High-protein veggie diet -- anybody tried it?

November 23, 2007 7:39 AM

High-protein vegetarian diet -- am I the first to try this?

Because of a genuine addiction to bread and pure carbohydrate foods like rice and pasta (perhaps even an oversensitivity), I'm trying a high-protein diet. I haven't eaten meat since being a teenager so it's also vegetarian. I don't eat fish either.

Essentially my food consists of vegetables and salads with a good portion of protein: cheese, egg, beans, pulses, tofu, nuts and so on (or a combination). It's working pretty well so far and I'm enjoying it. It requires imagination in the kitchen but I'm coping. My guiding principle is to make the core of each meal a duet of protein and fiber, in the form of vegetables/salad. So no omelette without spinach and mushrooms, for example, and preferably served on a bed of salad leaves.

What I want to know is: Has anybody else tried this? I'd like to read more and get some recipe ideas. With the zillions of diet books out there, somebody must have written about it.

You could call this a diet that simply avoids pure carb foods but it definitely ISN'T Atkins. The closest I can find is the Glycaemic Index diet, but I'm avoiding ANYTHING that's even moderate GI, such as peas or sweetcorn, and even fruit (I'm confident I get enough fibre in the vegetables I eat). For instance, a GI dieter will allow themselves soya and linseed bread, but that's out for me. In GI terms, I'm keeping myself below around 40GI points. In fact, when taken collectively, most meals are far less.

posted by long haired lover from liverpool to health & fitness (19 comments total)

I try to keep my diet relatively high-protein and mostly vegan. I've learned how to make a few key things which have improved my life:

- marinaded baked tofu: slice a block of tofu into about 6 slices, dry/press the tofu (read recipes for details), then marinate it, then bake at 375 (fahrenheit) for ~25 minutes. You can find lots of recipes online, and can use anything that looks good as a marinade. You can probably find marinades in bottles at the store, or make your own using one of the several recipes online.

- scrambled tofu. I'm still looking for better recipes, but this is relatively quick and fun.

- my homemade vegetable lentil soup - I use a decent amount of sauteed onions and tomatoes in this soup, so it may not be for you, but you can make up your own soup recipe and probably get a lot of mileage from it since winter's here. A key ingredient for me has been bouillon cubes. Celery is also important, believe it or not, or crushed celery seed. If you buy vegetable soup canned at the store, it nearly always has potatoes and/or noodles in it, so making it yourself lets you control that. Also, you can easily make it in big batches, so it becomes really time efficient.

I also add nutritional yeast sometimes, to the scrambled tofu and to the soup.
posted by amtho at 7:56 AM on November 23, 2007

Great suggestions, amtho. Thanks! Particularly the suggestion for using nutritional yeast.
posted by long haired lover from liverpool at 8:00 AM on November 23, 2007

Regarding tofu scrambles my favorite is curried tofu scramble. So good.
posted by mjones at 8:02 AM on November 23, 2007

Nuts Are Your Friend.

Here's a little recipe. You'll need peanut oil, soy sauce, almonds, snow peas, green onion (sliced 1" on an angle), mushrooms (sliced), and if you happen to have bean sprouts on hand, great (don't go out of your way).

Put a little oil in a hot pan, add the almonds until they brown up a little and remove them. Cook the snow peas and onion in the pan together (if the peas are frozen, they'll need to go in first unless you've completely defrosted them) for a few minutes before removing them. Now put the mushrooms in. They will take a little longer to cook, probably 5 minutes. Add some soy sauce (and bean sprouts if you've got them). Put everything back in, give it a good stir, and serve it.
posted by ilsa at 8:21 AM on November 23, 2007

It sounds a lot like the Eat-to-Live diet.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:27 AM on November 23, 2007

There's lots you can do with wheat gluten (aka "seitan"), which is extremely high in protein and can be used as a stand-in for meat. It's dense, even more so than firm tofu, and is lower in fat.
posted by HotPatatta at 8:33 AM on November 23, 2007

Raw foodists or people who it Living Foods just eat fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices, herbs. No egg or cheese. It's vegan, basically, but without cooking. Very delicious and healthy.
posted by dobbs at 8:42 AM on November 23, 2007

Oh, and since you asked for recipes, here's one of my current faves but you need a food processor.

Walnut Cranberry Squash "Rice"

1 small butternut squash, about 1 lb, peeled seeded, cut into 2 inch cubes
1/2 small yellow onion, about 1/2 cup, chopped
1 tbs cumin seeds
1 tbs coriander powder
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup walnuts, crushed
1 tsp salt

One handful at a time, put the squash in a food processor and process till you have small bits that basically look like rice.

Put squash bits in large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix.

Will keep for 2 days in the fridge.

This dish is absolutely delicious. Great by itself, or drop a tablespoon or two into a collard green leaf or cabbage leaf and roll it up.

Taken from Ani Phyo's "Ani's Raw Food Kitchen", my current fave cookbook.
posted by dobbs at 8:51 AM on November 23, 2007

Red lentils + goat yogurt are a really good combination for this.
posted by mustcatchmooseandsquirrel at 9:39 AM on November 23, 2007

http://www.ivu.org/recipes/

The recipes with beans/pulses as the base are loaded with protein and fiber.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 10:34 AM on November 23, 2007

I'm a vegetarian who does the do the high protein thing periodically. I do mix in a bit of brown rice and whole grain pasta though, so I get some complex carbs.

Indian and Asian food are your friends. I make saag paneer and matar paneer and substitute tofu instead of panner. I frequently eat these without rice or with a little brown rice. I do a lot of stir fries with veggies and soy. I cook lots of tofu, tempeh and beans simmered in sauces and mixed with vegetables. Get a crock pot and make soups from dried beans and add stuff like chard and kale.

The only bad thing, in my experience, from eating like this is that it is a diet with a large potential for creating vast amounts of horrific farting. So stock up on beeno! On a positive note, I lose weight when I am able to eat like this every day.
posted by pluckysparrow at 10:41 AM on November 23, 2007

This website and the accompanying book address the issue you have (carbohydrate & sugar addiction) and how to alter your diet accordingly, in many of the same ways you already have - increasing protein and vegetables, and eliminating simple carbs. However, the program incorporates whole grains such as brown rice rather than eliminating them altogether. It doesn't advocate vegetarianism but has resources available for those who are vegetarians (such as this article and the listserv on this page called "radiantvegetarians."). I myself have been following this program for nearly seven years and it has truly changed my life.
posted by granted at 12:00 PM on November 23, 2007 [3 favorites]

I did this with 40/30/30 "Zone" CHO/pro/fat ratios a while back. Ended up eating soy products with every meal. I planned it out on mix-and-match index cards. Worked well in terms of weight loss and energy levels, but got boring quickly. Also not sure how good all that soy is for someone. Easier as a vegetarian than a vegan, and easier still once I started eating meat again.
posted by objdoc at 6:23 AM on November 24, 2007

I did this with 40/30/30 "Zone" CHO/pro/fat ratios a while back.

With respect, what I'm doing is different. I assume that CHO stands for "carbohydrate".

I'm not purposefully eating any carbohydrate. Any I do eat is coming incidentally from vegetables, or things like beans and pulses, which are usually around 50/50 carbohydrate/protein (although they also have a lot of fibre, so their net carbohydrate quantity is lessened). I also eat Quorn, which has a similar mix.
posted by long haired lover from liverpool at 12:34 PM on November 24, 2007

I realize most South Beach Diet recipes utilize the "easy" source of protein that is lean meats, but your diet sounds an awful lot like it (at least Phase 1) otherwise.

I bet you can find some vegetarian recipes on South Beach Diet forums and the like. A forum I've used in the past is at 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet. Note: they've got just about any diet plan you can think of there, and a community to go with.
posted by eldiem at 10:21 PM on November 24, 2007

Your diet also reminds me of the raw food diets. I think the only difference would be the egg (they do eat some beans, I think after sprouting them or something). Might check out this website looking for recipes.
posted by salvia at 11:31 PM on November 24, 2007

I realize most South Beach Diet recipes utilize the "easy" source of protein that is lean meats, but your diet sounds an awful lot like it (at least Phase 1) otherwise.

Yes, it does, eldiem. Thanks. I've never studied the South Beach Diet because of its meatiness but it really does seem a mirror of what I'm doing, although I'm not being as restrictive re: fat -- I have normal cheese, for example, although am being sensible and not deliberately eating fatty foods.

I guess my best advice for anybody else who wants to give this a go is to use the SB diet as guidance; for example, note the fact it doesn't allow carrots. I myself had figured this out because carrots can be pretty sweet -- enough to make Carrot Cake, for example.
posted by long haired lover from liverpool at 6:38 AM on November 27, 2007

Quite by chance I came across a book in a second-hand store: The New High Protein Diet, by Dr Charles Clark.

This echoes exactly my thinking about this diet and explains everything in quasi-scientific detail.

Incidentally, it's working really well and I've lost around six pounds so far.

If you're thinking about giving this a go then it's probably the best book to look at. Pub 2002 in the UK by Vermilion (Random House); ISBN 0091884268.
posted by long haired lover from liverpool at 3:33 AM on December 3, 2007

So late to the thread, but I couldn't resist. I used to eat a lot of cashew creme sauce at a vegan restaurant I used to work at and I constantly lust after it. Not exactly a whole meal, and I must admit I ate it on pasta, but you can use it anywhere you might use a custard, bechamel or alfredo sauce.
The recipe was something along the lines of:
Add raw cashews and unsweetened soy or rice milk to blender. Blend.

You can add fruit, maple syrup, vanilla, chocolate, nutritional yeast, curry, or garlic powder to make it sweet or savory.
posted by quelindo at 6:31 PM on January 24