The Vegetarian Low Carb Diet: The Fast, No-hunger Weight Loss Diet for Vegetarians

"I am vegetarian and I eat healthily. After following the guidelines of this low carb diet for a couple of weeks I did loose weight but felt that my diet was far from healthy ! Being advised to avoid foods like oranges while being able to eat almost unlimited amounts of eggs and processed vegie food seemed wrong and unnatural to me.

*I did loose weight but I gained most of it when I tried to re-introduce carbs ie fruit and vegetables
*I felt light-headed for most of the time
*I am sure that the calorific value of the meals was so low that I would have lost weight on that level anyway - low carb or not.
*any diet that requires you to take supplements cannot be healthy
*the only real way to being a healthy weight is to take a lifelong aproach to eating healthily, exercising and monitoring / managing that calorific balance"
~ Written on 2007-10-27

"This is a fantastic book! If you are searching for a successful way to lose weight - this is definitely a method that I recommend! After years of checking food labels of calories and fat intake - I never really lost any weight without starving myself (which I knew was a BIG mistake!) However, after buying this book I noticed that by eating, my weight seeemed to be disappearing. I have a few minor things to mention though...

1) If you are NOT vegitarian (like me) then do NOT strictly attempt the vegitarian diet as you lack meat as well as carbs which you are use to. I thought vegetables were healthier and I love vergitarian food so I thought it wouldn't be a problem... but unforuntaly it was. I fainted on the tube, and friends also in the same situation experienced severe headaches and painful cramps! After switching to foods we were use to (i.e. meat), we experienced less problems.

2) It takes about a week on about 30g of carbs a day for 11st (+/- a stone) people to have a smaller appetite. I have however slightly broken the rules by having a glass of wine a night, a bite of a biscuit or so and still managed to lose 9lbs in two weeks! A very comforting start to the diet! (People I know on this diet have alos lost a substantial amount of weight in the first stage of the diet!!)

3) Remember to drink LOTS of water. Even after drinking 2 litres of water a day, I usually still feel thirsty and dehydrated.

4) TAKE YOUR MINERALS & VITAMENS! It is essential to take your minerals to ensure you get the essentials in your body as you are cutting out foods (like fruit) that have the ingredients your body needs.

I do however like the food in this book! I am a fan of cheese, but I particularly like the yogurt breakfast, the scrambled egg on mushroom breakfast, the vegi-burger dinner and I have yet to try the muffins!

Hope you find this usefull & good luck with your diet! x

"
~ Written on 2007-10-26

"Having struggled with ever-increasing weight for several years it was suggested that my problem was carbs - my body seemed to have forgotten how to deal with them normally so they were being stored as fat - eg "Syndrome X". I was sceptical but thought I'd give the diet a try - and chose this book for guidance as I trust Rose Elliot - we had her book "Simply Delicious" way back in the 1970s! Anyway - the results were spectacular - I lost half a stone in about 10 days, and 2 stone in three months. I am not a very imaginative cook, so tend to make the same things over and over, and I am vegan by preference so not everything is possible without dairy, but there are stacks of good ideas. The low carb burgers are fab - and really easy - the jelly is a lifesaver when you want some indulgent comfort food! - and the lasagne using cabage in place of pasta is inspired!"
~ Written on 2007-09-26

"I've found this book useful in that it has introduced me to a new way of eating, but the recipes are somewhat limited in that there's rather too much emphasis on tofu and goat's cheese, neither of which I can eat. Also, the indexing hasn't been done very efficiently which often means that looking for a recipe involves hunting through the book rather than simply going to the index.

The author claims that appetite dimishes after a couple of weeks but I haven't found that, and in fact I've found that when I feel hunger, it comes on very suddenly and can make me feel decidedly unwell, not something I've experienced before.

I am losing weight, slowly, which is as it should be, but whether I'll stick with this book for much longer is open to question. "
~ Written on 2007-06-27