It helps to understand how your body 'thinks', first. Our bodies are foremost afraid of dying of hunger, even though that's hardly an issue nowadays in our situation.
Muscles have the disadvantage of burning energy, even without being used (it elevates your metabolism). This inefficiency restrains your body from growing muscle mass too easily. So to gain and hold on to muscle mass, your body has to have noticed 1) you really need them (use it or lose it), and 2) you have a regular, constant flow of food supplies. With these 2 points combined, your body will decide that the risk of gaining muscle is smaller than the risk of not having enough of them.
Fat on the other hand won´t burn any energy by just being there. When having a very active lifestyle, though, every pound of fat suddenly has to be moved around all the time, which costs extra energy, so inefficiency with fat mass only comes up with an active lifestyle, as opposed to the situation with muscle mass, which always creates inefficiency (and added inefficiency when moving around a lot). So to lose fat mass permanently, your body has to have noticed 1) you really don´t need it, and 2) you have an active lifestyle.
You show your body that you don´t need your fat mass (point 1) by simply not using it. Realise how fat mass is actually a time buffer between the moment of energy intake and the moment of energy usage. When you eat very irregularly, your body will learn that a nice energy buffer of fat mass is needed to contain all these dynamics. That is;
The decision to gain fat mass is made especially easily by your body, when you don´t have an active lifestyle (point 2), since that way your fat reserves simply have no disadvantages.
So not using your fat mass is done by eating very regularly daily, and throughout the day, preferrably with 5 to 6 roughly equal meals, not too many fast carbs, and no forced energy restricted diets.
An important mechanism that comes into play when trying to change your body composition, is the fact that our bodies try to keep steady levels of a lot of things: temperature, blood pressure, glucose levels, etc.. This is called homeostasis. Same thing goes for our body composition, except that the 'ideal composition' that your body is trying to hold on to (the yoyo effect is a widely known example of this), depends very much on the 'opinion' of your personal DNA (inhereted by the success stories (survival) of your ancestors), and the lifestyle you've been living so far.
Homeostasis will cause body composition changed to go in 'spurts'. Also adaptation or plateau's are caused by this phenomenon.
To sum up;
Try using the training program in the shown link, earlier. Also eat the 5-6 times a day with equal portions, that's described there, but without the 400 kcal extra energy intake. Walk 1 - 2 hours a day. That way you'll lose fat mass and (re)gain muscle mass.
Remember that gaining muscle mass, while losing fat, is far from ideal. But when your goal is mainly losing fat, without losing muscle mass, and preferably even gaining some, then that's not too much of an issue. Since you're a vegetarian, try to eat a lot of proteins from beans and nuts. 15 energy% of proteins will do for your situation.
Muscles have the disadvantage of burning energy, even without being used (it elevates your metabolism). This inefficiency restrains your body from growing muscle mass too easily. So to gain and hold on to muscle mass, your body has to have noticed 1) you really need them (use it or lose it), and 2) you have a regular, constant flow of food supplies. With these 2 points combined, your body will decide that the risk of gaining muscle is smaller than the risk of not having enough of them.
Fat on the other hand won´t burn any energy by just being there. When having a very active lifestyle, though, every pound of fat suddenly has to be moved around all the time, which costs extra energy, so inefficiency with fat mass only comes up with an active lifestyle, as opposed to the situation with muscle mass, which always creates inefficiency (and added inefficiency when moving around a lot). So to lose fat mass permanently, your body has to have noticed 1) you really don´t need it, and 2) you have an active lifestyle.
You show your body that you don´t need your fat mass (point 1) by simply not using it. Realise how fat mass is actually a time buffer between the moment of energy intake and the moment of energy usage. When you eat very irregularly, your body will learn that a nice energy buffer of fat mass is needed to contain all these dynamics. That is;
- Eating irregularly throughout the day (using your fat mass by not eating enough during the day, getting short but high energy spikes by sugars that can´t be used at that moment, eating a too large supper meal that will mostly have to be used the next day) and;
- Eating irregularly throughout your lifetime (energy restricted diets, that your body regards as food shortages by some external cause, and periods of eating more, like Christmas and Thanksgiving).
The decision to gain fat mass is made especially easily by your body, when you don´t have an active lifestyle (point 2), since that way your fat reserves simply have no disadvantages.
So not using your fat mass is done by eating very regularly daily, and throughout the day, preferrably with 5 to 6 roughly equal meals, not too many fast carbs, and no forced energy restricted diets.
An important mechanism that comes into play when trying to change your body composition, is the fact that our bodies try to keep steady levels of a lot of things: temperature, blood pressure, glucose levels, etc.. This is called homeostasis. Same thing goes for our body composition, except that the 'ideal composition' that your body is trying to hold on to (the yoyo effect is a widely known example of this), depends very much on the 'opinion' of your personal DNA (inhereted by the success stories (survival) of your ancestors), and the lifestyle you've been living so far.
Homeostasis will cause body composition changed to go in 'spurts'. Also adaptation or plateau's are caused by this phenomenon.
To sum up;
- Eat regularly and evenly
- Move around regularly and long
- Use your muscles regularly and intensively
Try using the training program in the shown link, earlier. Also eat the 5-6 times a day with equal portions, that's described there, but without the 400 kcal extra energy intake. Walk 1 - 2 hours a day. That way you'll lose fat mass and (re)gain muscle mass.
Remember that gaining muscle mass, while losing fat, is far from ideal. But when your goal is mainly losing fat, without losing muscle mass, and preferably even gaining some, then that's not too much of an issue. Since you're a vegetarian, try to eat a lot of proteins from beans and nuts. 15 energy% of proteins will do for your situation.
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