LUCKILY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN TO START A MEDITERRANEAN DIET TODAY!
And it doesn’t require products that aren’t typically available for purchase anywhere. The Mediterranean diet is easy to follow, suitable for everyday use, practical, and above all, it eliminates the hassle of counting calories. This less-restrictive diet is, therefore, easier to maintain in the long run.
The main thing is to eat a balanced, varied, and healthy diet and to take your time eating. Mindfulness and sociability play a major role. If you look at the food culture in Spain, southern France, Italy, and Greece, you can see that peace and serenity are at least as important as cooking and eating together. Another smart strategy, that has now been proven by studies, is to eat slowly as that also helps with weight loss. If you don’t take your time, you often miss the body’s natural feeling of satiety and thus consume too many calories unnecessarily.
Transitioning from a typical Western diet might seem a bit difficult at first, but a high-fiber mixed diet with healthy olive oil and lots of fresh local ingredients offers a highly varied diet that’s worth trying. Simply adopt the habits of Mediterranean dwellers and base your meals around generous portions of vegetables and fruit, fresh and seasonal from the market whenever possible. If you plan to continue consuming meat, consider slowly reducing the meat percentage or replacing it with chicken and increasing the protein percentage with beans.
IS THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET SUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS AND VEGANS?
Fish and poultry are part of the Mediterranean diet, but since the Mediterranean diet offers a lot of freedom and design options, it is possible to change the dishes to vegetarian or vegan. It is important to use lots of fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds and high-quality oil. For vegans, goat and sheep milk products can be swapped out for plant-based milk products, such as soy products, that contain similar fat and are higher in unsaturated fat.
