Reddit reviews Eat More, Weigh Less: Dr. Dean Ornish's Life Choice Program for Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly

As a fellow vegetarian, I personally don't feel that Keto would be the right diet for me. It would require me to eat foods I hate (meat / seafood) and give up foods I love (pasta / bread). The key to weightloss is finding what works for you personally.

I have had a lot of success following Dr. Ornish's diet as outlined in his book Eat More, Weigh Less. Dr. Ornish is a cardiologist who created this diet for heart patients to help combat the effects of heart disease. It is based on a vegetarian diet, and I would describe it as bountiful - I never feel limited in what I can eat, and I never feel like I'm going hungry.

The basics of it is to cut out fat (which I know is the antithesis of Keto), limit sugars, and eat complex carbs. It's totally OK to eat a healthy serving of whole wheat pasta or bread on this diet - which makes it really good for me and my tastes. His book is great, because it has tons of recipes to choose from.

I've combined this diet with a calorie restriction - to help me get my portion sizes under control. As a female, you definitely don't want to go below 1200 calories a day - go below 1200 and your body goes into starvation mode and will store fat rather than burn it. Right now I'm shooting for around 1500-1700 calories a day.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

I've been a vegetarian for about 5 years now. I think my reasons are similar to yours, being that I am not against killing animals but I wasn't satisfied with the quality of most meat being sold to you in stores.

I switched to vegetarianism immediately (I was in college and just learning to cook and had to make all my own meals). It wasn't that hard to do, although I admit that occasionally meat smells good to me. For perspective, I have found that becoming a vegetarian is much easier than quiting smoking, which I often relapse on especially when I'm drunk. I've known other people to ween themselves off of meat, and that is the appropriate method for them.

If it is a problem with your family cooking meat focused foods, offer to cook some of the meals. If you don't know how, then learn. It is an extremely useful skill in life, especially since you seem to be garnering an interest in the source and quality of foods you consume. A friend of mine writes a great blog on the topic of learning to cook: http://inbountycherish.wordpress.com/

Now I have a few extra pounds on me, although I'm not huge. To anyone considering vegetarianism solely as a weight loss technique, it will not work well unless you also exercise or become more active. Also don't just cut out meat, but unhealthy foods in general.

People will judge you, and usually will try to argue with you like you are a stereotypical, animal-loving Petard (don't trust what Peta says by the way, their vegetarian pamphlets are disgustingly inaccurate). There are as many different reasons for adopting vegetarianism as there are vegetarians.

I read this book when I started: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-More-Weigh-Less-Abundantly/dp/0060959576 The author has conducted scientific research on the best diet for patients with heart disease, and as a result he extols the virtues of Vegetarianism for everyone. Also it contains a lot of great recipes. The title makes it sound like a weight-loss diet, but it is not (vegetarianism is a lifestyle choice). Dr. Ornish is merely saying that counting calories is bullshit, because different sources of calories are processed by the body in different ways, and that you can eat higher quantities of food that are processed more as instant energy than sent straight to fat.

I've also heard very good things about Michael Pollan's books (http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Pollan/e/B000AQ74HQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1). He is known for "In defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilema."

Go For It. At the least you will reduce your consumption of meat. Our closest living animal relative, the Chimpanzee (btw did you see the pic of the hairless chimp? http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bacdh/here_is_a_pic_of_a_hairless_chimpanzee/), has a diet which consists of 30% meat (if they are the lucky ones). Our stomachs are not that much different, and the importance of meat in our meals has increased substantially since the industrial revolution when we figured out better methods of storing meat. That's not that long in evolutionary terms, and our stomachs haven't evolved to compensate with increased consumption.

I may one day go back to eating meat, but I doubt I will make it the forefront of my diet. As a rule I won't eat an animal unless I am prepared to slaughter it myself.