The Weight Watchers diet program helps participants restrict their portion sizes and coaches them to balance their diet. Every food is assigned a PointsPlus value according to its nutritional and caloric content, and participants eat a specified number of points each day. No foods are required or forbidden, so vegetarians can apply the program to their lifestyle.
Weight Watchers Four Pillars
The Weight Watchers program focuses on four weight-loss strategies, or pillars. When you incorporate all four pillars into your lifestyle, you can lose up to 2 pounds per week in a healthy and sustainable way. Food, the first pillar, is the only element of the diet that may be different for vegetarians than for omnivores. The other three pillars -- exercise, behavior and support -- include things like tracking your daily activity level, weekly weigh-ins and attending meetings. These activities pose no special challenges for people with dietary restrictions such as vegetarianism.
Protein
Exercise is a key element of Weight Watchers, so anyone following the diet must get adequate nutrition to support cardio workouts and strength training. According to the Weight Watcher's website, you should consume one to two servings of high-quality protein each day. For vegetarians, this can come from tofu, tempeh, low-fat dairy products, seitan, beans or other legumes. Each of these foods has an assigned PointsPlus value, and you count them as part of your daily point tally.
Advantages
People living a vegetarian lifestyle may have some advantages adapting to the Weight Watchers program. Vegetarians may already eat more fruits and vegetables than the average American, and Weight Watchers assigns most fruits and vegetables a PointsPlus value of zero. This encourages you to fill up on low-calorie, fresh produce, because you can eat as much of it as you want without it counting against your points for the day. Vegetarians joining the program may already have a set of favorite veggie recipes and fruit-based desserts which suit the Weight Watchers lifestyle.
Considerations
Vegetarian meals are not necessarily lower in fat or calories than meat meals. Pasta, pizza and other carbohydrate-heavy meals are not the only vegetarian foods that may be worth a lot of points -- foods that seem to be mostly vegetables or tofu can be deceptively high in calories, particularly if you order them in a restaurant or buy them pre-made. Cheese, oil, butter, nuts, dressings and sauces can add large amounts of fat or sugar to food that would otherwise be very low in points. Beware of hidden calories when ordering salads, sauteed vegetables and other non-meat dishes.
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