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Hi!
I've been vegan for about 6 months now and have just started on a excercise/ weightloss semi- plan. The only part missing is the diet vegan food!

What are some of the things you eat? Do you count calories? What's been successful for you? What do you eat to replace some of the junk food from your previous eating habits? What helped you lose weight as a vegan?

I feel like I'm stuck to eating hummus and carrot sticks, which is not fun. :[

Any direction you can point me in is great, and any recipes you have I would love to hear!

Thanks!

Hello and welcome

Kudos on becoming veg and choosing to live a healthier lifestyle.

Here are some of my favorite dishes:

Veg Head Chili by Rachael Ray (Food Network) is an awesome dish that is enjoyed by veggies and non-veggies alike.

Soups with beans in a baked whole wheat wrap bowl

Roasted Cauliflower (Break up cauliflower, toss with light drizzle of olive oil, season with your favorite seasonings, bake until brown)

Roasted cabbage with thyme (Martha Stewart Meatless Cookbook)

Roasted mix veggies (halved grape tomatoes, mushrooms, cauliflower, squashes, peppers, asparagus, red onion tossed with basil, oregano, olive oil, garlic and roasted) Blend in a vitamix or other high speed blender for a roasted veggie soup.

Roasted garbanzo beans flavored with cajun spices.

Sloppy Nos (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking) :o)

Thai and Indian restaurants offer lots of veggie choices..although many are not diet friendly.

There are many terrific recipe books and veggie blogs available. McDougall and Furhman are two of my favorites. Both are brilliant and have differing opinions on the best whole food plant based diet to follow and include recipes and meal plans. Moskowitz's is also a favorite of mine. Her dishes are not only fun to make...they're delish.

Please let me know if any of these dishes are tasty to you and please do share some that you love.

It is difficult to be a vegan, it really is. But I think it's rewarding and it really makes eating something to appreciate. I mean, once you finally find a meal, you're so much happier than before when anything was edible.

The absolute best way to find recipes that I've found is to search through blogs. There are a TON of people out there who have vegan cooking blogs. Farshicle, Bread Without Butter, and FatFree Vegan are some of my favourites. Oh, and The Vegan Zombie on Youtube is a lot of fun. And kind of cute, too. Haha.

You'll find all kinds of interesting recipes this way and they're usually vegan takes on meat-eater dishes. So it's familiar.

Oh, and I also adore Linda McCartney and bought her vegetarian cookbook. I substitute out the butter/milk/eggs etc, but they're great easy dishes and, as an added bonus, you get to eat like a Beatle. :)

I know what you mean, I'm a vegetarian, and once I started trying to lose weight at first, I had a hard time finding good (healthy) things to eat. lol

But, I'll tell you there is this wonderful blog that I came across that has loads of healthy vegan recipes that you might wanna check out. :D It's called the picky eater blog, you can find it if you do a google search for it!

I think you might really like it. (:

Hello and welcome. My husband and I have been doing a vegetarian lifestyle for some time now and I find I am still learning new things about what to eat.

Thank you for this! Also I had a hard time too with too much cheese. I'm not vegan but started focusing my efforts on eating that way so that I could be on the healthier side of being a veggie and now I'm a pescetarian, although I'm almost always eating veggie unless my husband and I go out somewhere.

I found that it was hard to find a whole foods approach to vegan food and it was mostly substitutes and chemicals. After much searching I found Vegan Italian cookbook and some blogs with some delish vegan burgers even hubby enjoys eating. I'd recommend Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian book as well its a nice starting point for this sort of cooking, before I started down the path of veggie I learned how to cook from his original book, How to Cook Everything.

I heard that eating raw vegan is a great way to clean your body and lose weight. Has anyone tried that?

I tried raw vegan, and I think if you can sustain it, it would be amazing and cleansing for the body. But I live in northern Canada, and it was freezing cold outside when I decided to try raw vegan, and I was miserable and shivering. It's not something I can sustain, I like warm foods too much!

I am a big fan of ultimate salads!
Firstly I choose either Couscous or Rice (Brown or red)
I then choose my protein (Chickpeas or lentils are my fav!)
I then throw in heaps of cucumber, tomato, red onion, nuts, seeds, fruit, avocado, herbs etc
For a fat free dressing try balsamic vinegar, mustard and crushed ginger/garlic!
So easy to make or take to work and super healthy. You are also getting all your food groups ticked off!
GOOD LUCK! X

I like to make nut loafs/patties (with beans) or quinoa burgers (with beans) They are easy to make on a Sunday and have on hand during the week for a quick snack.

Your salad sounds good, shapingnz but i like olive oil so i would put that in too most likely. How much rice and beans do you put in for your serving. About 1/3 cup each or more/less?

I must remember to try this soon, although i have made similar salads before.

I think many westerners probably get stuck thinking have to buy all those horrid prepackaged paddies and burger things. Most of them that i've tried are not yummy. I never buy things like that. There are so many bean, lentil, legume recipes in the world that are wonderful but its good to go the cuisines where they are part of tradition for the best ones. e.g., india, mediterranean, middle east and even south america, though i have never tried the latter except from local restaurants here.

Hi Pattience,

If I am having it for lunch I would have half a cup or chickpeas and half a cup of brown rice (for example), so 1 cup in total, but for dinner I would have a cup of chickpeas and a cup of rice, so 2 cups in total. All the rest is virtually fat free so just throw it all in there!
Agreed about the fake meat and pre-packaged food. There is an insane amount of salt in it!
Asian food is easy to make vegetarian. I make my own sushi (with brown rice), stir frys (avoid packet and jar stir fry sauces), and I nice hot laksa in winter. And if you put chilli and ginger in its a bit of a detox at the same time!

P.S the reason why I don't use olive oil is because it makes me crave a massive piece of crusty bread to dip in it!

Is there such a thing as "diet" vegan food?
Unless you are surviving on Twinkies as a vegan, vegan food is naturally weight-reducing, as long as you count your calories daily.

Shapingnz, yes i like that too but that's an easy one for me to stay away from doing.

Arwen, I can't figure out why you are posing that question. Has someone asked for it? Just curious and confused. :-)

Pattience- This may be why Arwen asked. This is the OP's post at the very top. No need to be confused any longer.

Hi I'm new too. Just started posting today. From 1 newbie to another welcome.