New to Vegan
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rsmorlen
Posts: 31 Member
So after years of saying I'd never do it because I love meat too much, I've decided to eat a plant based diet. I've been active my whole life (gymnastics for 16 years, completed P90X, Insanity, & P90X2), and recently I've begun Crossfit. My goal is to gain muscle mass, but I'm not sure what I should be eating. I've tried low-carb diets in the past, but those always lead to cravings and I feel drained after a short period. Any help and advice would be great.
I'm 5'5", 140lbs, and at roughly 8% body fat. My long term goal is to be at 145lbs with 5-6% body fat.
I'm 5'5", 140lbs, and at roughly 8% body fat. My long term goal is to be at 145lbs with 5-6% body fat.
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I would say get into the habit of cooking lentils and beans (especially black beans!). Experiment with different varieties and find your favorites. I love mung beans and black beans. From there, you can pretty much add them to anything like stir-fries, tofu scrambles, make burgers out of them (there's tons of recipes for lentil burgers and a lot of variations based on what kind of spices/veggies you decide on). Also don't be afraid of eating fruit.. I eat as much as I want (within my calorie budget.. it can replace any snack) and it really helps me get through the intense workouts (P90X types). Also, try lots of different veggies like eggplant, squash, edemame!
Investing in a stovetop or electronic pressure cooker would also be a great idea since you can cook lentils, beans and squash MUCH faster (same for brown rice and wild rice). I sometimes make a ton of lentils on the weekend and use them up over the week.
I hope this helps!0 -
That does help. Should I invest in a rice cooker, rather than a pressure cooker? I feel like I would use that a bit more. What are some good brands of both? A timer on them would be good too. That way I could set it in the morning and it be fresh by the time I come home. If there's none that offer that, then that's fine.
Also, would investing in a good blender be beneficial? I'm not interested in a juicer, because I would like to consume the fiber, but it's my understanding that many vegan athletes have smoothies. Or is that not necessary?0 -
Okay I ended up getting a Vitamix to make breakfast smoothies, and I really like it so far. I'm looking forward to making soups, dips, nut butters, and juices.
I am disappointed in the lack of help though coming from the MFP community.0 -
Try not to be to dissapointed in this community. The challenge is not that you're asking advice about a vegan diet, you're asking advice about a vegan diet that will take you to a very low body fat percentage. Using the typical body-building mantra, that can be extremely challenging. My first question is "what prompted you to pursue a plant based diet". I personally started for health, and very short after, found an ethical / spiritual life that is beyond question. I too went to build muscle mass to prove that the Shaggy stereotypical vegan is just that. A useless stereotype. The largest land mammals on the planet are vegans. That said, a typical shredding body-building diet is high protein low carb, and plants are carbs. you can load up on high protein smoothies or eat plenty of processed vegan foods - gardein burgers, vegan hot dogs, etc. but @starizzle87's advice for me is by far the best: lentils have an extremely high protein content as do mung beans. black beans, spinach, these are all good. I would suggest you take a spin (google search) vegan bodybuilding and fitness. Robert Cheeke has competed successfully, and has writtin and published on this very subject. Brandan Bazier's thrive diet is another useful source of information regarding diet as a performance aid. Most of all, once vegan - stay vegan, and good luck.0
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Try not to be to dissapointed in this community. The challenge is not that you're asking advice about a vegan diet, you're asking advice about a vegan diet that will take you to a very low body fat percentage. Using the typical body-building mantra, that can be extremely challenging. My first question is "what prompted you to pursue a plant based diet". I personally started for health, and very short after, found an ethical / spiritual life that is beyond question. I too went to build muscle mass to prove that the Shaggy stereotypical vegan is just that. A useless stereotype. The largest land mammals on the planet are vegans. That said, a typical shredding body-building diet is high protein low carb, and plants are carbs. you can load up on high protein smoothies or eat plenty of processed vegan foods - gardein burgers, vegan hot dogs, etc. but @starizzle87's advice for me is by far the best: lentils have an extremely high protein content as do mung beans. black beans, spinach, these are all good. I would suggest you take a spin (google search) vegan bodybuilding and fitness. Robert Cheeke has competed successfully, and has writtin and published on this very subject. Brandan Bazier's thrive diet is another useful source of information regarding diet as a performance aid. Most of all, once vegan - stay vegan, and good luck.
Thanks for the advice. I originally started for health reasons and to see how my body would react to a vegan diet. But now I've begun reading up on Dr. McDougall, Dr. Gramm, Wolffe, and even Yourofsy. They have presented material to me that just seems to make sense and I've begun to move more towards an ethical reasoning behind being vegan.0 -
at the same time, if you have a health interest read the china study, and i might also suggest Eternal Treblinka; Charles Patterson. "To the animals, we are all Nazis, and every day is a holocaust".0
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Thanks vegandave!0
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Hi again! For some reason, I don't get alerts when someone replies to a post after me so I'm sorry for the late reply!
I'm not a vegan just because I am doing this more for health than ethical reasons so I don't worry about having an occasional meal out of line. BUT I hope you still benefit from my advice so here goes..
Vitamix is AMAZING for this lifestyle/a plant based diet. I make smoothies daily. Its also really good for making things like quick hummus and healthy salad dressings (Here's a good silken tofu dressing recipe: http://veggiepawa.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/green-onion-and-fennel-creamy-vegan-dressing/?postpost=v2#content )
I also tried making nut butters.. but my favorite nut butter is the raw unsalted almond butter from Trader Joe's and it ends up being the same cost if I make it myself so I gave up on that haha.
As for rice/pressure cookers. I liked the versatility of a pressure cooker b/c you can also cook rice in it. My favorite is the Instant Pot which you can get on amazon (and they just came out with a new version thats even better.. I wish I could get it but I still have the old one which works amazingly well ) There are also other electric pressure cookers from the more common brands out there that you may like but I did a lot of research before I settled on this one. Like I said before, it is great for preparing a week's worth of black beans, mung beans, red lentils (black beans can be used to quickly make burgers by mashing them with veggies and spices, mung beans are GREAT in salads and I love red lentils in my breakfast "scrambles"). Also you can use the pressure cooker to quickly whip up steel cut oats, or use it as a slow cooker for overnight oats. I love to mix my oats with a plant based protein powder for extra protein content.
So yeah.. There's a lot of stuff you can do to get more protein on training days. You just have to be creative
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Hi, as vegans getting protein from non-animal sources, it takes some planning to make sure that we get all the essential amino acids needed for muscle growth. I've been vegan for 18 years and I'm only just realising the importance of protein. I used to rely heavily on carbs to feel full, which is why I was overweight.
As I understand it, most plant-based sources of protein don't have all the essential amino acids required to build and repair muscle, but you can combine them to create a complete protein source e.g. rice and beans, barley and bean soup, nut butter on wholegrain bread/pitta and beans with nuts and seeds such as hummus made with chickpeas and sesame seed paste.
There are some complete vegan protein sources, which include tofu and quinoa. On training days, I also supplement this with a vegan protein shake, but I'm still finding I'm not building muscle as quickly as I would like.0
