Eating a plant based diet will help you overcome many illnesses, lose weight, and make you feel great. You’ll also be helping the environment due to eating fewer water greedy animal products, and use less packaging due to eating fewer processed foods.
Eating this way can be easy too. But, there is a lot of confusion due to the different types of plant based diets, and different “gurus” who proclaim to know what’s best. You’ll need to decide what type of plant based diet works best for you.
80/10/10 Raw Food Diet
This diet consists of eating only whole food raw plant based food consisting of 80 percent carbohydrate, 10 percent protein and 10 percent fat. Most people who are on the 80/10/10 raw food diet do not eat processed oils and added processed sugars.
A meal might consist of 6 bananas, 7 ripe peaches or a large salad that looks like it’s for a family consisting of one to two pounds of greens, fruit, nuts and seeds.
Starch Based Diet
This diet made popular by Dr. McDougal, consists of making starches like potatoes, sprouted grains and rice your main food group.
Root veggies eaten judiciously with at least 1 to 2 pounds of greens each day with no added fat, salts and very little sugar is the diet that he recommends for weight loss and cardiovascular health.
He is also a huge proponent of exercising each day and getting plenty of sunshine.
Low Carbohydrate Diet
This diet consists of eating more greens, and less starch or fruit based carbs. It’s sort of an “Atkins” like diet for vegans. You will eat a lot of leafy greens, flowering veggies like cauliflower and broccoli, plus mushrooms.
This diet is low in sugar and added salt. You’ll be eating fruit like berries instead of bananas, and high fiber asparagus over high carbohydrate root veggies like carrots. On this diet you can eat coconut oil, avocado, nuts and seeds.
Balanced Plant Based Diet
This diet is based on the standard diet recommendations to eat 30 percent protein 30 percent fat and 40 percent high fiber carbohydrate in your diet. You can easily accomplish this by simply eating whole food plant based food every day in the right caloric amounts for your needs without worrying about whether you are eating added oils.
However, you may need to be sure to add protein to each meal in the form of tofu, beans, or other meat replacements. It can be hard to lose weight on this diet.
The best way to choose which diet you will follow is to start with your doctor. Get some blood tests run to find out where you stand in terms of your cholesterol level and overall health. Then choose the diet that is best for you and addresses your health issues.
For people who are very ill, eating a diet very low in overt fat and protein of no more than 10 percent has been shown to be highly beneficial according to The China Study and many other studies done over the years.
