C. I’ll skip the meat, eat the sides that aren’t too heavy in dairy or gluten, and load up on the vegetables. Dessert? There’s always room for a little taste.
Scoring Your Nutritional Style Quiz
Tally up your total number of answers in each category.
• If you mostly answered As, you’re a Healthy Omnivore.
• If you answered mostly Bs, you’re a Flexible Vegetarian.
• If C was your favorite pick, you’re a Modern Vegan.
What if your answers don’t fall into a clear Nutritional Style? Or what if you think that style won’t work well for you? That’s OK. By the time we get through this chapter, you’ll know which style you are and where you can go with it.
TINA From Omnivore to Flexible Vegetarian
When Tina first scheduled an appointment with me, she was an omnivore who ate meat at most meals. She believed that animal protein sustained her; without it, she felt weak. At the same time, she was having problems with bloating and constipation. She often had big energy drops in the afternoon, when she felt deeply tired and had trouble focusing on her work.
Tina’s diet relied too heavily on animal protein for her calories. She figured her daily multivitamin filled in for the total absence of vegetables and fruit in her food. As we worked together, I recommended that Tina add more vegetables to her meals. We wanted to increase her intake of phytonutrients and essential vitamins and minerals, and also add some much-needed fiber.
Instead of eggs and toast for breakfast, I recommended she switch to eggs and sautéed spinach, or skip the eggs and go with warm grains.
Instead of a meat-filled sandwich each day, Tina began enjoying a salad with a small amount of animal protein a few days a week. She learned to vary her lunch by having lentil or bean soup or quinoa salad.
Instead of meat for dinner every night, Tina switched to meatless meals, starting just once a week and then adding a couple more days. She learned to make delicious stir-fries full of vegetables, using nuts or seeds to substitute for the meat. She also learned to make hearty bean stews and vegetarian chili. We made sure to include plenty of healthy fats—in addition to being essential to good health, the fats helped Tina feel satisfied by her food and helped sustain her energy throughout the day. Her afternoon energy lags became less severe.
Gradually, we added more and more plant foods. We began exploring protein smoothies, too. As we did, Tina’s taste buds began to change. She stopped craving meat at each meal and felt satiated by all of the flavorful, fiber-rich foods she was now eating.
After about three months of gradual changes, Tina mentioned that she hadn’t had meat in almost two weeks. When I asked her why, she said she’d just lost her taste for it. She also said she felt her thinking was clearer and she had more energy since she stopped eating meat. Her afternoon energy lags were gone—she was now feeling highly productive all day long.
I hadn’t encouraged Tina to give up meat completely—all I did was suggest cutting back and substituting healthier choices. Likewise, Tina hadn’t consciously set out to remove meat from her diet. She realized, however, that she clearly felt better and looked better now that she wasn’t eating meat. She had, without really trying, found the Nutritional Style that worked for her: Flexible Vegetarian.
It’s been a few years now, and Tina continues her Flexible Vegetarian Nutritional Style. She eats mostly plant-based foods, along with moderate amounts of dairy products and eggs. She eats fish now and then, and meat only rarely. She continues to feel and look great!
When vegetarians find their supposedly healthy diet isn’t working for them, they throw up their hands, claim their hair is thinning, and say their doctor tells them to go home and eat meat. They tell themselves that they just aren’t supposed to be vegetarian.
In reality, they never approached this eating style in a healthy, well-informed fashion. It’s very easy to be an unhealthy vegetarian, but it’s just as easy to be a super-healthy one. Flexibility is the key.
If you’re a Flexible Vegetarian, you allow yourself the occasional serving of meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products, because you’re aware of your body and know when it is calling for some extra protein and dietary fat. You add generous amounts of greens, vegetables, fruits, and raw foods to your diet to keep your mood balanced and your energy levels high. Most important, you eat this way because you love the taste and variety of wonderful plant-based foods. All over the world, meatless dishes are the basis of richly flavored, highly nutritious ethnic cuisines. With so many food traditions to draw on, a Flexible Vegetarian is never bored by her food!
The Modern Vegan
The fundamental principle of veganism is avoiding all animal foods—even honey, because it’s made by bees—and eating only plant-based foods. Many vegans choose this path for ethical reasons: They wish to avoid harming other living things, and they wish to have a minimal impact on the environment. But being a vegan isn’t a form of penance—it doesn’t mean eating nothing but brown rice and steamed kale. If you’re a Modern Vegan, your Nutritional Style is full of vegetables, fruits, grains, and plant-based protein sources, like dark greens, beans, nuts, and seeds. Many Modern Vegans also choose to eat mostly raw foods. If you have a good understanding of both nutrition and your own body, being a Modern Vegan can be a perfectly healthy lifestyle.
I work with many Modern Vegans in my consulting practice. The key to success for them is to be flexible in what they eat. It’s OK for a Modern Vegan to indulge an occasional craving for raw sheep’s milk cheese or local honey. It’s OK to cut back on raw foods if your body is craving the warmth and easier digestibility of cooked foods.
It’s also OK to bend a bit, especially when you’re away from your own kitchen. One of my Modern Vegan clients needs to attend business luncheons a few times a month. If it’s a buffet, great—there’s always plenty of salad and veggies and usually a meatless choice or two. If it’s a sit-down meal and there’s a vegetarian option, she asks for it. If there’s no vegetarian choice, and the waiter can accommodate her request for more broccoli and no chicken, that’s fine. If not, she quietly does the best she can with whatever is put in front of her. She’ll often eat—and enjoy—the animal-based main course. Remember, it’s food, not religion.
KAREN To Vegan and Back
My client Karen grew up in a family that ate the Standard American Diet. Lots of boxed cereals and sugary snacks, plenty of microwaved foods, and always meat for dinner.
As an adult, Karen became more aware of what she was eating, but it took becoming a mother to decide she really needed to clean up her diet. Unfortunately, Karen didn’t have a good idea of where to start. After listening to some of the moms in her children’s playgroup, she decided to make a radical change in her own diet and become a vegan. She abruptly gave up all animal foods and took up juicing. At first, Karen felt amazing. She had energy to spare, enjoying huge amounts of greens and vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds. She lost weight, too. For about a year, she was happy. Then she began to crave what she was feeding her family.
She began to sneak bites of her kid’s organic hot-dogs. She found herself picking at the roasted chicken in the kitchen so her husband wouldn’t question her choices. She was frustrated and hungry all the time, trying hard to make her new vegan lifestyle work. She believed that being a vegan was the best choice for her (after all, the other moms seemed so happy), but her body was rebelling.
