Selfsufficientish.com

What a brilliant idea window shopping LOL

Clara wrote:I was a teenage junk food veggie so I know how that goes - i was far healthier once I started eating a little meat, because meat/fish and two veg is quite simple and less fattening.

WOAH! Hold on there.

A proper vegetarian diet i.e one that contains lots of whole foods is the healthiest diet in the world. The reason your diet was unhealthy was because you were eating JUNK FOOD.

hedgewitch wrote:

Clara wrote:I was a teenage junk food veggie so I know how that goes - i was far healthier once I started eating a little meat, because meat/fish and two veg is quite simple and less fattening.

WOAH! Hold on there.

A proper vegetarian diet i.e one that contains lots of whole foods is the healthiest diet in the world. The reason your diet was unhealthy was because you were eating JUNK FOOD.

I don't see how you can say a 'proper' vegetarian diet, because vegetarians don't eat meat, there is no grading about it.... I would also argue your point about vegetarian diet being the healthiest, our bodies are designed (over millions of years of evolution) to function on a certain amount of animal fat and protein. Meat-eaters can eat whole foods too you know.

I have perfect respect for people that choose to be vegetarian or indeed vegan, but please don't try to claim a hierarchical structure, it is just a life choice.

I agree about junk food, but it is also plausible that a diet high in eggs, sugars, cheese, nuts could make you overweight... I have known of several overweight or unhealthy vegetarians, who don't eat 'junk food'





edited to fix the quote boxes

Annpan wrote:I have perfect respect for people that choose to be vegetarian or indeed vegan, but please don't try to claim a hierarchical structure, it is just a life choice.

Ummmm...I don't really understand what you are saying here. I wanted to point out that Clara's statement about her diet being unhealthy wasn't because she was vegetarian but was because she was eating vegetarian junk food.
If I was confused by what she said then I presumed, rightly or wrongly, that other people reading it might be confused into thinking that a vegetarian diet is unhealthy. I just wanted to clear that up.
Sorry if I wasn't clear about that myself.

Sorry Hedgewitch, you claimed a 'proper' vegetarian diet was the healthiest in the world and I was just saying it ain't necessarily so.

It also reads as if you think that people who eat processed food aren't 'proper vegetarians'

Becks, don't despair - she's only 11..... you know what will happen in 2 or 3 years time, don't you? Yes, that's rught, BOYS... the biggest encouragement of weight loss in teenage girls EVER...

OK, I say this a bit tongue in cheek there, but from experience (I have 3 grown-up-ish girls) I can say it's just about true.
My eldest (27) was lucky enough to be quite petite throughout, but she gained a LOT of weight whilst living with a feeder.... she's eating sensibly now & it's coming off slowly.
My middle girl (26) is like a rollercoaster, depepnding on whether she has a man in her life or not - single, she binges on pizzas & take aways, when she's with a guy, she eats sensibly & properly....

My youngest however..... was a F A T teenager... she lived with my mum for a few years from when she was 9 & had a diet that was straight from the deep fat fryer every single night (my mum forgot she had any pots & pans, I reckon)
Anyway, once Nix came back to live with me, her weight started to drop, although she was still inclined to head for the junk.
At age 12, she weighed nearly 15 stone..... after a year of living with us again, she was down to 12 stone & at 19 she now weighs 9 & a bit..... The big change for her was getting her off the junk & letting her help to plan, shop & cook meals - I also used to invite her friends round for tea - and then used to make her choose what we were having to eat.... and then I used to supervise HER cooking it!! (Altho she did this one night whilst we were out & she made a concoction of cucumber, apple, lettuce, mayo & vinegar.... )
The only rule was that it had to be made from scratch....
And she had great fun - showing off in front of her friends, & she's a mean cook now!

Good luck with it all - it can be hard when you see them on a path & you know where that path can lead to - parenting... can be fun, can be hard, but we all get there in the end

hedgewitch wrote:

Clara wrote:I was a teenage junk food veggie so I know how that goes - i was far healthier once I started eating a little meat, because meat/fish and two veg is quite simple and less fattening.

WOAH! Hold on there.

A proper vegetarian diet i.e one that contains lots of whole foods is the healthiest diet in the world. The reason your diet was unhealthy was because you were eating JUNK FOOD.

Yes that's exactly what I meant! Because I was (and still am to a much lesser degree) quite fussy about food I found I was more likely to eat healthily if I had a plain meat/fish and two veg diet because I wasn't (at that time) going to eat a cabbage gratin or pumpkin risotto or nut roast with accompanying veg. Far more likely to just eat pizza and chips! I was just trying to relate to what it meant to be a a fussy teenage vegetarian.

We eat mainly veggie (like 6 days out of 7) these days too and I couldn't agree more that it is far healthier than eating meat each and everyday - if i find myself in that situation I really feel it in a bad way.