4 Ways to Do the Body for Life Diet as a Vegan

1. Vegans Can Do Body for Life

If you want to do the Body for Life Diet as a vegan, you'll need to plan your daily menu accordingly. Individuals who eat a vegan diet avoid consuming animal products, including meat and fish, and animal byproducts, including dairy and eggs. Some vegans also avoid products such as honey. Whether you're new to eating vegan or following the Body for Life Diet, it's not that difficult to follow this diet as a vegan.

2. Choose Vegetable Proteins at Every Meal

The Body for Life Diet offers a number of choices of vegetable proteins that you can use when planning your meals. These include veggie burgers, tofu, texturized vegetable protein, soy foods, tempeh and seitan.

3. Skip the Lentils

A vegetarian who is following the Body for Life Program needs to be more careful than an omnivore to make sure that she is eating quality protein at every meal. Many products that contain vegetable proteins also contain significant amounts of carbohydrates. On the Body for Life website, the experts describe some of the problems that a vegetarian might have on this type of diet. For example, they present the scenario whereby a vegetarian who is following the diet might be tempted to exchange lentils for a protein in place of a chicken breast at one meal. The person would eat the lentils with an authorized carbohydrate like a baked potato and a vegetable. However, this would not be a good choice because although lentils contain protein, they also contain too many carbohydrates to be eaten with a baked potato. If that person had chosen low-fat cottage cheese or egg whites instead of the lentils she would have been complying with the rules of the Body for Life diet.

4. Try Body for Life Shakes

The developers of the Body for Life diet sell Myoplex products on their website. They claim that the whey protein found in the Myoplex shakes are one of the best protein sources for vegetarians. They point out that vegetarians have to be especially careful to eat a variety of foods so that they get all of the amino acids--the building blocks of proteins--with their meals. However, when vegetarians try to do this they run the risk of eating too many carbohydrates and fats. The Myoplex shakes are a good meal replacement for someone on the Body for Life diet because they contain all of the essential amino acids and are low in fat.