Can I lose weight on a plant based diet? I did it, so can you!

If you’re asking yourself can I lose weight on a plant based diet, you absolutely can. Why? Because many vegan foods are low in calories and fat compared to meats and animal products. Plus it’s what I did earlier this year and I lost a stone and a half (2020). See my before and after pics here. It wasn’t just going plant based that did it but it certainly helped. Continue reading and by the end you’ll be able to answer “YES!” to the question can I lose weight on a plant based diet?

What makes you lose weight

To lose weight you have to be in a calorie deficit, meaning you have to burn more calories than you eat. Whether it’s eating less or exercising more or a bit of both you must be in a regular calorie deficit (don’t do it for 1 day and expect to lose weight), we’re talking weeks and months, not days. Can I lose weight on a plant based diet? Going plant based will absolutely help you lose weight.

If you’re exercising regularly and eating right but not loosing weight you’re probably eating more than you think and therefore more than you need, which is easily done. A glass of wine here, a packet of crisps there, it all adds up.

To know how many calories you need you should first work out your maintenance calories (how many calories you burn just living, breathing and going about your day). You can use a calculator like this, it’s not going to be exactly right but it’ll give you an idea. If you’re not sure what to select on how active you are go with less as most of us over estimate how much of a difference exercise makes.

To lose about 1 pound a week you need to eat roughly 500 calories less per day. 1 pound roughly equates to 3,500 calories so divided up over a week that’s 500 per day. Losing 1/2 a pound per week would be 250 calories less per day and 2 pound per week would be 1,000 calories less per day. I wouldn’t recommend eating 1,000 less per day though, apart from the fact that you’ll be eating a lot less you’ll probably be miserable, do it for a week then get hungry and go on a massive food binge undoing your hard work. Do what you feel is right for you and always stay healthy.

I found that I never actually lost 1 pound per week, some weeks I lost nothing and some weeks 2 pounds came off. It averages out in the end. If you haven’t lost anything for a couple of weeks don’t give up, it’ll probably just come off in a chunk the next week.

Track your calories in and out

Once you know your maintenance calories you can then start logging your food. This will tell you whether you’re in a calorie surplus, deficit or maintaining. The tracker on MyFitnessPal is good or if you have a Fitbit you can track your food on the app (I recently reviewed the Fitbit charge 4, check it out here). The advantage of logging your food on the Fitbit app is that because your Fitbit is tracking roughly how many calories you’re burning it will tell you if you’re in a surplus or deficit. Logging your food does take time but it’s well worth doing, I learnt a lot about my eating habits (I snacked too much) and was surprised about how calorific some foods were!

Once you’ve logged your food for about a week, or longer to have an even better idea, plus at least one weekend (that’s when we treat ourselves to that take away) you should have a good idea of how many calories you’re eating.

Now for the hard bit. Time to eat less (and exercise more!)

Plan your plant based meals

Now you’ve logged your food you have an idea of how many calories you’re eating per day, so you’ll also have an idea of how much less you need to eat to lose weight. Let’s take the 500 calories less per day example. My maintenance calories are about 1,800 per day so I’d be looking to eat 1,300 per day to lose 1 pound per week. Let’s break it down:

• 300 calories for breakfast
• 300 calories for lunch
• 450 calories for dinner
• 250 calories for snacks

Total = 1,300 calories

This is just an example, I like to eat less for breakfast and more for dinner but you could do whatever works for you.

1,300 calories might not seem like a lot but this can be easily achieved, especially on a plant based diet. Remember your question, can I lose weight on a plant based diet? Continue reading to see how I did it.

Best plant based foods for losing weight

There are lots of vegan foods that are low calorie, healthy and perfect for weight loss. I cover some in my post about high protein vegan foods. Even though I was focusing on high protein foods some of these would be great to eat whilst on a weight loss diet as protein makes you feel full so you’re less likely to snack and go over your calories for the day. These are the kinds of plant based foods I ate to lose weight.

• Oats/Oatmeal
• Plant milks
• Chickpeas
• Kidney beans
• Houmous
• Red kidney beans
• Falafels
• Vegetables like carrots, broccoli, aubergine, spinach and kale
• Fruit like bananas, blueberries and apples

An example day would be:

Breakfast

Oatmeal with plant milk, yogurt and blueberries. Get the recipe here and swap the banana for blueberries and use 40g of oats/oatmeal – 283 calories

Morning snack

1 medium banana – 105 calories

Lunch

50g reduced fat houmous with 1 carrot, 1/2 a red pepper 1 wholewheat pitta bread – 275 calories

Afternoon snack

25g of almonds – 152 calories

Dinner

Chickpea curry with coconut quinoa – 409 calories

Total 1,224 calories

‘m a big fan of curries because they’re easy to make, delicious and I can just throw in any veg that I have in the fridge.

Walking, walking and more walking

Losing weight isn’t just about diet, exercise can play a big part as well. One of the things that helped me lose weight was walking my dog during lockdown. Usually I’d be working away from home all day so pre lockdown we had a dog walker that came in and walked Rio. We walked him at the weekend but not so much during the week. When covid-19 reared it’s ugly head I coudn’t work so would be walking Rio every day myself, so I was walking every day for about an hour. This really helped with my weight loss as I was burning an extra 280-300 calories every day.

I’m not saying you have to go for an hour long walk every day but any exercise you can squeeze into you day will certainly help with your weight loss. Follow the 80/20 rule for losing weight, 80% of your weight loss will be related to your diet and 20% will be related to the exercise you do.

So, can I lose weight on a plant based diet?

YES YOU CAN!

This is what you should be saying to yourself. By following a plant based diet you’re avoiding high calorie foods like rump steak (430 calories per steak) and cheese (416 calories per 100g) and if that wasn’t enough you’re also saving animals from being hurt and killed and doing your bit for the planet.

I hope you enjoyed the article, as always leave any comments or questions below. Have you recently gone plant based to lose weight? Let me know how it’s going by commenting below. I’d love to hear from you.

All the best

Katie

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