How to Stay Full on a Vegetarian Diet

If you've recently converted to being Vegetarian, how do you stay full? Most people who are not, usually eat meat 2 to 3 times a day. And that keeps them full along with breads and other foods. So for those of us who prefer to eat healthier, what can we do to make sure we get enough nutrition as well as the feeling of being full for more than 5 minutes at a time?

Here are 10 ways to make sure you will feel great about eating healthy and feel full at the same time.

1) Drink water before and after your meal. Water is a great filler-upper. Even though it seems empty, it contains volume, so it will trick your brain that it is filling up and kills hunger pains.

2) Add protein to every meal. It can be from beans, soy, tofu, yogurt, milk, egg whites, or cheese. Or make have protein shake with whey isolate, berries, and vanilla yogurt ice cream.

3) Eat more frequently. Instead of having 3 meals a day, go for 6-8 meals spread out every 2 hours or so.

4) Drink Decaffinated coffee after you eat. You might say why Decaf? It's not really so much the caffeine, it's the taste of the coffee and the signal it sends to your brain that makes you forget you are hungry. For some strange reason, coffee does that whether with or without caffeine. The less the better.

5) Add soup to your meal. Just make sure it doesn't have any heavy creams. It will fill you up and be satisfying to your tummy since it's warm.

6) Add salad to your meal. It's another healthy filler that won't cause any damage :)

7) Eat slowly. Savor the tastes of what you are eating so it gives your body time to realize, "hey, I'm full!"

Since the brain doesn't know it's full until after eating for a 1/2 hour.

8) Smell your food. Another brain signal to make us realize we ARE eating.

9) Drink water with your food. This is probably the best ways to make yourself feel full fast. And no guilt at all since it's just water.

10) Use a smaller plate. Since we eat with our eyes, if we use a big plate and we put a little food in it, we may think we are not eating enough already and in our minds we are already not full before we finish eating!