I bet most of you probably didn’t know this – the month of October is dedicated to celebrating a plant based diet and making people aware about its benefits.

I myself have been mostly a vegetarian for many, many years. I do eat fish, but no poultry or meat. There are different kinds of vegetarian eating, the most common probably being the lacto-ovo vegetarian, which allows milk and egg products into the diet. A total vegan diet doesn’t include any animal products at all, including things like honey. It’s a very strict diet and can be hard to follow, as well as get all your essential nutrients. But it can be done, you just have to work very hard to have a balanced diet.

The benefits of a vegetarian diet are many. Regarding your health, this kind of diet can help reduce your risk of heart disease, strokes, and certain kinds of cancers, as you’re eating less saturated fat and cholesterol. It can also help you lose weight, as you’re mostly consuming lower calorie vegetables and fruits. Studies have also shown that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters, approximately 7 years longer.

But that’s not all. You’ll spend less at the grocery store, as produce costs less than meat. You’ll also protect your bones, as eating meat (and we eat more protein than we should, which I recently wrote about) can leach valuable nutrients from your bones as your body. The average bone loss for a 65 year old vegetarian is about 18 percent, for a meat eater the same age, it’s double that. Pretty amazing, right?

Going vegetarian can also help you avoid toxins in meat, such as hormones and steroids. It will also help you avoid food-borne illnesses, as most of these are found in meat products.

And let’s not forget the benefits to planet Earth! Going veggie helps prevent global warming, as cows, goats, and other animals emit methane, which is a huge destroyer of the ozone layer. Less demand for meat means fewer animals in the world. It also helps prevent deforestation for animal grazing. Water preservation is also affected. One pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water, whereas one pound of wheat takes only 25 gallons.

You can also help reduce world famine. Currently, 72 percent of grains grown in the US are fed to animals raised for slaughter. It takes 15 pounds of feed to produce one pound of meat. But if these grains were given directly to the world’s people, famine would all but be eradicated.

So have I convinced you enough yet? And if you’re thinking that a vegetarian diet is bland and boring, think again! There are plenty of wonderful and tasty recipes out there to try, and it’s anything but boring. It’s also a lot easier than you think, as there are a ton of products now available at the grocery store (some even taste like real meat, if you really can’t go without…) and most restaurants also offer vegetarian options.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over some great recipe ideas to get you started. I’m trying to convince my clients at the Diversified Health and Fitness gyms to give up meat for just this month, so I am giving you the same challenge. Think you can do it?