Flexitarian Meal Plan: What It is, Benefits
Healthful Vitality | 08/26/2021 | By Lifestyle Contributor | Flexitarian Meal Plan: What It is, Benefits
Flexitarian is a diet plan that focuses on having a semi-vegetarian diet. Here, you can have plant-based food items, but you can also have non-vegetarian food products. However, you have to give importance to a vegetarian diet, and you would have meat in limited quantities.
Dawn Jackson Blanton introduced this diet plan through his work, The Flexitarian Diet, published in 2008. When you follow this diet with meat in moderation, you can obtain the required proteins, carbohydrates, calories, and macronutrients. As per this diet plan, you can get approximately 1500 calories per day. The division is as follows:
- For breakfast – It is 300 calories.
- For your lunch – It is 400 calories.
- For dinner – It is 500 calories.
- For your snacks – It is 150 calories.
You can make changes to this plan based on your lifestyle, workout patterns, goals, etc. In this semi-vegetarian diet, you can improve your health as it would be a balanced diet. Besides, you can follow this diet by following the five-week diet plan available in Blanton’s work. It would help you streamline your flexitarian meal plan. As per your meat intake, you can be a beginner, advanced, or an expert flexitarian. It depends upon the ounces or quantity of meat you have per week.
Benefits of adopting Flexitarian Diet in Meal Plan
When you switch to this diet plan, no doubt you can gain numerous benefits. They range from managing certain diseases to improving your life’s quality. A flexitarian plan can be beneficial in enhancing your psychological and emotional health as well. Here are some of the benefits associated with a flexitarian vegan plan.
Helps Manage Weight Loss
As you move towards a plant-based or semi-plant-based diet, your chances of managing body weight increase. Since there would be a variety of food items in your diet, it would help shed weight. Through this, you can initiate short-term or long-term weight loss. If your goal is increasing or managing weight, you have to work around your diet plan accordingly.
Flexitarian Meal Plan Reduce the Chances of Having Heart Diseases
With a rich intake of fiber and healthy fat, you can lower the risk of heart diseases and strokes. Since these food items contain antioxidant properties, they help in improving your cardiovascular health.
Even though you might be having meat, the intake is low when compared to a non-vegetarian diet. Due to this, it would reduce the blood sugar level and increase good cholesterol. Similar to heart health, a flexitarian vegan diet may decrease the chances of getting colon cancer.
Managing Diabetes
In a flexitarian diet, you can improve your metabolic health, which would, in turn, assist in managing Type-2 Diabetes. As per a study, flexitarian and other plant-based diets can handle glycated hemoglobin levels. It would help in improving your life’s quality and also manage Diabetes. In a flexitarian diet, your intake of unhealthy fat and added sugar would be less. These are other factors that can help in controlling Diabetes while you are following a flexitarian diet.