, on the other hand, were vigilant and conscious of EVERYthing:
They were conscious of the quantity and type of food they ate
They were conscious about the amount of activity that they needed personally to maintain their weight
They consciously worked to “keep in shape” after they reached their initial goal
They were conscious that they felt uncomfortable in their clothes after they gained even a little weight such as a few pounds after a vacation
They intentionally wore close-fitting clothes to keep themselves aware of their bodies, which prompted them to exercise more eat less if their clothes felt tighter.
From these findings emerge two of the very first steps that are absolutely necessary for you to end emotional eating and prevent diet relapse:
1. Develop greater conscious awareness
2. Develop alternative behaviors and coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and emotions
It takes courage to directly confront your problems and strength to overcome them, but you can’t even begin to solve a problem unless you are aware you have one. It all begins with AWAREness.
One of the best ways to increase conscious awareness of your eating habits is to keep a nutrition diary at least once in your life for a period of at least 4-12 weeks.
many people are catching on, as reflected in the popularity of sites like fit day, which lets you log in your daily food intake, while others keep extensive written journals.
People who are struggling with relapse and weight regain, but who refuse to admit that calories are important, who find keeping journals to be too much like work, or who don’t at least find some other way to raise their awareness about what and how much they are eating, are likely to continue to struggle.
P.S. As you can see, based on research in both obesity and psychological journals, and as your own instincts probably have already told you, emotional eating is not a “women’s tabloid magazine” type of topic that can just be brushed over lightly. It is very very real problem, and it affects men as well.
Fortunately, there are numerous real solutions for ending emotional eating. You now have two of the first and most important steps.
If you’d like to learn more, I recently wrote a short ebook called, THE A.W.A.R.E. Formula: 5 steps to end emotional eating
In the past, I had been an emotional eater who battled with significant weight fluctuations. I’d reach for chocolate, sweets, chips and crackers when under stress. Somehow, these foods seemed to make me feel better or so I imagined.
At that time, I knew nothing about emotional eating. It was only by trial and error that I became aware of my eating habits.
In the past, I had been an emotional eater who battled with significant weight fluctuations. I’d reach for chocolate, sweets, chips and crackers when under stress. Somehow, these foods seemed to make me feel better or so I imagined.
At that time, I knew nothing about emotional eating. It was only by trial and error that I became aware of my eating habits.
According to Tom Venuto, author of Burn the Fat, willpower and conscious mind are not enough to overcome emotional eating. He shares 5 powerful ways to take control of emotional eating behaviours in the article “5 Steps To Beating Emotional Eating” (see below)
Hey, no one is perfect… I still fall for emotional eating on occasions. But Tom’s valuable advice has helped me to be in control of, rather than to be controlled by, the evil of emotional eating. I hope these 5 tips can help you too.
Today we continue with our special motivation and fitness psychology article series (“bloginar”) with some serious information about what some experts believe is the #1 cause of obesity in the world: Emotional eating. But what is emotional eating really? Quite simply, you may be eating for reasons other than satisfying physical hunger, providing energy, supporting your metabolism and feeding your muscles, too often, and it may indeed be keeping you overweight.
Are you an emotional eater? Do you eat for the wrong reasons? Do you eat mindlessly, stuffing down food with nary a conscious thought?
Take this quiz and find out:
Do you frequently eat for any of these reasons?
To obtain a good feeling
For comfort
Out of sheer boredom
Out of habit (for example, every time you watch TV)
For purely social reasons
To cope with stressful events
To fill a void or missing need
To recapture a feeling or memory associated with a food (makes you feel “like being back home with family again,” etc)
To cope with depression
To cope with (or in response to) other feelings such as anger, loneliness, frustration, disappointment, grief, lack of control or anxiety
If so, then you’re an emotional eater!
As long as you are an emotional eater, you may continue to struggle to follow even the very best laid nutrition plans. That’s what’s so frustrating about this issue. You KNOW your nutrition (and exercise) program would work… if only you could stop sabotaging yourself with inappropriate eating!
Conventional solutions to emotional eating are helpful. Much of the traditional wisdom focuses on conscious eating (mindfulness or AWARE-ness), as well as setting up your environment for success (ie, keep the trigger foods OUT of your house!).
Awareness IS an important part of the solution, but an incomplete one. There are lots of people who are ALREADY AWARE of their emotional eating problems, but they feel powerless to stop them
Why? It’s because traditional awareness-only solutions to emotional eating focus only on willpower and the conscious mind. But that’s not where your power lies.
Your true power source is your non-consious mind, which is the part of you responsible for automatic behaviors. Think about it: If the non conscious parts of your mind can handle complex tasks like beating your heart and circulating your blood without consulting your conscious mind, then how easily do you think it can control your eating behaviors?
Your ability to change inappropriate eating behaviors (eating for the wrong reasons), starts with your understanding that you have been running patterns on automatic pilot (unconsciously), without even realizing it.
The first step towards freedom from emotional eating is to develop conscious AWAREness. But there is more to it than this. Conventional approaches tell you to become AWARE of your “mindless eating” but then they don’t tell you how to change those old patterns.
I’ve been spending the last few years researching this topic of eating behaviors and emotions and I’ve been researching Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for many years before that. It was NLP that really helped me fill in the missing piece and make what I can honestly and legitimately call a “breakthrough.”
I’ve discovered numerous quick and easy, yet very powerful ways to neurologically short-circuit the old emotional eating behaviors and literally re-wire you with healthy eating behaviors that run on auto pilot just as easily as the old negative habits did. I’ve organized them into a very concise, succinct system.
It’s called, The AWARE Program: 5 Steps To End Emotional Eating. It’s the same program that is also summarized in my hard cover book, The Body Fat Solution and the complete AWARE formula is now available in a digital ebook format.
Here’s my 5 step formula:
1. Raise your AWARENESS about your habitual eating behaviors. In a word, this means eat mindfully. Many people eat without thinking. For example, stress eating can be an unconscious pattern and you often don’t even realize when or how much you eat impulsively in response to stress. 3 easy ways to raise awareness include eat exclusively, eat slowly and keep a journal.
2. WATCH out for your emotional eating triggers. Every time you eat emotionally, there is a cause, or “trigger.” As mentioned above, stress is the BIG one, but the list of potential triggers could go on for pages and may include feelings (loneliness, frustration, sadness, etc), places (buffets, kitchen, etc), people (mom, spouse, drinking buddies), or events (parties, movies, T.O.M, etc)
3. ARREST the negative patterns when they happen As you raise your awareness, you’ll shift from an unconscious, mindless eater, to a conscious, mindful eater. That doesn’t mean you won’t be assaulted with temptations and encounter trigger situations. However, once you are aware, you can interrupt the emotional eating patterns and THINK before you act.
4. REPLACE the old emotional eating behavior with more constructive alternatives. nature abhors a vaccuum. It’s rarely enough to simply stop an old behavior in its tracks. It’s important to replace the old behavior with a constructive new one. Alternative coping mechanisms can include all kinds of stress relievers (meditation, yoga, relaxing music, a jacuzzi/bath/sauna, deep breathing, etc), a talk with a friend, and even exercise.
5. ESTABLISH new beliefs about food and the right reasons for eating. Food is for fuel, for feeding muscle, and providing energy. Although there are appropriate occasions to use food for other reasons, when you establish beliefs such as “Food is fuel” your eating behavior will be vastly different than if you habitually use food to cope with stress and bad feelings. This is why I’ve found that athletes and bodybuilders are rarely emotional eaters - they always view food as fuel, for energy and construction material for the body.
There you have it - that’s my entire 5 step formula. If you’d like to learn a LOT more, including more details on emotional eating triggers and how to deal with them, how to find alternate coping mechanisms, how to balance proper nutrition with an enjoyable social and family life, and much more, you can get the entire ebook, 5 Steps to End Emotional eating, for FREE, for the next 3 days only by purchasing the Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle system from www.BurnTheFat.com. (Previously it has only been available to members of my Burn The Fat Inner Circle community).
Not only that, during our special OPERATION MOTIVATION bloginar this week, you can also get SIX MORE absolutely FREE bonuses with the purchase of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.
To get all the details visit the Burn The Fat website at: www.BurnTheFat.com.
If you want to STOP eating meat and start transforming your body with an EASY and SIMPLE to follow vegetarian meal plan, then I have great news for you!
Vegetarian Nutrition Expert Kardena Pauza put together these vegetarian meal plans to help you out.
Go here and grab these meal plans at no cost to you:
In this video, Craig Ballantyne (author of Turbulence Training) runs on the treadmill on an incline of 0.5 and a speed of 10.5 mph for 3 minutes, while Brad Pilon eats pizza and drinks soda pop.
Brad is going to try to consume as many calories as he can in those 3 minutes, while Craig is going to see how many calories he can burn off in that same amount of time.
In 3 minutes, Brad consumed approximately 1000 total calories, while Craig burned only 43 calories!This just goes to show you, in diet vs. exercise, you can never out train a bad diet. It doesn’t matter how good your program is, if your nutrition sucks, you’re not going to lose fat.
If you’re looking for some great balanced meal plans for fat loss without having to do all of the planning yourself, check out this new program:
I’ve seen people who spent hours at the gym and yet, still not able to achieve their goal of losing body fat.
When they asked me how they can be lean, I told them “you can’t out train a bad diet“.
Losing fat is about being in a calorie deficit. This means consuming less calories than you burn.
Most people fail to lose body fat when they are not aware of their calorie intake. They tend to play the guessing game, and end up under estimating their calorie intake.
How do you get results you want? YOu need to PLAN and COUNT calories. This is where meal plans WORK.
Vince Del Monte has put together step-by-step, easy-to-follow Empowered Nutrition Meal Plans that tell you exactly what to eat.
The benefits of the Empowered Nutrition Meal Plans include:
never have to worry about counting calories again, as the meal plan selector chooses the meal plan that is just right for your body
eating a wide variety of foods you like and still be confident that you’re losing fat
providing a detailed done for you shopping list that ensures you are buying the right foods for fat loss success
working with your specific body shape and size to produce fat loss results no matter what your genetics are
providing easy cooking instructions for quick and delicious meals that guarantee fat loss result
taking all the guess work out of eating so you simply follow the plan and you can’t miss
frequent meal timing keeps your energy levels steady and high throughout the day
Let me be frank… following meal plans is not for everyone.
If you are aware of your calorie intake and you are getting results and look and feel the way you want, then you don’t have a problem. Keep doing what you’re doing and rock on!
If you are not, meal plans can help you develop calorie AWARENESS and speed up your fat loss.
Get your complete set of Empowered Nutrition Meal Plans for HALF PRICE here:
"Discover The Truth, The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth About Losing Belly Fat That Diet, Supplement And Weight Loss Industries Do Not Want You To Know..." in the
In the past, I had been an emotional eater who battled with significant weight fluctuations. I’d reach for chocolate, sweets, chips and crackers when under stress. Somehow, these foods seemed to make me feel better or so I imagined.
