How to Eat Low-Carb for Vegetarians and Vegans

Low-carb diets have emerged as a useful eating pattern for those who have not managed to lose weight trying to follow a low-fat eating pattern, or those with metabolic health issues like type 2 diabetes.

It's important to experiment and figure out a way to match your carb intake to your own goals and preferences. That being said, these guidelines are reasonable:

100-150 grams per day: This is a decent maintenance range, and is good for people who are active.

50-100 grams per day: This is useful for weight loss, and is a solid maintenance range for people who don’t exercise that much.

Now conventional low-carb diets rely heavily on meat, which makes them a bit tricky for vegetarians.

But this doesn't need to be the case.

Eggs and dairy products, without added sugar, [such as plain yogurt and cheese] are low in carbs, but high in both protein and fat. So for vegetarians, they are perfect for a low-carb diet.

These foods are also rich in vitamin B12, which is not found in plant foods. Vegetarians can get all the B12 they need from these foods [whereas vegans need to supplement.

The other perceived problem for vegetarians who want to eat low-carb is that all plant foods are naturally high carb. But there is actually a large variety of low-carb plant foods. Many are even high in protein and fat.

Many vegetables are low in carbs. This includes tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, eggplant, bell peppers, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
Berries like strawberries and blueberries can be eaten on a low-carb diet. Depending on how many carbs you want to eat, other fruits may be acceptable as well.

Avocados and olives are low in carbs but high in fat.

Nuts and seeds and soy foods are low in carbs, but high in protein and fat, which makes the incredibly important here. Things like almonds, walnuts, macadamias, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, and tofu and tempeh.

Some legumes are quite low in carbs, including green beans, peanuts and chick peas.

Fats and oils of course don't contain any carbs.

Even dark chocolate is low in carbs if the cocoa content is as around 70% or more.

So let's look at a 2-day sample menu for a vegetarian that is low in carbs.
You can adapt this based on your own needs and preferences.

Day 1:
Breakfast: Fried eggs with baked beans and avocado.
Lunch: Carrot and cucumber sticks with hummus dip, and 2 handfuls of nuts.
Dinner: Eggplant moussaka.

Day 2:
Breakfast: Full-fat yoghurt and berries.
Lunch: Leftover moussaka from the night before.
Dinner: Spinach and feta quiche

Now for more ideas there's loads of free recipes available online. The best place to start is an article we wrote about this topic on Authority Nutrition, and you can either click the youtube card that appears or follow the link in the video description.

As you can see there are many delicious plant foods that are low in carbs and high in fat and protein.

Clearly, you don’t need to be a meat eater to follow this type of eating pattern. If you are vegan on the other hand, it does become quite difficult, and realistically you will only manage to get your carb intake down to about 150 grams per day, at best.

Follow Authority Nutrition:

[musicvixen]

Lunch is carrot and cucumber sticks with hummus? I would be starving 10 mins later lol

[doggiesarus]

I figured out how to eat beans and go low carb. Sprout them. One cup of mung bean sprouts is 5 grams, minus 1 fiber grams. The same amount of mung beans un-sprouted are 39 grams, with 15 grams of fiber. If you sprout your beans, you also can eat them raw or cooked, your choice. You can sprout whole grains as well and the same kind of transformation happens.

[catabun]

I fried up a block of cubed tofu and made my own pesto using cashews, olive oil, nutritional yeast and spices. I have some roasted bell pepper on the side. Overall carbs were at about 20-25g and protein 25g (nutritional yeast is high in protein). I think you can be low carb vegan too

[theantimatterplan]

hey this was not very useful for vegans

[kshitizmishra]

As a vegetarian, I find it impossible to get decent protein without beans and legumes all of which have 3-4 times the carbs as protein. Even milk has 45g carbs for 34g protein. But it is also expensive compared to eating beans or legumes. Lot of vegetarians dont eat eggs; and lot of us in India dont have olive oil or berries that often (expensive). Even if we do, how many berries and fruits and nuts and yogurt does one need to fill their stomach? Veggies are fine, but again for protein we eat more of legumes beans.

[AmericanWayne]

I've lowered my h1c to 5.9 on a high carb, whole food, vegan diet.

[Thewolf_]

I'm vegan eating keto my carbs are under 100 grams everyday I also am a endurance athlete training for big goals I also work as a mover keto as a vegan is easy I feel great I'm strong I'm 5 weeks in transitioning from a 80% carb diet & just did a ride 44 miles 2, 000 ft climbing at 18.2 mph did a loop headwind & tailwind oh and that was on a 18 hour fast :)

[YeshuaKingMessiah]

Even with 3.eggs every a.m. (for dys when you just cant eat eggs again, crack them into a smoothie before blending & you ll never know theyre there) and a couple svgs of yogurt or kefir a day, you ll still have to eat a couple oz cheese daily too. 1egg=7g protein, 1c yogurt/kefir=7g, 1oz hard cheese=7g. Even then, you'll need to eat a couple oz nuts & seeds daily too. Still will be low in protein.Without grains and beans, its hard to get enough protein even for lacto-ovo vegheads.There are quite a few lacto-intolerant vegheads too. Theyll be SOL on a lowcarb diet.

[morecoffee]

I find it very easy to be low carb as a vegan.

[StupidSimpleHowTo]

so where does the vegan part come in? had to scroll through the down bar for what seemed like days for more info

[kellihenderson]

My mom is a lifelong Vegetarian but tried going low carb which made her sick and unsatisfied. Low carb upset her digestion and promoted ulcers. Her physician advised a low-protein/fat, high-carb diet. We are looking for a second opinion on the internet.

[KarmasPerjury]

net carbs are what kick you out of ketosis fiber is either insoluble fiber which you cannot derive calories from or soluble fiber which ferments in your gut making SCFA (blood fat, ketones, lipids) so while you might be eating 150 carbs really only 50 of those will be netcarbs which can easily get you into ketosis and it becomes overkill when you exercise and intermittent fasting

[lr]

So not really for vegans on what he says, also over 70% off population are low in B12 all the time, that’s including meat eaters and you only get b12 if that animal got eating some grass then by eating that animal they can get a very Small amount of B12, but we don’t need a lot, say if you had some herbs growing and picked some from the garden to use for eating you will get your B12.

[m.dejonge]

Sounds realy good, but I have to avoid diary mostly. Some goat feta, once every few months are about it.
At the moment eggs are fine.😊

[kaleidojess]

I don't even eat enough so I definitely need carbs. Just watching out of curiosity.

[bellaassa]

chikpeas is the tricky part it have al most 40g of carbs in 100g and 350 cal yet it s a low carb

[ListenDeathMetal]

Low carb vegan here, it's entirely possible actually.

[thevegankitchenmagician]

I have been a low carb vegan for 4 years, lost over 100 pounds and get less than 20 g of carbs regularly!

[SharpUchi]

So then a vegan must be very active in order to stay fit/toned since they’ll be eating a minimum of around 150 carbs per day correct?

[question]

i hear complex carbs are the way to go if your going to eat them. oatmeal, brown rice, its the reg carbs thatll suck