Plenty of careful vegetarians are surprised by a high result. The plate looks healthy, so the number feels unfair. The problem is a quiet assumption hiding inside the word vegetarian.
The assumption
Meat-free reads as healthy, and healthy gets mentally filed as gentle on blood sugar. But blood sugar does not care whether a meal contained meat. It cares how much carbohydrate arrived and how fast.
Where the carbohydrate hides
A typical vegetarian meal is often built on staples that are almost entirely carbohydrate: rice, roti, bread, potatoes, and a generous serving of fruit. Even lentils and beans, valuable as they are, carry a real carbohydrate load. Stack these on one plate and the glucose response can be large, no meat required.
What to change first
You do not need to abandon the foods you eat. Anchor each meal with protein and fiber, eat those first, keep the starch portion honest rather than the centerpiece, and notice that a walk afterward helps. The lever is the structure of the plate, not the category of the eater.