According to a scientific review published in the journal Nutrition Reviews, a vegetarian diet is highly effective for weight loss.
A vegetarian diet is consists of a diet free of eating animals – no meat or seafood. However, animal products, such as milk and eggs, are consumed. This is called the lacto-ovo approach. The lacto-ovo approach is the most common form of vegetarianism adopted.
The review, compiled data from 87 previous studies, indicated that the weight-loss effect of vegetarianism does not depend on exercise or calorie-counting. The authors found that the body weight of both male and female vegetarians is, on average, 3 percent to 20 percent lower than that of meat-eaters.
Vegetarian and vegan diets have also been put to the test in clinical studies. The best of these clinical studies isolated the effects of diet by keeping exercise constant. The researchers found that a low-fat vegan diet leads to weight loss of about 1 pound per week, even without additional exercise or limits on portion sizes, calories, or carbohydrates.
For vegetarians, obesity prevalence ranges from 0 percent to 6 percent, noted study authors Susan E. Berkow, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Neal D. Barnard, M.D., of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
A 2012 study published in the journal Obesity found another interesting component of vegetarian diets: when compared to other weight-loss diets, people are more likely to remain on track with vegetarianism. In comparing 428 college students, most participants in the vegetarian group (62 percent) remained on their diet for more than 1 year, whereas the majority of the weight-loss participants (61 percent) followed their diet for only 1 to 3 months.
Being vegetarian isn’t just great for weight loss. Previous studies have found that vegetarian populations tend to be slimmer than meat-eaters, and they experience lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other life-threatening conditions linked to overweight and obesity.