Vegan Weight Issues

Do you log and measure your food? If you log it here then it would help people give you advice if you opened up your diary.

I managed to gain all of my weight being vegan, and I'm now losing all of my weight being vegan. It has always been less about my specific food choices than about going over my maintenance calories. If you switched out the foods you're used to maybe you're eating a bit more overall than you think?

Also, exercise helps but there's no such thing as targeting specific areas of fat loss. Unfortunately our bodies choose where we gain or lose fat.

Before you begin trying to diagnose what is wrong, I'd commit to getting a few weeks of consistent logging in. That will make it much easier to figure out what is going on and how you can adjust your intake.

I'm another vegan who gained all my weight as a vegan and then lost it as a vegan, so it can be done! Like @Hoshiko says, my food choices were much less important than how many calories I was eating. If you are eating exactly like you did before minus dairy and eggs, I'm wondering if your protein intake went down and you are eating larger portions of the rest of your foods because you are hungrier. This sometimes happens to newer vegans who don't replace animal proteins with vegan sources of protein. Your one day of logging is pretty low on protein and a chunk of that comes from nuts. It's very hard for smaller people to get sufficient protein from nuts and still stay at their calorie goal -- most of us just don't burn enough calories to be able to eat that many nuts. I found it helpful to think of nuts as a source of fat, not a source of protein (although they do have some protein).

Eating at school can be hard -- some easy sources of vegan protein that don't require a kitchen include protein bars, protein shakes, and most vegan jerkys. If you have access to a fridge in your dorm room, maybe find some simple recipes for bean salads? You can make these with canned beans and then have them in a wrap or with vegetables.

College eating can be so hard! If you're logging it might actually make it a bit easier to see what areas you can improve on. I don't know what your situation is but if you have a fridge or mini-fridge it can open up your possibilities quite a bit.

Thanks for opening up your food log. Like @janejellyroll said, I would focus on logging for 2 weeks consistently and upping your protein as much as possible. After two weeks you can re-evaluate and see where you are. Sometimes just being conscious and informed about what you're eating leads to weight loss, but if it doesn't then we can give you more specific tips.

Logging can seem like a pain but it seriously, really works. Since you don't have a lot to lose it's even more important, because those tiny choices add up quick. I also think that it's really great that you're catching this now. I didn't and ended up gaining 40 lbs during my college years, even while being super active. Don't be like me!

Same happened to me... Hummus was my problem, we are no longer on speaking terms

mollyammer wrote: »

@AliceDark I typically try to eyeball my servings out, the peanut butter sandwich i manually put in through the recipe feature! Do you recommend starting to measure things out exactly?

Studies have shown that many humans are awful at eyeballing portion size. I know that I am. Measuring cups are more reliable than eyeballing, but can be pretty inaccurate. A food scale is the best way to measure solid food, especially calorie-dense foods like peanut butter. I don't think I am making an unreasonable assumption when I say that many people who are eyeballing peanut butter are eating much more than they think they are.

mollyammer wrote: »

Since my food log isn't very informative right now, I just wanna mention some things that i normally eat on an everyday basis. Although I am on campus, I do have a full kitchen and have a decent amount of options on campus too; I recently started buying brown rice pasta instead of whole wheat and I make that a couple times a week, I normally add an organic tomato sauce lightly and a fake meat for protein (not the best i know), i also make regular brown rice a lot and will add some type of bean or fake meat. My log from today shows the salad i had for lunch which is something i get a few times a week as well. The on campus supermarket has cliff protein bars, I may look into those. @FatDadSlim i also eat a lotttt of hummus, i'm wondering if this has contributed to my weight gain as well? Although i had hummus just as much last year when i weighed less so i really don't know lol

If you're eyeballing your portion sizes and you just started logging, I'm not sure how you can know that you're eating just as much hummus as you did last year.

janejellyroll wrote: »

mollyammer wrote: »

Since my food log isn't very informative right now, I just wanna mention some things that i normally eat on an everyday basis. Although I am on campus, I do have a full kitchen and have a decent amount of options on campus too; I recently started buying brown rice pasta instead of whole wheat and I make that a couple times a week, I normally add an organic tomato sauce lightly and a fake meat for protein (not the best i know), i also make regular brown rice a lot and will add some type of bean or fake meat. My log from today shows the salad i had for lunch which is something i get a few times a week as well. The on campus supermarket has cliff protein bars, I may look into those. @FatDadSlim i also eat a lotttt of hummus, i'm wondering if this has contributed to my weight gain as well? Although i had hummus just as much last year when i weighed less so i really don't know lol

If you're eyeballing your portion sizes and you just started logging, I'm not sure how you can know that you're eating just as much hummus as you did last year.

^^^ Agreed. Also if you're working out 60-90 min per day and only eating the 1,000 or so calories like day one in your diary, weight would be coming off, you wouldn't be gaining.