Vegan Ideas

witchcadet

Hi Guys!

I have been a vegan for about 8 months. My weight loss has been challenging. I just started tracking again, anyone have an ideas or advice about balancing veganism?

LisaBeateith2012

Bump for later

Anita4548

My advice - make sure you dont eat too many carbs and little/no protein. This was my mistake and I was feeling horrible

ldy_78

My advice - make sure you dont eat too many carbs and little/no protein. This was my mistake and I was feeling horrible

Repeat above advice. Yes, watch your carbs and your sugars. Go easy on the fruit and grains. Eat lots of greens and protein and you should be fine. As a vegan you need to make sure that your protein intake is complete in that it has a complete amino acid profile. This means diversifying protein sources. Many vegans just eat tofu or just eat lentils, but to get the aminos necessary for optimal absorption and usage you need to have a variety. whfoods.com and nutritiondata.self.com give stats on most vegan foods.

kemlis

Eat lots of legumes, nuts and seeds! Soy products such as milk, tofu and yoghurt are fine, but relying on soy products too much can result in a monotonous diet and it'll make food boring and possibly lacking in nutrients.

Maitria

Sneak protein into your recipes through chickpeas or white beans. Chocolate Covered Katie has desserts with beans, and there are lots of recipes for high protein white bean mashed potatoes (you get to include the potatoes ) Oh She Glows has a lot of main course recipes. You can find recipes for socca (garbanzo bean flour and water fried in olive oil.) Both websites have make your own energy bars and smoothie recipes. I like to make banana "ice cream" with peanut butter powder and protein powder.

You can make great gravy out of garbanzo beans and/or nutritional yeast. You can roast beans as a crunchy snack. Red lentils are super quick to cook; try to eat some grains (rice, wheat, oats) each day to round out your protein.

Try to remember to choose higher protein veggies, and sneak greens like spinach and kale into smoothies. If you don't have any issues with gluten, there are tons of products with wheat gluten that are very high in protein. If you are going to cook, get yourself a tofu press. The Vedge has lots of tofu recipes.

RaspberryKeytoneBoondoggle

If you haven't discovered red star nutritional yeast flakes yet, I recommend you try it!
Try with popcorn, rice, in casseroles, as a condiment. I love it and it's a source of protein and fortified with b12.

RaspberryKeytoneBoondoggle

Also, learn how to make seitan, and be prepared to cook and prep. at least once a week, or buy meat replacement products.

mathmatt

There are a lot of vegan references online.
No Meat Athlete
Brendan Brazier (Thrive)
Rich Roll
Tim VanOrden
Happy Cow (for restaurants and other stuff)
Dr. McDougall's Newsletter

I'd highly recommend learning as much as you can about vitamins and minerals. MFP can be a great tool to track your intake. The best advice I can give is to learn to cook a wide variety of foods. I've known a lot of vegans who ate nothing but pasta and bread and couldn't figure out why they were so unhealthy.
If you're looking for some recipes here are some great sites:
Manjula's Kitchen vegan section(Indian)
Vegan8
Finding Vegan
Budget Bytes vegan section
Post Punk Kitchen
Vegan Stoner

And good recipe books are:
Vegan Planet
Veganomicon
Vegan Soul Kitchen
Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food
Fast Fresh Vegan Pleasures
and if you're having a party, Vegan Table
There are a lot of others. These are just the ones I use the most.

I'm a huge fan of fresh whole fruits and vegetables and using as little processed prepackaged food-like products as possible.

bullofheaven

Avocados, olives, and EVO is your friend.

rivka_m

Seitan! It's really high in protein. Smoky seitan out of "Vegan Diner" is my favorite, makes a delicious lunchmeat. You can get wheat gluten off Amazon.

Also seitan sausage - http://www.theppk.com/2008/02/on-sausages-and-community/

Nutritional yeast, as noted above. I like Kal brand personally, but any that's fortified with B12 is fine. You can make a good "cheezy" sauce with it.

I find when I eat more vegan meals (I'm not vegan but I mostly cook vegan) it's easy to go low protein/low fat and then I'm hungry again in half an hour. When I make it a point to add fat and meet my protein target it really helps.