Hi everyone,
My husband and I are just starting the low cal med diet. Day 1 today. We would welcome any support or advice you may have. We are vegetarian but not vegan. And are a little concerned that a large proportion of the meal plans. Include meat. We would love to hear any advice on alternatives.

Hi Margaret and hubby,
Welcome to the forums. There are quite a few vegetarian members on here and you will find some recipes and threads to read all about veggie food. I can recommend the recipe for the baked aubergine. Give yourself a few days to get used to the idea of eating low carb and low cal and you will soon get into the swing of combining healthy veggie foods for maximum effect. I was also recommended Rose Elliot’s book on low carb vegetarian meals which I find is very good. All the best you both.

I am veggie and live in France which adds a complication due to difficulty obtaining some food stuffs. I am coming up to 2 weeks now, have lost 9lbs and am enjoying the plan. Breakfast I always have a bowl of porridge as this sets me up for the day. I try to use jumbo oats as they are better and full fat milk with a drip of honey. Lunch normally I have a Greek yogurt, full fat with fresh berries. Dinner is a selection of veggies, roasted, casseroled with often eggs or pulses. I do a veg shepherds pie topped with cauliflower mash which I have found I love. I am now eating a large amount of vegetables and loving it. Rose Elliot is a good book but she does not always use clean food which is my other passion.
Experiment with veg remembering you can use butter, cream etc. Have a look through the recipes on here, they are tried and tested.

Hi,
like you I am vegetarian and was disappointed in the lack of vegetarian recipes in the book. I did find more on the Newcastle website http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/documents/StudyRecipes.pdf, and have used the soups a lot. I decided that I would start using meal replacement shakes and for week 1 replaced two meals with them and the third meal was a stir-fry or soup or/and eggs. The second week I went down to one replacement meal and the third week I stopped them completely. I also followed the Newcastle approach for the first 2 weeks and was looking only at the 800 cals and not so much the amount of carbs I was eating. This all gave me time to adjust to 800 cals per day and get organised for what I could eat (no parsnip/beetroots/squash at the height of their seasons was a blow) and make a lot of soup.
I have got a bit sick of eggs…. so have greek yoghurt and blueberries plus 3gms each linseeds, pumpkinseeds and sunflower seeds for breakfast some days. Lunch is usually soup plus a salad – cucumber, tomato, spring onion and feta cheese is a good standby for this.
I have just reached my main goal to get my BMI down under 30 in 4.5 weeks losing 8.5kg, losing 2kg most weeks.
Other recipe books to look for Rose Elliots vegetarian low GI, and ignore the rice/pasta etc works for me.
Good luck.

Wow Orchid those are fantastic results for just over 4 weeks. You must be so proud.
There are a few veggies on here who have been posting recipes so maybe a bit more variety for you now.
Really looking forward to seeing your 8 week results Well done you !

thank-you 🙂 an yes, I was bouncing off of the walls yesterday when I did my weigh in yesterday. I was even more shocked when I went to get changed later in the day for a meeting and found what I had planned to wear was too big – and I got into some ‘motivation buys’ from the sales that were meant for the autumn and are a full dress size smaller! Although not prediabetic, by blood sugar was high and about to get into that range, yesterdays FBS was 5.0 mmol/day. This really does work!

Thanks for all the helpful comments re vegetarian. We have now completed day 2 and feel okay. Not hungry as I thought. Had frittata yesterday and cottage pie with cauliflower mash the whole family loved both dishes. Not sure on all the full fat yoghurt etc as I have spent years consuming the low fat zero fat versions. Well we are looking forward to day 3 tomorrow.

Thanks for the encouragement Bill1954. I was very sorry to see the news about your daughter on another forum. Like many others, I wish there were more I could do other than offer long distance support to you and your family. Every day now becomes very precious for you all. I hope for better news once the MRI scan comes in. Take care, you are in my thoughts and prayers.