It's pretty common for would-be vegetarians to be "carbotarians" and fail to feed themselves properly because they simply don't know any better and eat primarily bread and pasta. I also had this experience of being a ravenous carbotarian, but my roommates were all vegetarians and taught me. If you don't know vegetarians, look to athletes and home chefs for advice.
Tl;Dr combine a grain with a legume at least once a day to obtain a full protein. Beans and rice is a good staple, for example (but to reduce exposure to arsenic you should parboil the rice[1] as well as rotate through some other staples). Put peanut butter or peanut protein powder in stir fries, put hummus in your sandwiches, eat eggs, etc. And, I know it sounds obvious, but it's a reminder I needed, do actually eat vegetables.
It's not difficult but if you've eaten meat your whole life you may need to change some habits, because you have more room to get away with a poor diet if you're eating meat.
I eat a vegan diet, I'm intricately aware of how this all works. There is no reason for a vegetarian to be going hungry - include a damn egg in your food if you need the protein.
I also have plenty of vegetarian friends and none of them complain about this either, but I'm willing to admit this is possibly not representative of the wider population. I just don't think there's any excuse.
I don't mean to make you feel patronized, I wanted to add context because it's a "lucky 10000" sort of phenomenon where the knowledge is so common that it isn't discussed, and people who don't know often aren't told. It's easy to eat on autopilot and then get in trouble when you decide to change your diet. I figured there were people reading who didn't know.
Your friends not complaining is probably an example of that, they remain vegetarians because they've already worked this out, they don't complain because it isn't a problem, they don't tell you because you already know.
Cooking a stake, is a lot easier than making a curry is kind of where it gets tricky for me.
For now I make a chicken sandwich for lunch, take like 5-10 minutes, fills me up, what do I do as a vegetarian.
I love the idea of it, I just think that being a vegetarian can be a luxury and takes more time for some people, especially who have larger frames and appetites.
> For now I make a chicken sandwich for lunch, take like 5-10 minutes, fills me up, what do I do as a vegetarian.
Sandwich with hummus, tomato, cheese, lettuce. Very quick and filling. Maybe have it with a hardboiled egg. That's what I would do.
For a 20-30m thing I like to do asparagus, mushrooms, and tofu as a stir fry, lots of protein in that.
Since you mentioned a whey shake I'm guessing you get a lot of exercise. That's probably why it's more difficult for you. Plenty of people work out and are vegetarian, but yeah, both factors are going to make it more challenging and require you to be more mindful.
To be clear, I'm responding because I think it's an interesting topic of conversation, I think being a vegetarian every other day is a perfectly reasonable choice.
1. Throw in a pan: a can of cheakpeas or lentil, whatever cream (coconut/soy/oat), curry spices. If you got others frozen/canned vegetable on hand go for them but not mandatory. Thinks that don’t need real cooking like olives, tofu bites, fresh spinaches or shrooms can also go here.
2. Cook (heat-up, actually) for 5-10 minutes
3. Add some drops of lime juice in bottle or a branch of parsley or other herb. That’s for vitC, but eating a raw fruit or vegetable (carrot or celery), is also an easy option
4. Eat with bread
You can also do the same in a microwave oven to trade taste for convenience.
Personal topping : as a Mediterranean I put olive oil on basically everything, and often a bit of nutritional yeast.
I guess it's not eating flesh, but it's still causing a lot of harm is what I'm hearing.
In our family, we eat vegetarian every second night. Basically vegan 3/4 nights a week. However I do find myself running to the fridge for cheese or a whey protein shake for desert quite often.
What? Vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you lose all sources of animal protein, there's no real reason to be starving on the diet.