I was just reading a discussion about how low carbing helps arthritis and it made me think of my sister who is very overweight too and suffers from bad arthritis as well as other prolems. I've told her how I know our bodies are better suited for low carb eating and she's open to it BUT.... she is a devout vegetarian who will not eat any type of meat - fish included - and can't figure out how to do a low carb diet. Has anyone here known of vegetarian low carbers? She does eat eggs and dairy. I'd love to help her. She needs some relief!

hi Hana
 

We had this question not so long ago. Click here to read the discussion in our Health Issues forum. There's a link to a vegetarian lowcarb page too. Choosing eggs and dairy will make for more variety; someone who is strict vegan would likely get bored, or malnourished even. As I stated in my post about arthritis, GRAINS, especially wheat, are suspected irritants with joint inflammation, and a lot of folks feel better when they eliminate these from their diets. Soy is of course a good protein source, but beware some hydrolysed vegetable protein products -- TVP, vegetarian burgers, seitan, etc --- are derived from wheat gluten.

Good luck, and I hope your sister is feeling better soon.

Doreen

I have a friend who's a vegetarian (lacto-ovo) and has lost some weight on the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. She says her health seems to have improved on it, too, and she finds it easy to follow.

In case you're not familiar with this plan, it allows starchy foods and some sweets at one meal a day, and is very low-carb the rest of the day. So vegetarians can have rice, beans, etc. on a daily basis, while still following a relatively low-carb plan (at least compared to the typical North American diet).

I'm not sure how useful this diet is as solely a weight-loss diet; my friend has quite a lot of weight to lose, and it may not work for that last dratted 20-30 pounds it seems you have to scrape off with a vegetable peeler (Grrrr!). But maybe it's something your friend would like to try out.

Rachel