Beth:
you cannot spot reduce, i.e. deliberately lose fat from a particular part of the body. Your workouts, if done consistently, will help you lose the abdominal fat on their own. Also, unless you are taking in way too many calories than demanded by your lifestyle, you will be able to lose this fat without dieting.
I have not made many changes in my diet and am able to build muscle and get more definition as a vegetarian. Most people do already consume enough protein. You should probably educate yourself about good nutrition and about the calorie needs of the active woman's body. None of us here are experts on nutrition. We have all played around with different ways of eating (three main meals versus 5-6 small and frequent meals per day), and nutritional approaches (following a high protein diet versus a regular and recommended 40:30:30 ration of carbs, protein and healthy fats respectively), to find what works for us. This trial and error approach is something you will work on as you pick up the pace of your workouts and start to eat better.
Start by getting your exercise plan all mapped out. A basic rule of thumb might be to aim for the following on a weekly basis: 3-4 cardio sessions (of different types and different intensities) and 2-3 weight training sessions. Bear in mind that a session doe not have to be an hour long, and this is much more doable than it might seem.
Start out, and progress until exercise is a regular, scheduled event for you, then start evaluating what is working, where you want to improve, where to do more, where to do less. It is consistency in your workouts and paying attention to the rule of progressive overload (gradually and continually increasing the challenge to your muscles via increased weight or slower reps, for example) that will not only help you lose that fat around the middle but also get you the muscle mass and definition you seek, rather than diet.
You can build muscle on the average diet. You cannot build muscle without consistently and continually challenging the muscles with increasing resistance.
What workouts do you own? What exercise do you like to do? How much time do you have? If you can give some more information, we could try and help you map out a routine to get you started...
Clare
