The Modern Way of Being a Vegetarian

We know the many health benefits of eating a plant-based vegetarian diet. In fact, vegetarians live 3.6 years longer than meat eaters. So you want to become one, but don't want to eat cardboard soy products every day? You are not alone. Here's how to become a vegetarian the 21st century way. We are always confused with all the vegetarian terms, such as vegans, lacto-ovo, etc... Now we have a new term called flexitarian? This is basically two words put together - flexible plus vegetarian so you get the word flexitarian. This is a new way to eat that minimizes meat without excluding it all together. Why it is that you get the health benefits of being a vegetarian without having to give up meat.  Being a vegetarian is not about just eating soy products, isn't it?  For people who have the tendency to want to eat more vegetarian foods but don't know where to get started. In the first place you should know about different food groups, then go through not only soy beans, but through all different kinds of beans, nuts and seeds you can put in your diet to replace meat but not necessarily exclude it all together.  There are some of the protein foods that I suggest to replace meat.To be a flexitarian, you can either be a beginner, advanced or an expert. If you are a beginner, you would have two meatless days per week. If you were advanced, you would have three or four meatless days per week. And if you were the expert, you would have five or more meatless days per week. Depending on how aggressive you are going to get, this would determine the types of protein you would have to start using. If you were to do it a couple of times a week, you might try garbanzo beans, black beans and maybe some almonds. If you are going full monty, you are going to have a lot more variety so you could try white beans, large lima beans, all sorts of different tofu's and tempeh that are fun to try and experiment with. Many of us think that beans are difficult to prepare. What are some of the easy steps that one should go about in preparing beans and legumes?  One of things that is overlooked and so convenient is using canned beans. Most are already to go. You just rinse and drain them and 40% of the sodium washes away. You can start putting them into stir-fry, pastas and pita pockets for lunch. It really is an amazing time saver that can easily get people eating beans and loving them in a convenient way.  For someone who has never been a vegetarian but they want to become beginners, what are the steps to become a flexitarian.Whether  it's breakfast, lunch or dinner, or even snacks, you can just start trying recipes. Or if you are looking for more structure, you can actually make a five week official meal plan that you can follow. In five weeks, it will guide you in how to try all these different foods. Like a sample day that you enjoy is when you wake up, you will have a piece of whole-grain toast with pea nut butter. A quick veggie burger for lunch with some salads. Then for dinner, you will have a veggie and nuts salad, peanut stir-fry that has garbanzo beans instead of chicken or shrimp. For snacks,you can have these salt and pepper pita chips that you can  make along with a chocolate mousse with tofu and raspberries, which is easy to make. It's like a really fun choose-your-own-adventure and you can really go in there and try any of the recipes and start your journey. what is interesting to know is that a vegetarian or an occasional vegetarian actually weigh less. Yes. Many of the research studies done have shown that even people who call themselves vegetarians are really flexitarians in disguise. Only about one in three people who call themselves a vegetarian really is a vegetarian. Most people who follow this flexitarian lifestyle. When you look at flexitarians, or people who eat a plant based diet, they weigh 15% less than their meat eating counterparts.