Trying to become vegetarian

Okay, about two weeks of hardly eating meat have passed. Once I told myself that it does not have to be 100% vegan, but also vegetarian, and occasionally even meat (when there are no other tasty options), it actually was not that hard. In the end I ate chicken soup once, and sushi maybe 3 times during this time. I also switched to soya milk completely and with no pain (the vanila one is super tasty, not sure if that healthy though:P).

But now, to the point.. I guess I should start watching what I eat, not to make my body lack some basic nutritional elements, right.. like.. protein? :P

Disclaimer: all pictures are from an awesome Polish page called Ile Waży (http://www.ilewazy.pl/). It tells you how much each product weighs and its nutritional value, together with a photograph of how much it actually is :)

Protein

So, how much protein do I need per day?

According to here, it should be "0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight", which means 47g for me. That is 325g per week. How much do I eat now?

Soya milk - let's say, I drink maybe 2 glasses of that per week. That, according to Google, is:

16g soya milk

Then, I also eat oatmeal with it, which in my case is maybe.. 100 gram of oatmeal, 4g of flax seeds and 4 gram of quinoa seeds per portion.. which is 13g + 0,8g + 0,8g = 14,6g per portion, so per week it will be:

29,2g oats

Getting close to daily intake, but I'm actually calculating the weekly one :D

Pasta, I must eat pasta at least 2 times a week, or maybe even 3 times. Accroding to this amazing Polish website, a portion of cooked pasta could be sth like 1,5 * 10,6g = 15,9g, which would be 3 * 15,9g per week, which is

47,7g pasta

If there is pasta, there should be rice. Also 3 times per week, that is 3 * 4,2g, that is:

12,4g rice

Great, what do I eat on other days. I guess half a pizza could happen at least once. Accodring to here, that could be sth like 65,7g / 2 = 32,85g.

32,85g pizza

Bread, maybe 5 slices per week. Again, looking it up, that will be 2,5g * 5 = 12,5g.

12,5g bread

Chocolate :D let's say one chocolate per week

6,6g chocolate

Sushi :) once per week, the regular size is 8 pieces, 8 * 2g = 16g

16g sushi

Sour cream, because whenever I eat out they must be adding it to anything that has a sauce like consistency.. so that maybe 6 spoons per week? this is 6 * 0,6g = 3,6g.

3,6g sour cream

Falafel, that would be, according to Google 13g, so:

13g falafel

Eggs, 2 per week, that is 2 * 6,3g = 12,6g

12,6g eggs

I did not know that there is such huge difference between pasta and rice regarding protein. Salads, beer and similar stuff I don't count of course :) In sum this is 202,4g. 325g - 202,4g = 122,55g is missing.

Let's see what would happen if I added meat on every day:

Chicken, 3 days: 17,5g * 3 = 52,5g
Pork, 3 days: 19,5g * 3 = 58,5g
Ham 3 days, 2 slices: 6 * 2,4g = 14,4g
And I should remove the falafel, as then I would rather eat chicken kebab, that is -13g.

Allgother that would be 112,4g. Pretty close to 122,55g, so it makes sense!

That means I am currently missing between 112 and 122,55 gram of meat per week. Let's make it 117g, to make it easier. That is about 17 gram of protein per day is missing, out of 47g.

Protein replacements

This blog seems to have neat overview of which protein types are neccessary in the body and frequently missed in vegetarian diet :) So, after removing the weird stuff and spinach (because they write everywhere how useless it is, containing self inhibiting ingredients), it seems like:

Egg white is source of all of the important proteins. Apart from eggs: sesame flour, sunflower seeds and kidney beans contain most of the important proteins, one protein is contained only in tofu or cottage cheese (out of the ones I found and consider available), one in sesame flour only, one only in kidney beans. Also asparagus and mozarella contain some random stuff.

I guess I could replace flour with sesame flour.. whatever it would mean. Sunflower seeds - that is easy, just put it in a salad (or eat alone:D), kidney beans - it is easy to add it to cooked lunch once in a while, I will have to find out how to prepare tofu (or start ordering it in a restaurant), and consider eating more eggs. Even though the poor chicken.. Okay, so:

100g of sunflower seed per week, hopefully I will find a pack that contains 100g or 200g. That is 24,4g.

24,4g sunflower seeds

Kidney beans, in this page the serving size is 256g, I guess it is ok, and that has 13g of protein:

13g kidney beans

Cottage cheese - let's start with eating one package per week, that is 22g.

22g cottage cheese

Eggs - let's add 1 egg per week, so now 3 eggs per week - that is an extra 6,3g:

6,3g extra egg

Extra egg sounds quite funny :P Sesame flour, I will buy it, and do something with it.. I don't know, let's say a glass.. I can eat pancakes each weekend.. oh that has a lot of protein!

71,9g sesame flour

I guess that would be it. Now I have extra 137,6g, I guess that is enough. Or more than enough. I guess I will not manage with the sesame flour every weekend, so every second weekend could be also fine (and more affordable:P) :)

Other macro micro somethings

I guess also other stuff than protein is missing in vegetarian diet. Let's just use this first Google search result page, it seems to be talking about the right stuff. Soo, that is:

1. Iron - okay, makes sense. They say I should not drink tea or coffee (great), and not eat spinach, nothing more useful. But here they have some list, good I will cook lentils, I like them :)
2. Zinc - eat soybeans, cashews, and sunflower seeds, wash stuff before eating (oh good that they pointed that out :P) - am already adding a lot of sunflower, I guess I could add some nuts to my oatmeal mix.
3. Calcium - since I would like to stop milk and milk product in some future, that could be tough. They say I could also eat "soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium-fortified foods". Again, adding almonds to my oatmeal and snack mix.
4. Vitamin B-12 - well there's basically 2 things to do: buy supplement from pharmacy, and look for anything with B-12 on it while shopping. Got it :)

To sum up, what I need from there is: some pills with B-12 and iron, almonds, cashew nuts, lentils, and yoghurt (can be soy yoghurt).

Summary

So, it was not that hard :) I will try to go with the plan and in another few weeks I will try to research how much of each ingredient do I actually need. For now it is more important to include them in the diet, and get used to them. I think this way will be easier.