It can be challenging to serve healthy meals on a budget, but with planning you can eat better for less. Many people save money by adding meatless meals to their weekly menus. Meatless meals are built around vegetables, beans and grains — instead of meat, which tends to be more expensive. Meatless meals also offer health benefits.
The health factor
A plant-based diet, which emphasizes fruits and vegetables, grains, beans and legumes, and nuts, is rich in fiber, vitamins and other nutrients. And people who eat only plant-based foods — aka vegetarians — generally eat fewer calories and less fat, weigh less, and have a lower risk of heart disease than nonvegetarians do.
Just eating less meat has a protective effect. A National Cancer Institute study of 500,000 people found that those who ate 4 ounces (113 grams) of red meat or more daily were 30 percent more likely to have died of any cause during a 10-year period than were those who consumed less. Sausage, luncheon meats and other processed meats also increased the risk. Those who ate mostly poultry or fish had a lower risk of death.
How much protein do you need?
The fact is that most Americans get enough protein in their diets. Adults generally need 10 to 35 percent of their total daily calories to come from protein. Based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, this amounts to about 50 to 175 grams a day. Of course, you can get protein from sources other than meat.
In fact, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends choosing a variety of protein foods, including eggs, beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds. The guidelines also suggest replacing protein foods that are higher in solid fats with choices that are lower in solid fats and calories. The fats in meat, poultry and eggs are considered solid fats, while the fats in seafood, nuts and seeds are considered oils.
Try meatless meals once or twice a week
You don’t have to go cold turkey. Instead, try easing into meatless meals. Consider going meatless one day a week. If you don’t like the idea of a whole day without meat, start with a couple of meatless dinners each week. Plan meals that feature entrees you like that are typically meatless, such as lasagna, soup or pasta salad. Or try substituting the following protein-rich foods for meat in your favorite recipes: Beans and legumes are great in casseroles and salads; vegetarian refried beans are a good substitute for meat in burritos and tacos; tofu is a perfect addition to stir-fry dishes.
When meat is on the menu
When your meals include meat, don’t overindulge. Choose lean cuts and avoid oversized portions. A serving of protein should be no more than 3 ounces (85 grams) — or about the size of a deck of cards — and should take up no more than one-fourth of your plate. Vegetables and fruits should cover half your plate. Whole grains make up the rest.
Flexing for your health
The term “flexitarian” has been coined to describe someone who eats mostly plant-based foods, but occasionally eats meat, poultry and fish. That kind of healthy eating is the central theme of the Mediterranean diet which limits red meat and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and healthy fats and has been shown to reduce your risk of heart disease and other chronic conditions.
Why not work on your flexibility and start reaping some healthy benefits?
1. Diets don’t work.
Maybe this is obvious, but if diets really worked you would only need one in your entire life. The reality is that diets are a short-term fix, like putting a Band-Aid on a cut when the bleeding is internal. Diets don’t solve the real problem.
2. You’ll probably gain weight.
Not at first, in the beginning you will lose weight. But studies have shown that in the long term, dieting is a reliable cause of weight gain. That’s right, even if you’re overweight you’re better off never dieting.
3. Diets make you miserable.
Calorie deficits make you grumpy. Nutrient deprivation makes me grumpy. I think there are better ways to spend our time, how about you?
4. Diets screw up your metabolism.
When you lose weight too quickly, you’re bound to lose some muscle. Also, when you dramatically decrease your calorie intake, your body adjusts to this lower level and learns to use less energy. These two strikes against your metabolism mean that when you go back to your old eating habits (if you’re lucky and don’t over compensate for your starvation by eating more, like most people) then you will store more calories as fat than ever before.
4. Diets make you a buzzkill.
Friends and family with restrictive diets ruin it for everyone. If you won’t even pretend to eat or drink what everyone else is having in celebration you make people uncomfortable in at least two ways: 1) they can tell you aren’t having as good a time as they are, which isn’t fun, and 2) they feel judged being less virtuous than you. Suffer on your own time.
5. Diets destroy your relationship with food.
Diets set you up for a feast or famine mentality, where you oscillate between barely eating anything and binging on 12-packs of deep-fried bacon-stuffed cupcakes. You can’t win.
6. The food tastes horrible.
Eating bad tasting food won’t kill you, but it’s hard to argue that you’re really living either.
7. Diets are hard.
Diets take lots of time, energy and self-discipline. They aren’t easy to keep up, and they’re nearly impossible to maintain. Since they don’t work, this is particularly unfortunate.
8. They’re temporary.
Even if you can stick out a diet and meet your weight goals, you know that as soon as you go back to your old habits the pounds will return (and probably bring some friends). So if it isn’t going to last, what’s the point exactly?
9. They cost money.
Not all diets are expensive, but chances are high that if you start one you will invest in a book or program, and probably special foods as well. It’s true that good food costs money, but do you need to pay extra to suffer and gain weight?
10. There’s a better way.
All the above inconveniences might be acceptable if weight loss is very important to you and there are simply no other ways to achieve it. But that isn’t true. Small, customizable lifestyle changes can transform your body and your health.
The changes are slower and much less dramatic, but they last because they are permanent. Losing a simple 2 lbs a month (.5 lb/week) will set you down almost 25 lbs in one year. More important, for most people a shift to healthier eating greatly improves quality of life. Not only do you get healthier and lose weight, the food is amazing and you discover a world of flavors and food culture you never knew existed.
Diet vs. Dieting
We all know what it means to “go on a diet.” When you are dieting (the verb) you temporarily change how you eat–sometimes in ways that are very extreme–for the purpose of losing weight or achieving another immediate goal, like “detox.”
But we also use the word diet to describe normal, everyday eating patterns such as a “healthy diet” or “vegetarian diet.”
Failing to distinguish short-term and long-term eating behaviors is a serious problem though, because in reality most of us confuse these methods and try using short-term strategies to achieve goals that can only be met with a long-term approach. And describing and correcting this fallacy is almost impossible when the terminology we use is the same for both.
Dieting Is Temporary
To be clear, there are a few cases where dieting (short-term) can be beneficial. Sometimes an athletic event or other performance requires temporary weight loss or a special training program. But if your goal is long-term health or permanent weight loss, you won’t find much success with this approach.
Sure you can lose weight if you go on a diet. In fact, you can lose weight on almost any diet (I’m still skeptical of the cookie diet, but I would not be surprised if someone has lost weight on it). What you must remember is if your changes are temporary, so will be your success.
Worse, most temporary weight loss plans encourage rapid weight loss that ultimately destroys muscle and lowers your metabolism. This makes future attempts at weight loss even more difficult and may result in a net weight gain, once you have fallen off the bandwagon. In other words, you achieve the opposite of your goal.
The Maintenance Illusion
Deep down you probably know all this. Yet still we love to rationalize this behavior by telling ourselves that once we lose the weight, then we will switch to a healthier diet. We tend to associate “healthy diets” with weight maintenance, and we keep this idea in the back of our brains for the mythical time when we finally achieve our perfect, ideal bodies. But this strategy is backwards.
Habit
To lose weight and keep it off, to prevent chronic diseases and stay fit and active into old age, we need to permanently change our daily eating habits. We must learn to make healthier choices and gradually shift our behaviors to those of a healthy, thin person.
To change our bodies we must change our habits. And habits are created in our minds. We need to stop thinking of dieting as a way to achieve permanent weight loss. Instead we need a term that emphasizes our set of personal habits we adopt for long-term good health.
Healthstyle
This is the word I am choosing to describe the healthy habits that fit our own individual styles. One of the wonderful things about health and weight loss is that there are countless ways to get there. And what works for someone may not work for you. Healthstyle is your customized path to health that suits your personal tastes and lifestyle. Most importantly, Healthstyle emphasizes habits and long-term health, not painful diets and temporary weight loss.
A Boston area Hypnotherapist, with 10 years of medical experience as an RN, Paul has been helping clients since 2001 to overcome everyday challenges. Read more
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