In Plant Based approach, no need for skipping meals, or counting calories. Fruits and vegetables, on average, contain about 80 – 90% water. As fiber can bulk up the volume of foods without adding calories, so can water. Zero-calorie component like fiber or water means you can eat more food but gain less weight.
Hundred calories of broccoli, tomatoes and strawberries compared with chicken, cheese, and fish. You’ll notice that even though the calorie content is the same, the volume of these foods is different. So, it makes sense that calories of plants are more likely to fill you up where as calories of animal or processed foods may leave you half-empty.
Benefits of a Plant Based Diet
Plant-based diets are great for people who like to eat. You can eat as much as you want without worrying about calories. A clinical trial found that a plant-based diet beat out the recommended diet for weight loss. This occurred without requiring calorie or carb counting.People who are taking plant-based meals faced less risk of cardiovascular disease as compared to other.
Diabetics are more likely to suffer from strokes and heart failure. In fact, diabetic patients may have the same risk of heart attack as non-diabetic individuals with confirmed heart disease. The plant-based approach can also lead to a significant drop in LDL cholesterol, thereby reducing risk of heart disease.
How do people feel about making such a major shift in their diets?
Most people who switch to a plant-based diet are happy they did. In a recent randomized, clinical weight-loss trial, diabetics were split into two groups. One half uses the conventional diabetic diet as recommended by diabetes organizations. The other half on a plant-based diet consist of vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits, and nuts.
At the end of six months, the plant-based group reported a better quality of life and a higher mood score than the conventional diet group. Patients having plant-based diet felt less constrained than those consuming the conventional diet. Patients eating vegetarian food were less likely to binge, and the plant-based folks tended to feel less hungry as well. Both of which could help these subjects sustain this way of eating in the long run.
So not only do plant-based diets appear to work better but they may be easier to adopt long term. And with the improvement in mood, they seem to bring, there may be benefits for both physical and mental health. When it comes to maximally lowering diabetes risk, does it matter if you eat just a little meat? Researchers in Taiwan sought to answer that question. Traditionally, Asian populations have enjoyed very low rates of diabetes. In recent years, diabetes has emerged on a near-epidemic scale, coinciding with the Westernization of Asian diets.
