Maria Buhay-Lim

The buzz about plant-based diets has been so popular nowadays with all the much media attention they are getting.  Moving your diet to a plant-based is one of the most powerful steps you can take to improve your overall health, prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, heart problems, diabetes, cancer to name a few, and boosts your energy levels.

There is a higher chance that you can live longer and reduce your risk of getting sick with a plant-based diet.  Furthermore, you would be helping the environment. 

But exactly what is a plant-based diet? It is any type of eating plan that predominantly consists of food entirely from plants such as vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, legumes, herbs, and spices with few or no animal products.  

You can kick-start your plant-based nutrition with these 4 steps:

Step 1: Choose Your Type of Plant-Based Nutrition

A spectrum of plant-based eating options is available to you. Considering that your nutrition will be mainly coming from plants, your options are:

1. Strict plant-based nutrition (Vegan): With strict plant-based nutrition, you are abstaining from using and consuming any meat, fish, or animal products like dairy foods, honey, or eggs.  You are known as a vegan if you follow this type of diet.  
2. Vegetarian plant-based nutrition: In vegetarian plant-based nutrition, you only avoid meat but you will be able to consume eggs, milk, cheese, and other products of animals.   You eat plant-based foods, like vegetables, fruits, beans, soy, grains, rice, and nuts. Don't eat meat, poultry, fish, or seafood of any kind. 
3. Pescatarian plant-based nutrition: The pescatarian plant-based nutrition is similar to the vegetarian one but includes fish. That would mean that your nutrition includes plant-based food, eggs, milk, cheese, fish, and other products of animals but no meat. A pescatarian diet may be healthful to you.  It carries health benefits, as long as you do not consume fish with high levels of mercury.  
4. Flexitarian plant-based nutrition: This is also called a semi-vegetarian diet.  This option is great for individuals who would like to slowly move into plant-based eating without fully committing to never eat meat again. In this plant-based nutrition option, your meals will have a large proportion of plant-based food.  n addition to small portions of eggs, or dairy foods and, on occasion, include meat, fish, seafood or poultry.                                                   

Step 2: Adapt Your Grocery

In order to ease yourself into plant-based eating, try to slowly increase the amount of plant-based food on your grocery list and stop purchasing animal protein and dairy products. Stock up on cans of legumes such as black beans or chickpeas. They are fast and easy ingredients to add to many recipes (just make sure they are not full of sugar or salt).  There are so many incredible products now on the market.  You can get kale chips, chia seeds, black beans, spinach, potatoes, butternut squash,  dairy-free milk, tofu, tempeh, berries, citrus fruits, pineapple, and many others.   This might require a bit more shopping time at first but eventually, you will know which brand is the healthiest.

Step 3: Plan Your Meals

One of the most difficult parts about adapting to plant-based eating is to adopt new habits in the kitchen. Instead of having burgers for dinner, you have to find new ways to cook and bring more plant-based food at your table.  How about a black bean burger instead?  It is recommended to try new recipes as opposed to trying to adapt your old recipes to plant-based nutrition.  Know ahead of time what foods you need to eat and drink and what foods you need to limit or avoid, depending on how strict you decide to be. 

Step 4: Let’s Do This!

The best way to start plant-based eating is to make small changes now.  Choose a day this week when you want to have a plant-based nutrition day.  That day will be the beginning of your journey in plant-based eating.  Once you’ve chosen a date, pick your recipes!

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Are you ready to start eating healthy?

Plant-Based Eating!
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