Although we’ve titled this article “The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss,” it might have been slightly more appropriate to call it “The Most Helpful Foods for Fat Loss.”
As you’ll soon be reminded, fundamentally, all you need to achieve your fat loss goal is a proper understanding of what it means to be in a caloric deficit and how to implement that knowledge sustainably until you reach your goal.
In fact, some of you might be bewildered to learn that it’s not about eating “this” magical food or “that” magical food to reveal a lean, sculpted physique.
It’s about manipulating the number of calories you consume in context of the number of calories you expend toward a sustainable calorie deficit.
This, however, begs an obvious question.
How can any vegan foods be “best” for fat loss if it’s all about calories?
And this is a great question!
Although fat loss is primarily about being in a calorie deficit, arguably the most efficient and enjoyable way to achieve a total body transformation is to make sure the foods you eat within your calorie deficit provide evidence-based amounts of protein while maximizing food volume for the sake of satiety.
To this point, the best vegan foods for fat loss will give you adequate amounts of protein for supporting lean muscle, carbs for energy, and dietary fat for your hormones and health while being voluminous enough to leave you feeling as satisfied as possible after each meal.
And these are the foods I have chosen to outline in this article.
So, in this article, you can expect to learn:
What a caloric deficit is and why it is important for fat loss as a vegan
Which vegan foods are most helpful for fat loss
How to track your macronutrients (protein, carbs, and dietary fat) to lose fat as a vegan
More information on this topic is provided in our podcast episode “The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss”, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
HOW TO ACHIEVE A CALORIC DEFICIT AS A VEGAN FOR FAT LOSS
As popular as certain deprivation-based diets have become in mainstream fitness culture, diets based on unnecessary deprivation are inherently flawed.
For example, we all know that if you tell someone they can never have pizza, pizza becomes infinitely more alluring. And, if you try to convince yourself that vegan donuts are off of the menu for life, you can be sure that at some point you’ll find yourself daydreaming about vegan donuts.
Unfortunately, tons of people have been led to believe that fat loss as a vegan simply isn’t possible while incorporating certain vegan foods. And although most of these stereotypically taboo foods might fall into the “junk food” category, there are plenty of healthful foods that have been demonized as well.
Take the ketogenic diet for example, which is a diet that generally recommends about 70% of calories from fats, 25% from proteins, and just 5% from carbohydrates.
For anyone on a plant-based ketogenic diet, even bananas are essentially off limits given that a normal-sized banana has about 107 calories, which would make up more than 5% of daily calories for anyone eating less than 2,000 calories per day.
This is a perfect example of what it means to deprive yourself meaninglessly in the name of fat loss, and meaningless deprivation leads to frustration and burnout.
As you’ll soon realize, any vegan food can be consumed during a fat loss phase.
This is why, if you want to lose fat as a vegan, you need to first understand The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss.
The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss
The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss simple states the following:
You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss. This is known as a calorie deficit, which is what we briefly discussed in the introduction.
A caloric deficit is achieved when the sum of calories expended is greater than the sum of calories consumed over time.
And, although calories are the most important part to be mindful of when losing fat, it is also important that you stay within a given set of macro targets (proteins, dietary fats, and carbohydrates) in order to optimize your fat loss experience.
You can also use our FREE Vegan Macro Calculator to learn exactly how many grams of protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should be consuming to accomplish your primary fitness goal.
But, why are these macronutrients important to consider?
You need adequate amounts of protein for supporting lean muscle, carbs for energy, and dietary fat for your hormones and health.
Fortunately, however, you can eat whatever you want and still lose fat when you maintain a caloric deficit and hit your macro targets within these parameters:
+/- 10 grams per macronutrient
+/- 50 calories for fat loss
+/- 100 calories for bulking
Bonus Tip: Your health is also vital to maintain, so it is recommended that you get at least 80% of your daily calories from nutritious whole plant foods that you enjoy.
Because you can eat literally whatever you want as long as you hit your macro targets, we call this flexible dieting.
The whole point of flexible dieting is having the opportunity to choose the foods that you personally want to eat while achieving your fat loss goals.
You can learn more about vegan macros in our podcast episode entitled “What Are Macros and Why Are They So Important?”
WHAT TO EAT TO LOSE FAT AS A VEGAN
At this point, I’m going to explore the best vegan protein, carbohydrate, and fat sources for fat loss.
One of the universal themes that you will see in our consideration of the best foods for vegan fat loss is the idea of caloric sparsity.
Consuming calorically sparse foods can have a profound positive impact on your satiety, which tends to greatly improve adherence and enjoyment of dieting while losing fat.
So the goal becomes quite simple.
To set yourself up for as much fat loss success as possible, structure the majority of your diet around high-volume, whole plant foods with a low caloric density that also allow you to hit your protein target.
The following foods don’t have any magical fat loss powers, but they are some of the best plant foods for nailing your macros and conquering hunger.
The Best Vegan Protein Sources for Fat Loss
Some of the best high-protein foods for vegan fat loss include lentils, tempeh, tofu, seitan, textured vegetable protein, and edamame pasta.
While many other plant foods offer respectable amounts of protein, you would be wise not to rely on them to be the main protein source of a meal.
For example, a common misconception is that nuts and quinoa are good sources of protein.
Although nuts do contain some protein, nuts are not primarily a protein source; they are primarily a dietary fat source.
And although quinoa does contain some protein, quinoa is not primarily a protein source; it is primarily a carbohydrate source.
Making the mistake of centering your meals around food with suboptimal protein contents will make it nearly impossible to stay within your caloric range while respecting your protein targets as well.
The Perks of Protein Powder
On the other hand, strategically incorporating a high-quality protein powder into meals is one way vegans can adequately meet their protein targets. Protein powder is great for fat loss because:
Protein powder is extremely convenient. You can make a macro-friendly protein shake in less than a minute when needed.
Protein powder has incredible macros for body recomposition. Most high-protein vegan foods are also high in carbohydrates (such as lentils) or high in dietary fat (such as tofu). It can be very helpful to have a protein source in your diet that is almost entirely protein to boost your protein intake without adding a ton of unnecessary calories.
Protein powder helps to add flavor. You can mix protein powder into shakes, baked goods, oatmeal, smoothie bowls, and a host of other foods to add flavor and make them more suited to your own macro targets.
Be sure to do your own research and choose a protein powder from an honest company that aligns with your own values surrounding ingredient quality and environmental awareness.
The Best Vegan Carb Sources for Fat Loss
Some of the best vegan carbohydrate foods for fat loss include quinoa, sweet potatoes, brown rice, oats, buckwheat, and teff.
I like to encourage people to choose wholesome, high-carbohydrate foods while limiting the consumption of highly-processed, high-carbohydrate foods like cereals, breads, crackers, and chips.
To be clear, all of those foods can be worked into a vegan meal plan for fat loss as long as they fit into your macros, but it is important to consider your health and satiety as well. As long as you are willing to accept the health and satiety risks, you are, of course, welcome to enjoy any vegan foods you wish.
Conversely, carbohydrate sources such as sweet potatoes and whole grains are full of fiber and digest more slowly to make you feel satiated for longer.
They are also relatively high in protein compared to most highly processed, high-carbohydrate foods, which can provide helpful supplementation toward your overall protein target for the day.
The Best Vegetables for Vegan Fat Loss
Generally speaking, the more vegetables you eat, the better, and this is true for both your health and for accomplishing your fat loss goals.
Nearly all vegetables are wonderful additions to your fat loss meal plan, but some of the best vegetables for vegan fat loss include kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage.
Why?
You guessed it.
Given their low caloric density, you can eat nearly as many vegetables as you want!
However, although vegetables are quite low in calories, they do still count towards your macronutrient totals for the day, and you could theoretically overeat your vegetables and launch yourself out of a caloric deficit.
Fortunately, even on a caloric deficit, you will likely get full eating vegetables well before you surpass your calorie target.
Just keep in mind that there are a few vegetables that are relatively high in calories, like carrots, so it’s important to track everything you eat, especially in the beginning phases of a fat loss protocol.
Once you accumulate experience, you might be able to nuance your approach to a hybrid style of tracking that allows for the flexibility of not tracking certain low-calorie foods like spinach, iceberg lettuce, and other similar greens.
The Best Fruits for Vegan Fat Loss
Fruits can also be very nutritious and fantastic additions to your fat loss meal plan.
The best fruits for vegan fat loss include berries, grapefruit, kiwi, apples, honeydew and watermelon.
There are plenty of other incredible fruits beyond what is listed here, but many fruits are more calorically dense than vegetables, which can make them difficult to add to a vegan fat loss meal plan.
For example, avocados are delicious and nutritious, but they are high in dietary fat and calories.
Dried fruits can be particularly high in calories as well, which makes them a “snack of concern” since they travel well and can be an easy pick-up for vegans on the go.
The point is always to remember how fat loss works and let the foods you consume be dictated by that line of thinking.
If it fits your macros and you’re willing to eat it with the implications of health and satiety in mind, you’re good to go.
HOW TO TRACK YOUR MACROS for vegan fat loss
Although the focus of this article is primarily on which foods will be most helpful to anyone looking to lose fat as a vegan, I wanted to include some helpful tips on how to track these foods as well.
Firstly, it’s important to say that, if you track your macros very carefully when working to lose fat, you are guaranteed to get results. If you do not carefully track your macros, it is almost guaranteed that you will not get the results you aim to achieve.
Or, at the very least, the specificity of your desired outcome will become less predictable and more ambiguous. In other words, the more meticulously you track, the more systematic your results will be.
And if you’ve never calculated your macros before (much less tracked them), remember that you can use our vegan macro calculator to help you get started.
Tracking everything you eat can be tedious, so it is highly recommended that you create a meal plan that you can follow every day.
Meal plans are really helpful because they remove any unnecessary thought fatigue from the dieting process.
Essentially, you do all the work upfront by picking macro-friendly foods that you enjoy and using them to build an entire day’s worth of meals to hit your target macros. Just to be clear, I mean literally opening your food tracking app of choice like Cronometer and plugging in a full day of eating to ensure those combinations of meals will check all of the boxes for a successful day of fat loss dieting.
Planning out all of your meals ahead of time makes balancing your macros easy.
And if you’ve never meal-planned before, I highly recommend using our 30 free vegan meal plans to kickstart your effort.
As people get started, however, one of the most common obstacles beginners will face is successfully consuming enough protein on a day-to-day basis without violating their calorie targets.
My tip for avoiding this?
Plan all of your meals around a plant-based protein source, and then build the rest of your meals around those sources with the remaining calories you have allotted for the day.
For example, you might decide that you want to eat four times per day with one non-protein-centric snack. At that point, you would need to identify four sources of protein and divide your total protein intake for the day by four. If our macro calculator recommended for you to eat 120 grams of protein per day, you’d be looking to consume about 30 grams of protein per meal.
To make up those meals, maybe you’ve decided you’d like to feature the following protein sources: tofu, chickpea pasta, seitan, and protein powder.
Once you’ve plugged in the tofu for breakfast to represent your tofu scramble, the chickpea pasta to represent your lunch, the seitan in to represent your dinner, and the protein powder in to represent your dessert smoothie, you can finish building those meals one by one by adding things like vegetables, pasta sauces, rices and beans, and berries or seeds.
And this is how you can meal-plan for yourself in a way that is effective and designed explicitly for fat loss.
YOUR NEXT STEPS TO LOSE FAT AS A VEGAN
From here, I’d like to put everything together and give you a simper two-step plan of action.
Step 1: Identify a macronutrient intake that supports your goal.
Use our FREE Vegan Macro Calculator to earn exactly how many grams of protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should be consuming to accomplish your primary fitness goal.
This is the first step because you can’t design your own meal plan without knowing which distribution of macronutrients is going to guide you to your goal.
Step 2: Utilize our free vegan meal plans to get started.
Download our 30 FREE Vegan Meal Plans to start following and tracking your macronutrient targets to meet your fat loss goals.
These plans will give you a ton of incredible ideas about how to jump into this new lifestyle without the thought fatigue of having to reinvent the wheel for yourself.
Summary
Calorie deficits are king for fat loss.
The only “best” foods for vegan fat loss are the ones that help you stay within your daily calorie and protein targets, but sometimes it can be helpful to be given a list of foods that tend to be more helpful than others.
The most common thread among all fat loss friendly foods is caloric sparsity. If you can eat more food for fewer calories while consuming enough protein per day to support your body recomposition goal, you likely won’t experience any unnecessary hunger while you shred body fat.
The best vegan sources of protein for fat loss tend to be tofu, tempeh, seitan, TVP, legume-based pastas, and lentils.
The best vegan sources of carbohydrates for fat loss tend to be quinoa, sweet potatoes, brown rice, oats, buckwheat, and teff.
The best vegetables for fat loss tend to be kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage.
The best fruits for fat loss tend to be berries, grapefruit, apples, kiwi, honeydew, and watermelon.
Tracking your macros meticulously is the best way to see systematic fat loss results.
