I wanted your opinions on it. I was thinking of becoming vegetarian, and I was wondering what the pros and cons were?

Thanks for any advice!

Before you start weighing the pros and cons, what are your reasons for going veg? I think that will help determine the pros and cons of it.

Although, if you are well versed on how to maintain a healthy vegetarian diet, I can't really come up with any cons

I'm just sick of eating really bad. The thought of hamburger just kinda makes me sick. My friend became a vegetarian 3 months ago and she said it was the best thing she did for herself. I just think it would be more of a positive thing for me to do.

You can always try it for a month and see how it goes. There's a great forum in the vegetarian section that'll help you along the way.

I've been vegetarian for a long time, and I really love it.

I have been a vegetarian for going on 6 years.
I would say if you eat a healthy vegetarian diet, with plenty of sources of protein (such as eggs, cheese, bean, lentils, vegetarian meat products, etc.) and plenty of fruits and veggies, then...
The pros are:
1) All the moral aspects of it (the not eating animals thing)
2)You will lose weight if you have been eating a lot of red meat or fatty meat
3) I find that being vegetarian forces you to eat more vegetables and fruits
4) If you eat a healthy vegetarian diet, then you will not feel as sluggish from all the meat in your system
5) This might be too much information, but I found that I have much healthier 'bathroom trips'. When I was eating meat I would have really long and uncomfortable bathroom trips as meat can be hard to digest.

The cons:
1) If you don't make an effort to get in enough protein and healthy foods, you will feel tired!
2) If you do not eat enough protein, things can happen such as your hair will become thinner and your nails will become brittle and break easier. I have noticed my hair getting thinner, but this didn't start until about 4 years after I stopped eating meat. And the first 2 years, I wasn't eating very healthy or getting enough protein. If you eat enough protein, this stuff shouldn't be noticeable.
3) Not having as much of a selection when going out to eat or eating at others' houses. I would say this has been the biggest con. When I go out to eat there is usually only a couple of things I can choose from that don't have any meat. That being said, you can ALWAYS find alternatives. If you go to a sit down place, you can always order a lot of sides and make a meal out of them, or salads, or basically get anything without the meat. If I eat at fast food (which I rarely do), I just get it without meat. For example, bean tacos or no meat on nachos, or cheese pizza.
4) Again, you will have to be creative when making food at home. A lot of people have the misconception that you can't eat anything that had meat. But you can! I make cheese and veggie enchiladas, veggie lasagna, bean tacos, pasta, veggie stir fry, etc. And there is a HUGE line of vegetarian meat products at grocery stores that are really good in my opinion.

Thanks for all the information guys!!

It's a hard decision for me because I love chicken =(

Well, and you can always stop eating red meats, right? If you're doing this specifically as a weight-loss effort, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep the chicken/turkey in your diet for the sake of protein... and just swear off red meats. No one's forcing you to go the whole 9 yards in either direction, right?
Chicken (as long as it's not battered and fried!) is a good, and healthy option! I don't eat wheat/gluten anymore because it doesn't affect my family's digestive system well.. and I'm dropping a lot of weight, still eating chicken breasts with rice and veggies all the time.

Don't feel you have to go all or nothing with this decision! Maybe you could ease your way in by deciding to have a set number of meatless days, and seeing how that goes. Right now I'm 95% vegetarian (the chicken wraps at our local Indian place are the last thing that have to go...) but when I started, I was just eating meatless 4 days a week. Then I realized I didn't miss it and preerred my meatless days, so I stopped cooking meat, and then stopped wanting it when I went out (naan wraps excluded).

The major pro I found with moving to a mostly-vegetarian lifestyle is that before I hated vegetables, only ate a few of them, and frequently would make them as a side dish for my steak or pork chop and only take a bite of them. Now that I'm cooking vegetarian, I'm forced to try all sorts of new vegetables, most of which I absolutely love! I also can't escape eating them in my meals -- it's not like there's a side of veggies -- everything's a veggie (or lentil or bean or other delicious meal component)! I basically forced myself to pull a complete 180 on the crap I was eating, and it worked out really well. Now that I know how delicious veggies can be, I'd never go back to the way I ate before.

I've also noticed since I basically stopped eating meat that my skin is much clearer (it's radiant now!), my digestive system is much cleaner (maybe b/c a healthy veggie diet is really high-fiber), I don't get "food coma" anymore, and -- tmi -- my boyfriend says my skin tastes sweeter. Veggie for the win!

I think going full veg might be a little extreme. Supporting free range and organic farms is far more productive anyways. I tried veg for a bit. It's hard, and in the end, I found it to be sort of pointless. My not eating animals wasn't making those that were factory farmed any happier and it wasn't supporting farmers who do treat their animals well (especially in hard economic times). So I eat less meat and save that money for buying the good stuff. That being said I eat a lot of Morning Star products too (although more and more stuff is coming out about how tofu isn't the greatest for you, but those mostly have to do with sperm count, which doesn't really apply to me).

If you're looking to be healthier stay away from fatty red meats and maybe cut back on meat in general (Western society eats a lot of meat), but there's no reason to cut it out entirely. Your body wants it, if it didn't we wouldn't have pointy teeth.

Keep your budget in mind as well - if you plan on buying meat substitutes, those can add up really quickly. In my area, Morningstar burger costs about $.70 a patty; 4 oz. of ground turkey is about $.32; and 4 oz. 93% lean ground beef is about $.29