Flexible Vegetarian
If you’re a Flexible Vegetarian, also called a Flexitarian, you follow a vegetarian or an almost vegetarian eating style. You mostly avoid animal foods and enjoy the amazing variety of plant foods: beans, nuts, seeds, grains, vegetables, and fruits. You sometimes eat some poultry or fish, and also enjoy moderate amounts of eggs and dairy foods.
I’m not using the label vegetarian, because your Nutritional Style isn’t about rules and never eating animal foods. Many of my clients come to me already enjoying this particular eating style. They’re vegetarian, except for when they’re not. They don’t feel guilty if they crave an egg once in a while, or if they enjoy a piece of fish while out to dinner. It’s just food, and if their diet is 90 percent vegetarian, they’re OK with that. Your Nutritional Style is about the style of eating that you love and that makes you feel your absolute best. It’s not about forbidden foods.
Your Nutritional Style is about the style of eating that you love and that makes you feel your absolute best. It’s not about forbidden foods.
The downside to the standard vegetarian diet is that people employing this style often rely too heavily on processed carbs. Many people “fail” on a vegetarian diet because they forget about the vegetable part of the word; instead, they load up on sugary carbohydrates and dairy foods to replace the meat in their diet. A diet that has lots of cheese, deep-fried onion rings, and blueberry muffins isn’t really a healthy diet, even if it doesn’t include red meat. For too many vegetarians, an unbalanced diet leads to weight gain, low energy, skin problems, digestive issues, sinus problems, and more, all because they’re making poor nutritional choices.
THE NUTRITIONAL STYLE QUIZ
Your Nutritional Style is the style of eating that nourishes and satisfies you completely, not just because you look your best when you eat that way, but because you feel it, too. It’s the style of eating that banishes cravings, feeds your body well, and allows you to live life with joy, ease, and grace. It’s the style that fits well with the rest of your life and enhances it.
So what’s your Nutritional Style? Let’s figure that out together.
Take the quiz below and tally up your answers. When deciding which answer to give, please pick the one that’s closest to your usual eating habits. Or think of it this way: If you were eating out and had to choose from the three options, which would it be?
You’ll probably find you fit naturally into one of three Nutritional Styles. Once you’ve determined what your basic Nutritional Style is, we’ll begin your journey to better health with whichever style suits you right now. Within that style, I’ll teach you to upgrade your food choices to make them the healthiest ones possible. And if later on you feel you need to adapt your food choices to a different style, you’ll have the knowledge to make the shift slowly, and seasonally, in a smart and sustainable way.
No matter which style you choose, they all share one common goal: to help you attain a fabulous, vibrant, uplifting, happy-to-be-you level of health and well-being. I invite you to find that place where you feel good in your own skin and know you’re doing your best to stay there.
1. What’s your preferred source of protein in the food you normally eat?
A. Animal protein: meats, fish, eggs, maybe dairy
B. Legumes: beans and lentils
C. Nuts, seeds, and some soy
2. An average dinner for you would be:
A. Chicken breast, quinoa, and veggies
B. Vegetable chili and a salad
C. Kale noodles and fresh marinara sauce
3. Your favorite breakfast is:
A. Bacon and eggs
B. Oatmeal with blueberries
C. Green juice
4. They offer wild salmon and steak filet at a party and you choose:
A. Both, to taste each of them
B. A small piece of salmon
C. That fish had a mother! Pass the salad again.
5. Your BFF wants to go for ice cream, and you get to choose what kind. You go for:
A. Full fat and delicious creamy ice cream, any flavor!
B. Rice milk or tofu ice cream that tastes almost as good
C. Raw organic coconut ice cream loaded with raw cacao nibs
6. The soup you crave for chilly days is:
A. Hearty chicken and vegetable, maybe add some noodles?
B. Miso noodle soup or lentil
C. Raw broccoli soup with tahini, warmed gently
7. How often do you eat fish?
A. Whenever I want, as long as it’s a kind I love
B. Now and then if at all
C. Never. Our oceans are threatened
8. How do you feel if you don’t have meat, fish, or eggs for several days?
A. I definitely miss it and want it back. Why am I doing this?
B. I feel OK—I’m eating more legumes and grains, and I don’t really miss it.
C. Fabulous
9. What’s in your omelet at the omelet bar?
A. Ham, sausage, onions, yum
B. Spinach, onions, a bit of cheese, and easy on the eggs
C. Skip the eggs, please sauté all the vegetables you have.
10. You just arrived at an avant-garde cocktail party, starving, and the menu is only cheese. You go for:
A. All of it
B. You eat mostly the veggies and crackers, because you know you’re intolerant of dairy products.
C. You whip out a raw bar from your handbag and nibble away.
11. You just ate a big, gooey sugar doughnut from the corner doughnut chain. How do you feel?
A. Really bad, but really good. Life happens.
B. It was delicious, but now I’m feeling bloated. I’m juicing when I get home.
C. Nauseated and unable to think or speak
12. What do you eat at a big holiday dinner?
A. Turkey, ham, all the sides, and, of course, dessert. I love to taste everything!
