As a vegetarian are you struggling to get enough protein into your diet? How does your diet look? What is the balance of carbohydrates and protein in your diet. What do you have for Breakfast – Mid Morning – Lunch – Mid Afternoon – Evening Meal – After evening meal? Do you get protein into every meal or is your diet heavy on carbs.

Excess carbohydrates in the diet is one of the major reasons for weight gain i.e. cereal and toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, pasta for tea and other carb based snacks such as rice cakes and chocolate during the day. Excess carbs are easily stored as fat.

Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates generates a rapid rise in blood glucose. To adjust for this rise, the pancreas secretes the hormone insulin into the bloodstream, which lowers the glucose. Insulin is, though, essentially a storage hormone, evolved over those millions of years of humans prior to the agricultural age, to store the excess calories from carbohydrates in the form of fat in case of famine.

Insulin, stimulated by the excess carbohydrates in our overabundant consumption of grains, starches and sweets, is responsible for all those bulging stomachs and fat rolls in thighs and chins.

Top Tip – Get Protein into every meal. Protein comes in the form of meat, soy products, cheese and dairy products. However, most of these are in the form of animal proteins, which add greatly to the bad cholesterol in our bodies. Therefore we need to look for high quality proteins, in our diet, from non-animal sources.

Healthy Breakfast
What type of breakfast do you have? Is your breakfast made up entirely of carbohydrates? Really how healthy is your breakfast cereal? How much fibre does it contain? Look at alternatives to breakfast cereals and toast.

Make sure you eat breakfast
If you don’t eat breakfast, you slow down your metabolism and send the body into “hoard mode,” thinking it’s starving because you’re going a long period of time frequently 8 to 10 hours or more, without food. Or you develop a craving later in the day. Try a protein shake packed with nutrients, hunger busting soy protein and complex carbohydrates instead of skipping breakfast.

Don’t starve.
Dropping your calorie intake below 1,000 calories a day will signal to your body that you are in starvation mode, and will slow down your metabolism.

Find alternatives to carbohydrate based snacks
The supermarkets are full of carbohydrate snacks. Snacks such as rice cakes, chocolate bars, crisps and other bars where the principal ingredient is carbohydrate. Check the special offers, how many are carb based snacks? Why? Its a high profit item with low cost raw material. Take a look at the GI index of carb based snacks such as rice cakes. Can you open a pack of biscuits and just eat one? Carbs = short term sense of fullness. Protein = long term appetite control. Consider alternative snacks

What about fruit?
Yes a healthy snack as contains fibre and nutrients but avoid snacking on fruit as an alternative to a balanced meal containing protein, especially if sensitive to carbohydrates. There are more nutrients in vegetables! Top tip – Get balance of snacks between fruit, protein and vegetables.

The ratio of macronutrients protein, carbohydrate, and fat-in the meals you eat is the key to permanent weight loss and optimal health.

Get all the facts on – sources of protein for vegetarian diet.