Being vegetarian comes with a lot of complications. You’ll need to tailor your meal to get all the nutrients you need, and you might find difficulties going out with friends in restaurants. Going vegetarian is a big decision, but there are ways to make the change a little bit easier.
Plan Your Meals
The hardest part of any diet is making sure that your body gets all the essential nutrients. You can create meal plans for the week over the weekend. If you don’t have time to plan or cook, consider getting your meals through vegetarian delivery services. It might take a little searching, but you can surely find health food companies that can meet your needs. Pre-prepared meals are very important when starting a diet. They prevent you from straying off your chosen path and are just more convenient overall. Vegetarians need to be more careful with their diets, so start noting down which ingredients don’t go well with your body. You might have a peanut allergy you didn’t notice before, or certain proteins might not react well with you. Going vegetarian limits your overall choice of food, but it increases your exposure to specific food. This increased exposure can have adverse effects, so make sure to zero in on what ingredients don’t go well with you and cross those from your grocery list.
Get a List of Restaurants
Eating out with friends can be a problem, but not if you’ve done your research. Make a list of restaurants, do the groundwork, and ask if they have options for vegetarian meals. Adjust to your friends’ wishes, and don’t force your friends to go to vegetarian restaurants. Not everyone enjoys vegetarian meals, and dragging your friends to places that only you enjoy will turn you into a social outcast pretty soon. If the restaurant that your friends want to go to doesn’t have vegetarian options, you can meet them for drinks or coffee. Your friends should understand you. Also, rarely do people have decent conversations in restaurants anyway. Dinner parties and gatherings at a friend’s house is a different situation. You can’t have them make vegetarian meals just for you, and you can’t go about not eating during a gathering. Bring a few vegetarian dishes that everyone can enjoy, like salads or chilli sticks. You won’t have to go hungry, and you’ll also be giving your friends a taste of vegetarian dishes.
Remember Your Reasons for Going Vegetarian
Whether you’re going vegetarian for health reasons, weight loss, or plain idealism — you should keep those reasons to heart and always remind yourself of the bigger goal. Try to stick to your diet as much as you can, especially during the beginning of your diet. Straying a bit once in a while might be unavoidable, but continuously disregarding your diet will make it ineffective.
In the end, with proper planning, maintaining a vegetarian diet isn’t that difficult. Plan your meals and have some recipes ready in case you’ll need to wow your friends.
