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The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss: Your Ultimate Guide

August 1, 2024

The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss: Your Ultimate Guide

Welcome to the ultimate guide to vegan fat loss! While we’ve titled this article “The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss,” a more fitting title might be “The Most Helpful Foods for Fat Loss.” Why? Because the key to fat loss isn’t about eating some magical food; it’s about understanding how to create a sustainable caloric deficit.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this guide:

  • What a caloric deficit is and why it matters

  • The best vegan foods to support fat loss

  • How to track your macros (protein, carbs, fats) effectively

What’s the Deal with a Caloric Deficit?

To shed those extra pounds, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Sounds simple, right? But it’s not just about eating less; it’s about eating smart. The best way to transform your body is by choosing foods that keep you full, provide the nutrients you need, and fit into your calorie goals.

Achieving a Caloric Deficit as a Vegan

Here’s a fun fact: diets that involve extreme restrictions are often less effective. Telling yourself you can never have pizza or vegan donuts makes them even more tempting! The real trick is understanding that fat loss doesn’t mean you have to give up all your favorite foods.

The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss is simple: You need to burn more energy than you consume. This means maintaining a caloric deficit over time. But while calories are crucial, you also need to hit your macro targets: proteins, fats, and carbs.

To keep your health in check and avoid feeling deprived, aim for a balance. About 80% of your calories should come from nutritious, whole plant foods you enjoy. This approach is known as flexible dieting, and it lets you enjoy a variety of foods while reaching your goals.

Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss

Now, let’s dive into the best vegan foods to help you reach your fat loss goals. We’ll explore high-protein, high-carb, and high-fat options that are not only nutritious but also help keep you full.

The Best Vegan Protein Sources

Protein is crucial for weight loss because it helps preserve lean muscle mass while losing fat. High-protein diets can increase satiety, making you feel fuller for longer and reducing overall calorie intake.

Additionally, protein has a higher thermic effect compared to fats and carbohydrates, meaning your body burns more calories during digestion. This combination of increased fullness, muscle preservation, and higher calorie burn supports effective and sustainable weight loss.

Here are the top 5 vegan protein sources:

  • Lentils: Packed with protein and fiber, great for soups and stews.

  • Tempeh: Fermented soy product that’s high in protein and adds a savory flavor.

  • Tofu: Versatile and can be used in a variety of dishes.

  • Seitan: High in protein, perfect for a meat-like texture.

  • Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP): A protein-rich, dried soy product.

Note: While nuts and quinoa have some protein, they are better as complementary sources rather than primary ones. For a protein boost, consider adding a high-quality protein powder to your diet.

Graphic 1: Macronutrient Profile of Top Plant-Based Protein Sources.

The Best Vegan Carb Sources

Carbohydrates play a vital role in weight management by providing the body with a primary source of energy. Choosing complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, can aid in weight loss because they are rich in fiber, which helps increase satiety and stabilize blood sugar levels.

This can reduce overall calorie intake and prevent overeating. Additionally, the steady release of energy from complex carbs helps maintain muscle function and supports physical activity, which is needed for effective weight loss and overall health.

Here are the top 5 vegan carb sources:

  • Quinoa: High in protein and fiber, great for salads and bowls.

  • Sweet Potatoes: Rich in vitamins and fiber.

  • Brown Rice: A filling, nutrient-dense choice.

  • Oats: Perfect for breakfast or snacks.

  • Buckwheat: A good source of protein and essential nutrients.

Pro Tip: Focus on whole, less-processed carbs like these for longer-lasting energy and satisfaction.

Graphic 2: Macronutrient Profile of Plant-Based Carbohydrate Sources.

The Best Vegetables for Vegan Fat Loss

Vegetables are essential for weight loss due to their high fiber and low calorie content. They provide a sense of fullness and help control appetite, making it easier to maintain a calorie deficit. Rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, vegetables also support overall health and metabolic function.

Additionally, the low energy density of vegetables means you can consume larger portions without consuming excessive calories, making them a key component of a balanced, weight-loss-friendly diet.

Here are the top 5 vegetables:

  • Kale: Nutrient-dense and versatile.

  • Spinach: High in vitamins and minerals.

  • Broccoli: Packed with fiber and antioxidants.

  • Asparagus: Great for digestion.

  • Brussels Sprouts: High in fiber and vitamins.

Pro Tip: You can enjoy large portions of these veggies without overdoing your calorie intake.

The best vegetables for fat or weight loss for vegans

Graphic 3: Macronutrient Profile of the Top 5 Vegetable Sources.

The Best Fruits for Vegan Fat Loss

Fruits are important for weight loss because they are nutrient-dense and low in calories. They provide essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants while offering natural sweetness that can satisfy cravings for sugary foods. High in fiber, fruits help increase satiety and regulate appetite, which can aid in reducing overall calorie intake.

Additionally, the natural sugars in fruits are accompanied by water and fiber, which slow down digestion and contribute to a steady release of energy, supporting sustainable weight management.

Here are the top 5 fruits:

  • Berries: Low in calories and high in antioxidants.

  • Grapefruit: Helps with fat metabolism.

  • Kiwi: Packed with vitamins and fiber.

  • Apples: Great for snacking and adding to meals.

  • Honeydew and Watermelon: Hydrating and low in calories.

Pro Tip: Balance fruit intake with your overall calorie goals to avoid exceeding your limits.

The best fruits for fat or weight loss for vegans

Graphic 4: Macronutrient Profile of the Top 5 Fruit Sources.

How to Track Your Macros as a Vegan

Tracking your macros can be a game-changer for fat loss. Here’s how to get started:

  1. Use a Nutrition Calculator: Our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator helps you figure out your daily protein, carb, and fat needs. You will need to sign into Facebook Messenger to access our calculator.

  2. Create a Meal Plan: Plan your meals around high-protein foods and adjust with veggies and carbs to hit your macro targets.

  3. Track Your Intake: Use apps like Cronometer to keep an eye on your daily intake and make adjustments as needed.

Pro Tip: Planning and tracking help remove guesswork and keep you on track.

Your Next Steps for Vegan Fat Loss

Ready to take the next step and get personalized support on your fat loss journey? If you're tired of going it alone and want to lose 5 to 20 pounds over the next 90 days, we would love to help you!

Join the Vegan Superhero Academy! We’ve successfully coached over 2,250 vegans like you who are ready to transform their health and achieve their goals. Our 1-1 coaching program offers customized plans, 24/7 support, and a like-minded community to help you every step of the way.

Click here to learn more and join our community!

Our academy members at the 2023 Vegan Superhero Retreat.

Summary 

The key to fat loss is maintaining a caloric deficit while meeting your macro targets. Focus on high-volume, low-calorie foods like protein-rich sources, whole carbs, and nutrient-dense veggies and fruits. Tracking your macros meticulously ensures you stay on course.

If you’d like to hear us talk through this topic, check out our podcast episode “The Best Vegan Foods for Fat Loss” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher!

Have a question? Send us a message in Facebook Messenger!

 

Discover the Anti-Aging Power of Dr. Greger's Diet

Eat Like Dr. Greger for 7 Days and Transform Your Health

Ever wondered what it’s like to follow a nutrition expert’s diet? I did just that!

I embarked on a 7-day journey to eat like Dr. Michael Greger, renowned physician and one of the leading researchers in the world, and now I’m sharing my experience with you.

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

Why This Challenge?

Inspired by Dr. Greger’s latest book, How Not to Age, I decided to take on his anti-aging diet for a week. This diet is packed with a variety of low sodium, anti-aging foods, and focuses on a vegan diet that’s also low in protein. The idea is to promote longevity and overall health through nutrition.

What’s in Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Diet?

Dr. Greger’s diet is all about incorporating a plethora of plant-based foods that have been scientifically proven to slow down the aging process. Here are some key components of his diet:

  • Daily Dozen: This includes a mix of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.

  • Extra Anti-Aging Foods: These are newer additions based on Dr. Greger’s recent research. They include some unusual but incredibly healthy options.

Day 1: The Beginning

Starting off, I was both excited and nervous. The diet required me to slash my salt intake and cut my protein intake in half. This was a significant change, even for someone who has been on a vegan diet for a decade.

Day 2: Adapting to New Foods

One of the biggest challenges was incorporating new foods like mushrooms, which I’ve never liked. However, knowing their health benefits, I tried my best to find ways to enjoy them.

Day 3: The Low Protein Challenge

A major aspect of this diet is its low protein content, which made me wonder about its long-term effects on muscle building and strength.

Day 4: Finding the Right Balance

By mid-week, I was starting to enjoy some of the new foods. However, keeping the sodium intake low remained a challenge.

Day 5: Unexpected Benefits

I noticed a drop in my blood pressure, likely due to the low sodium diet. This was an encouraging sign that the diet was working.

Day 6: Getting Used to It

As the week progressed, I started to get used to the diet. The low sodium and low protein intake were becoming manageable.

Day 7: Wrapping Up

By the end of the week, I felt healthier and more energized. The variety of foods kept things interesting, and I made some long-term changes to my diet.

Why You Should Try It

If you’re interested in vegan weight loss strategies, a fit and healthy lifestyle, or simply want to know more about the benefits of a vegan diet, this challenge is for you. It’s an excellent way to explore new foods and learn about effective and practical tips for vegan weight loss.

For full details, make sure to watch the full video above.

Get the Full List and More!

Want to dive deeper? Get the full list of Dr. Greger's anti-aging foods, the health benefits for each, and the evidence that backs it. Plus, check out our free nutrition calculator to get your custom plant-based nutrition targets.

Dr. Greger’s anti-Ageing Foods

Get the full list of Dr. Greger's anti-aging foods, the health benefits for each, and the evidence that backs them.

Click here for the list.

Want To Get Your Custom Nutrition Needs?

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Dr. Michael Greger: The Shocking New Research On Diet & Longevity

In this interview, Dr. Michael Greger shares his most shocking discoveries from his latest book, How Not to Age.

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

You can purchase Dr. Greger’s new book, How Not to Age, here.

Dive into Dr. Michael Greger's Insights on Diet and Longevity

Dr. Michael Greger has dedicated three years to researching and writing one of the best books on health and diet. Despite the challenge of confronting long-held beliefs, his work is crucial. As the founder and director of NutritionFacts.org and a New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Greger brings a wealth of nutrition expertise. This post will explore his latest findings on diet and longevity and why a plant-based diet is key to a longer, healthier life.

The Impact of Diet on Longevity

One of the most significant revelations from Dr. Greger's research is the extent to which lifestyle choices, particularly diet, influence longevity. He notes that only about 15% to 30% of our lifespan is determined by our genes. The remainder is shaped by how we live our lives. Dr. Greger highlights studies showing that plant-based diets can significantly slow the rate of aging.

Autophagy: The Body's Cleanup Crew

Autophagy is a vital process in the body that acts as both a salvage operation and a garbage disposal, picking up nutrients and clearing away debris. Dr. Greger explains that fasting is commonly associated with autophagy, but it often requires several days of water-only fasting to be effective.

Fortunately, there are other ways to boost autophagy, such as exercise and consuming certain foods. Foods like coffee, which contains chlorogenic acids, and wheat germ, rich in spermidine, can activate autophagy without prolonged fasting.

The Role of Zombie Cells in Aging

Zombie cells, or senescent cells, are cells that have stopped dividing but are not entirely dead. They release inflammatory compounds that contribute to aging. Dr. Greger emphasizes the importance of preventing cells from becoming prematurely senescent. This can be achieved by minimizing DNA damage through a diet rich in antioxidants, such as green tea and cruciferous vegetables.

Additionally, certain food compounds, like fisetin found in strawberries and quercetin in capers, have been shown to have senolytic effects, helping to clear out these harmful cells.

The Dangers of Excess Weight

Dr. Greger describes research that states that even modest weight gain affects longevity. Being just 11 pounds overweight can lower life expectancy by 30 minutes per day, comparable to smoking two cigarettes or drinking two pints of beer daily.

The most dangerous fat is visceral fat, which wraps around internal organs and releases inflammatory substances. Thankfully, this fat is also the first to be lost through diet and exercise.

The Power of AMPK

AMPK is a pivotal enzyme that serves as an energy regulator in the body, akin to a fuel gauge. Dr. Greger likens it to having the potential of "exercise in a pill." Enhancing AMPK can be achieved through exercise, calorie restriction, and specific dietary interventions, such as consuming vinegar or barberries.

Protein and Longevity

Dr. Greger further explains that elevated insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels are linked to shorter lifespans. Lowering protein intake, particularly from animal sources, can reduce IGF-1 levels. Conversely, plant proteins do not provoke the same increase in IGF-1, rendering them a healthier option.

Reducing protein consumption to recommended levels can also decrease levels of mTOR, an enzyme that accelerates aging.

Supplements: Are They Necessary?

While Dr. Greger initially considered recommending a variety of supplements, his research led him to a different conclusion. Most supplements, including resveratrol and NAD boosters, did not demonstrate significant benefits in his studies.

Instead, Dr. Greger advocates for obtaining nutrients from whole foods and spices, such as turmeric, amla, black cumin, and long pepper.

Conclusion

Dr. Michael Greger's exhaustive research provides compelling evidence that diet plays an essential role in longevity. Adopting a plant-based diet, engaging in regular exercise, and making informed lifestyle choices can significantly enhance our prospects of living a longer, healthier life.

For those inspired by Dr. Greger's work, watching his video and utilizing our free vegan nutrition calculator can be excellent next steps toward better health.

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Balancing Your Hormones, Menopause, Omega-3s, Spreading Veganism, & More | Dr. Neal Barnard

Dr. Neil Barnard is a professor of medicine, the founder of the Barnard Medical Center, and the president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, all while constantly writing new books.

How does he get it all done? 😅

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

Here are some highlights from this powerful interview with the legend, Dr. Barnard.

The Power of a Plant-Based Diet

Switching to a plant-based diet can revolutionize your health. This isn't just about weight loss; it's about preventing and even reversing diseases. Dr. Barnard emphasizes that if you're not eating meat, your arteries can open up again, making diseases reversible. This is crucial because many health issues, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, are diet-related.

Practical Tips for Transitioning

To successfully transition to a vegan diet, start with small steps. Spend a week exploring plant-based options you could enjoy. Oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, pancakes without butter, or scrambled tofu instead of eggs can be excellent choices. After a week, you’ll have a list of foods you like. Then, try a three-week test drive, eating vegan all the time. Most people notice significant changes in their weight and overall health within this period.

Addressing Menopausal Symptoms with Diet

Menopause can bring various symptoms, but diet can help manage them. Dr. Barnard's research shows that a plant-based diet, low in oils, and includes soybeans can significantly reduce hot flashes.

Steps to Follow

  1. Adopt a Plant-Based Diet: Eliminate animal products.

  2. Keep Oils Low: Reduce intake of high-fat plant foods like avocados and peanut butter.

  3. Include Soybeans: Half a cup of mature soybeans daily can be particularly effective.

Combating Hormonal Imbalances

For conditions like hypothyroidism and PCOS, a plant-based diet can be beneficial. Research suggests that hypothyroidism is least common in vegans. Ensuring adequate iodine intake, such as through seaweed, is also essential. For PCOS, a diet similar to that recommended for diabetes, which focuses on whole plant foods and low in added oils, can be transformative.

The Role of Omega-3 Fats

Omega-3 fats are crucial for health but should be consumed cautiously. High levels of omega-3 have been linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer, so it's important to try to get these fats from whole foods like flaxseeds and chia seeds rather than supplements.

Personal Care Products and Health

While diet is the primary focus, it's also wise to avoid certain substances in personal care products. Aluminum, found in many deodorants, is a neurotoxin and should be avoided. Opt for aluminum-free options to reduce exposure.

Conclusion

Adopting a plant-based diet offers numerous health benefits, from weight loss to reducing menopausal symptoms and managing hormonal imbalances. Practical steps like starting with small changes, keeping oils low, and including soybeans can make a significant difference.

Additionally, being mindful of personal care products can further enhance overall health.

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How To Eat To Build Lean Vegan Muscle

When aiming to build muscle, it's crucial to focus on three main pillars: calories, protein, and meal volume.

In this video, I'll show you exactly how to eat and create a meal to build lean vegan muscle!

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

The Importance of Calories in Building Muscle

Calories play a significant role in muscle building because achieving optimal muscle growth requires a caloric surplus. This means consuming slightly more calories than you burn daily. When in a caloric surplus, your body has the energy it needs to grow muscle tissue.

Understanding Caloric Surplus

A recommended caloric surplus is around 10% for muscle gain without excessive fat accumulation. For example, if you burn 2,000 calories daily, aim to consume about 2,200 calories. This controlled surplus ensures you have ample energy to build muscle effectively.

Protein: The Building Block of Muscle

Protein is essential because it serves as the primary building block of muscle from a nutritional standpoint. Adequate amino acid intake stimulates muscle protein synthesis, the process by which your body builds new muscle.

How Much Protein Do You Need?

Aim to consume protein at a rate of 0.4 grams per kilogram of body weight per meal, spread across at least four meals per day. For instance, a person weighing 70 kg should consume around 28 grams of protein per meal. To maximize muscle growth, strive for a total daily protein intake of 1.5 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight.

Balancing Volume for Optimal Nutrition

Meal volume is important because you want to ensure your meals are manageable in size yet nutritionally balanced. Striking a good balance between nutrient intake and meal volume is key.

Building a Muscle-Building Meal

A typical muscle-building meal includes a main protein source, micronutrient-rich foods, and calorie-dense additions. Here’s how to structure your plate:

  1. Main Protein Source: Tofu is an excellent choice, providing 36 grams of protein per serving. Marinate it in Thai peanut sauce for added flavor and nutrients.

  2. Micronutrient-rich foods: Include a variety of fruits and vegetables to ensure you're getting enough vitamins and minerals. Cooked spinach and red cabbage are great options as they reduce volume while retaining nutrients.

  3. Calorie-Dense Additions: Add high-fat foods like avocado and carbohydrate sources like quinoa. These provide the extra calories needed without adding excessive volume. Additionally, sauces like Thai peanut sauce can significantly boost calorie intake.

Avoiding Common Muscle-Building Mistakes

Too Many Low-Calorie Foods

One common mistake is focusing too much on low-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables. While nutrient-dense, they can add too much volume, making it hard to consume enough calories.

Too Many Calorie-Dense Foods

Conversely, overloading on calorie-dense foods like sauces can lead to excessive calorie intake without providing sufficient micronutrients. This can result in fat gain rather than muscle growth.

Summary: Key Takeaways for Vegan Muscle Building

To build lean muscle on a vegan diet, focus on maintaining a caloric surplus, consuming adequate plant protein, and balancing meal volume. Adjust your nutrition based on your body composition and goals. For personalized guidance, download our ultimate plant-based nutrition guide linked in the description below.

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How to Grocery Shop as a Healthy VEGAN

I'm excited to share with you a selection of delicious and nutritious foods that are perfect for a healthy vegan grocery haul. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. ⬇️⬇️

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

Tip #1: Start with Fruits and Vegetables

When you begin your grocery shopping, head directly to the produce section. Fruits and vegetables should make up the majority of your diet. Stock up on these nutrient-dense items first. While it's okay to indulge in some processed foods, prioritize unprocessed, wholesome plant-based options.

Why This Matters

Emphasizing fruits and vegetables ensures you receive a wide array of essential nutrients. Leafy greens like kale and spinach are rich in micronutrients such as vitamin A and vitamin K. They're also high in fiber and versatile enough for smoothies, salads, and side dishes.

Tip #2: Go In with a Plan

Always shop with a grocery list. Knowing what you need before entering the store helps prevent impulse buys and ensures you stick to your nutrition plan, aligning with your health and fitness goals.

Practical Application

Having a list helps you remain focused and guarantees you procure all the ingredients necessary for balanced meals. It's beneficial to plan your meals for the week in advance so you know exactly what to purchase.

Tip #3: Buy in Bulk When Possible

Purchasing in bulk can save you both time and money. It reduces the number of trips to the store and often comes with a lower cost per unit.

Where to Buy

Consider shopping at local farmers' markets for seasonal produce. These markets frequently offer great deals on bulk purchases.

Tip #4: Avoid Shopping When Hungry

Shopping on an empty stomach can lead to impulsive buying of unhealthy items. Eat a small snack before heading to the store to mitigate this risk.

Personal Anecdote

I used to grocery shop right after work, feeling starved and tired. I'd end up with a cart full of snacks that didn't support my fitness goals. Now, I eat a small snack before shopping, making a significant difference.

Tip #5: Follow the Law of Grocery Carts

Whatever you place in your cart will end up in your pantry or fridge, tempting you when you're hungry. Encourage your family to make healthier choices as well, so they're not bringing unhealthy snacks into the house.

Friendly Reminder:

✅ Returning your grocery cart is not only courteous but also adds a few more steps to your day.

Focus on Protein

If your goal is to build muscle or lose body fat, ensure your meals include a protein source. While all plants contain protein, some sources are more protein-rich than others.

Lesser Processed Options

Lentils, tofu, and tempeh are excellent vegan protein sources. Tofu, in particular, is incredibly versatile and can be used in a variety of dishes such as stir-fries and scrambles.

Moderately Processed Options

Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP) and high-protein pasta made from edamame, mung beans, or chickpeas are great choices. They are high in protein but low in fat.

More Processed Options

For those new to veganism, plant-based meats like Beyond Burger or Tofurkey plant-based chicken are convenient. However, they are more processed and should be consumed in moderation.

Protein Supplements

Protein powders and bars can help you meet your protein needs, especially when you're on the go.

Grains and Legumes

Grains and legumes are crucial components of a vegan diet. They provide a good balance of protein, carbohydrates, and other nutrients.

Examples

Oats, quinoa, black beans, and chickpeas are staples. They offer a well-rounded nutrient profile but are primarily carbohydrate sources.

Special Mention

Edamame stands out for its high protein content and is also an excellent source of folate. Rinse canned beans to improve digestibility and reduce gas.

Miscellaneous Items

Other essentials like plant-based milk, hummus, and vegan cheeses add variety to your diet and can be incorporated into numerous recipes.

Condiments and Seasonings

Bragg's oil-free vinaigrette, soy sauce, and salsa are fantastic for adding flavor without extra calories. Experiment with different seasonings to keep your meals exciting.

Supplements

Consider a vitamin B12 supplement in addition to consuming fortified milks & nutritional yeast. Omega-3 supplements sourced from algae are also beneficial, especially if you're not getting enough from whole foods like chia seeds and flax seeds.

Snacks

Frozen fruits are a nutritious and cost-effective option. They are often more affordable and retain more nutrients than fresh fruits.

Conclusion

That's a wrap! I hope you found this guide immensely helpful. The next time you go grocery shopping, keep these tips in mind to ensure you're meeting all your nutritional goals as a vegan.

If you’d like this information in a convenient download, check out our grocery guide below.

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Fit Vegan Fridge Tour - (What Foods I Buy To Stay Lean & Fit)

Transitioning to a vegan diet can be daunting, especially when it comes to figuring out what essentials to keep in your fridge. To help ease the process, we're diving into a comprehensive vegan fridge tour.

This video will guide you through the must-have items for vegan shopping and meal prep, while also offering practical tips for sustaining a healthy, plant-based lifestyle.

Let us know what you think! Leave your comments on YouTube.

Stocking Up on Plant Milks

One of the staples in any vegan fridge is plant milk. Whether you prefer soy, walnut, hemp, rice, oat, or almond milk, these dairy alternatives are rich in nutrients and versatile in use. Soy milk, in particular, is creamy and high in protein, making it a favorite for many.

Balancing Whole Foods and Processed Foods

It's advisable to maintain about 80% whole foods in your diet, leaving room for 20% processed vegan options like vegan pizza or sausages. This balance allows you to enjoy comfort foods while still prioritizing nutrient-dense choices.

Protein Sources: Tofu and More

Tofu is a versatile and protein-rich staple that every vegan should consider. Marinating and pre-cooking tofu makes it easier to incorporate into meals. Additionally, other protein sources like edamame, soy curls, and seitan offer variety and convenience.

Snacks and Condiments

Snacks like hummus and sauerkraut not only add flavor but also offer nutritional benefits like probiotics. Condiments such as soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and mustard are essential for adding zest to vegan dishes. Nutritional yeast is another must-have for its cheesy flavor and nutritional benefits.

Fruits and Vegetables

Fresh fruits like pineapple and strawberries, along with veggies like spinach, bell peppers, and broccoli, are essential for a balanced vegan diet. Prepping these items in advance can save time and help you stay on track with your nutrition goals.

Nuts and Seeds

Ground flax seeds and Brazil nuts are excellent sources of Omega-3s and selenium, respectively. Incorporating these into your diet can help you effortlessly meet your daily nutritional requirements.

The Freezer: A Vegan’s Best Friend

Your freezer can store a variety of essentials like frozen bananas, blueberries, and pre-packaged vegan meals. These items are perfect for quick smoothies or meals, ensuring that you always have nutritious options available.

Conclusion

Maintaining a well-stocked vegan fridge is easier than it seems. By balancing whole foods with occasional processed treats, preparing meals in advance, and keeping a variety of fruits, vegetables, and protein sources on hand, you can simplify your vegan lifestyle.

I hope this fridge tour has given you valuable insights and practical tips for vegan shopping and meal prep.

LINKED VIDEO - Does Flaxseed Provide Enough Omega 3 For Vegans   

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The Top 5 Vegan Nutrition Mistakes

Veganism is a lifestyle, not a diet.

But, whether you went vegan for your health, the animals, the planet, or a combination of all three, what you eat plays a major role in how you look and feel.

If you’re new to the plant-based lifestyle (or even if you’ve been vegan for a while), it can be challenging to navigate a new set of nutritional principles and easy to develop habits that are detrimental to your long-term health and fitness goals.

I want to help you avoid that. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to avoid five of the most common nutrition mistakes that prevent vegans from accomplishing their health and fitness goals.

Here’s a quick breakdown of those mistakes:

1. Assuming all vegan products are automatically healthy

2. Consuming too few (or too many) calories

3. Believing that "clean eating" will build your dream body

4. Not eating enough protein

5. Overlooking supplementation

MISTAKE 1: ASSUMING THAT VEGAN PRODUCTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY HEALTHY

There is plenty of scientific evidence that proves vegan diets are healthier than non-vegan diets on average.

For example, the EPIC-Oxford study, which has studied 65,000 men and women over the last 30 years to determine the long-term effects of diet on human health, has shown that a vegan diet is associated with around a 50% reduction in risk of high blood pressure, significantly lower levels of blood cholesterol, a 25–30% reduction in ischaemic heart disease, 19% reduction in cancer risk, and a 30–40% reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes.

But just because vegan diets are healthier on average doesn’t mean that all vegan foods are automatically health-promoting. 

After all, Oreos are vegan!

Generally speaking, however, the more calories you consume from whole plant foods instead of heavily processed vegan products, the more nutrients you will consume and the healthier your diet will be.

My general recommendation is that you consume at least 80% of your daily calorie intake from whole plant foods. This can include everything from raw fruit and leafy greens to cooked rice, legume-based soups, curries, oatmeal, sushi, and way more! 

It’s important to remember that the term “whole plant foods” does not mean that the food must be raw or cooked without added flavor. It simply means that you are consuming plants as close to their natural state as possible.

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with consuming processed vegan foods in moderation. 

After you have biased at least 80% of your daily calories toward whole plant foods, you are welcome to spend the remaining 20% of your daily calories on more heavily processed foods like vegan mock meats, dairy imitations, snacks, and sweet treats as you can see in the diagram below.

 
80/20 Rule for vegan calories
 

While processed vegan foods are less healthy than whole plant foods, they typically don’t contain most of the unhealthy compounds found in animal foods like cholesterol, trans fatty acids, heme iron, hormones, antibiotics, and more.

And while your body does need cholesterol to make certain hormones and build cells, you don’t need to consume dietary cholesterol from food because your body inherently produces all the cholesterol you need. 

In fact, many would argue that you’d be best not to consume dietary cholesterol, which is only found in animal products, given that dietary cholesterol has been linked to a wide range of cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

Beyond cholesterol, trans fats are another category considered to be a serious risk factor to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Trans fats have also been associated with symptoms of depression, lower testosterone in men, and dementia. 

Artificial trans fats produced from vegetable oils were banned in the United States in 2015, which means the only major dietary source of trans fats today are those that occur naturally in animal products.

It is commonly thought that people who eat plant-based diets may be more prone to iron deficiency. But it turns out that they are no more likely to suffer from iron deficiency than people who eat animal products. In fact, there is even research to suggest that people who eat plant-based diets actually get more iron than those who eat animal products. 

However, there is a difference when it comes to the type of iron. The iron found in plants is non-heme iron, whereas the iron contained within the blood and muscle from animal flesh is known as heme iron.

Heme iron consumption has been associated with a 27% increase in the risk of coronary heart disease, a 16% increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes, and a 12% increase risk in cancer for every milligram of heme iron consumed per day. In fact, researchers can tell how much meat a cancer patient eats by analyzing a biopsy of their tumor. Heme iron consumption has also been associated with an increased risk of stroke.

Not only do processed vegan meat and dairy alternatives not contain cholesterol, trans fat, or heme iron, they also don’t contain any hormones or antibiotics.

While you should be mindful of how much saturated fat and sodium you are consuming through heavily processed vegan foods, the point here is that processed vegan foods, while considerably less healthy than a vegan diet centered around whole plant foods, are certainly an improvement over an equivalent diet of heavily processed non-vegan foods.

Lastly, it's important to note that vegan products are 100% better for the animals and the environment. 

That’s a win-win-win for your health, the animals, and our planet!

MISTAKE 2: CONSUMING TOO FEW (OR TOO MANY) CALORIES

Many people who try veganism and then revert back to eating animal products claim that they felt tired or had low energy. 

But is this a fair critique of an exclusively plant-based diet, or is it possible that other factors may have played a role in these complaints? 

At first glance, one might be tempted to divert this unwanted attention toward any potential flaws in the vegan diet and make the claim that sleep and stress play a pivotal role in your energy levels. And while it’s always a good idea to optimize your sleep habits and manage your stress levels, it’s unlikely that this select group of vegan drop-outs all experienced a coincidental decrease in sleep quality upon their adoption of a vegan diet. 

Assuming sleep quality and stress levels are unchanged, then the most likely reason some people have reported feeling lethargic or low-energy following the transition to a plant-based diet is because they simply weren’t consuming enough calories.  

Calories are your body’s main source of energy, which means, if you don’t consume enough calories on a daily basis, then you’re simply not going to have enough energy to live vibrantly and train with intensity. 

But, to be fair, this is an easy mistake to make. 

Generally speaking, the caloric density of plant foods is significantly lower than that of animal products, so you need to eat more volume to get the same number of calories. 

Or maybe you’ve made the mistakes of simply removing all of the animal products from your diet without replacing them with new foods like tofu, tempeh, beans, whole grains, a beautiful array of new vegetables, and a modest amount of nuts and seeds.

And if you are having trouble eating enough calories to meet your needs, don’t limit your intake of fruits and vegetables. Instead, focus on increasing your intake of wholesome higher-calorie foods like nuts and seeds, avocado, and dried fruits.

At the same time, there is a general misconception that going vegan is a good way to lose weight. Eating more plants generally does help people lose weight, but depending on what you eat, it is just as easy to gain weight eating plant foods as it is to gain weight eating animal products. 

If you are consuming more calories than you burn every day, even if you are eating lots of fruits and vegetables, then you will gain weight regardless of which foods you are consuming.

In other words, if a daily intake of 2,200 calories is what it takes to gain weight for a smaller female, it doesn’t matter if you reach that caloric target by eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches or eating steak and eggs. 

For that reason, I would recommend tracking what you eat for a few weeks to anyone making the transition to a vegan diet simply to make sure you are eating about as many calories as you burn every day. 

This is called eating at caloric maintenance, and it’s a good place to be as you give your body time to adjust to a new eating pattern. 

Then, if you’re feeling great and have plenty of energy a few weeks into your new vegan diet, you’ll know you can continue around caloric maintenance for sustained results. Or, you can either lower your calories to burn fat or raise your calories to start building lean muscle more optimally.

MISTAKE 3: BELIEVING THAT “CLEAN EATING” WILL BUILD YOUR DREAM BODY

Many vegans have fallen prey to this idea that you can simply “eat clean” to build your dream body by consuming all of your calories from healthy, nutritious foods. 

And, there is some degree of truth to this since healthy, nutritious foods support the development of a healthy, lean physique, but it’s not quite as simple as relying exclusively on the “purity” of your foods.

More specifically, there are two primary nutritional drivers that dictate every physique endeavor: calorie intake and protein intake.

If you burn 2,000 calories per day, but somehow manage to eat 3,000 calories of raw fruits and vegetables, you might have perfect blood work (which is wonderful) but you’re not going to be losing any fat.

Conversely, if you burn 2,000 calories per day and eat 1,600 calories of junk food, you will lose weight. And if you keep your protein intake high enough while consuming fewer calories than you need from vegan junk foods, you can lose almost exclusively body fat.

Weird, right? 

As counterintuitive as it may seem to many, it’s true. You can gain fat by eating “clean” and you can lose fat while eating mostly junk food. It all comes down to your overall caloric consumption. 

Also, don’t forget the importance of resistance training! Paired with proper protein intakes, resistance training is the primary driver of new muscle growth. 

But to put a nice bow on the topic of “clean eating,” I want to reiterate that I recommend people get at least 80% of their daily calories from nutritious, whole plant foods that they enjoy. 

The remaining 20% of your calories can come from more processed foods. For instance, if you love chocolate and vegan pizza, then include a bit of both of those foods in your diet. It will likely serve you well in terms of sustainability and enjoyability. 

Personally, I get about 90% of my daily calories from relatively unprocessed, nutritious plant foods, but I’m not afraid to eat a bit of my favorite processed foods from time to time. 

For those who may be new to this idea, this way of eating is known as flexible dieting.

MISTAKE 4: NOT EATING ENOUGH PROTEIN-RICH FOODS

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight (0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight) for healthy adults. 

This amount is defined as “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.” This means that as a bare minimum, a 180-pound person only needs 65 grams of plant protein per day. As long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet, this recommendation is extremely easy to meet.

However, many decades of research and anecdotal evidence have proven that active people, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

Studies from the University of Western Ontario, the Exercise Metabolism Research Group, and McMaster University all agree that the ideal range to aim for is 0.7 to 0.9 grams of high-quality protein per pound of body weight (1.5 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight) to maximize muscle growth.

That means that a 180-pound person who performs somewhere between three and six hours of formal exercise per week would benefit from a protein intake of approximately 144 grams per day. 

More practically speaking, this person could easily split that protein target into three whole meals of 36 grams of protein per serving and a post-workout protein shake to meet their needs. 

But what happens when you don’t consume enough protein on a daily basis? 

Simply put, you won’t be building muscle as effectively as you could.

So if you’re serious about your vegan muscle-building endeavor, you would be wise to consume protein within the recommendations featured in the graphic below.

The most common sources of vegan protein for people looking to add size to their frame are tofu, tempeh, seitan, TVP, legume-based pasta, protein powders, and certain whole grains like Ezekiel bread.

 
 

MISTAKE 5: OVERLOOKING SUPPLEMENTATION

Although a wholesome plant-based diet has been proven to be the healthiest diet in the world, most vegans would benefit from taking certain supplements. 

This, however, does not in any way make the vegan diet inferior to other dietary patterns, and it is well known that most omnivores would also benefit from supplementing with these nutrients of focus. 

Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 is not made by plants or animals but rather by microbes that blanket the earth. 

All vegans should supplement with vitamin B12. 

Dr. Michael Greger, one of the world’s leading experts in nutrition, recommends consuming at least 2,000 mcg (µg) of cyanocobalamin once each week, ideally as a chewable, sublingual, or liquid supplement taken on an empty stomach. 

You can also consume B12-fortified foods like nutritional yeast, but there is no defined upper intake level of B12, so many experts advise that you err on the higher side of consumption. 

But B12 supplementation recommendations vary depending on the demographic. Those over 65 years of age should take at least 1,000 mcg (µg) of cyanocobalamin every day. 

Children also have different needs. 

Bonus Tip: If you’re experiencing deficiency symptoms, the best test is a urine MMA (methylmalonic acid) test, not a serum B12 level test.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Another thing to pay attention to is your intake of omega-3 fatty acids. 

The three omega-3 fatty acids are ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). All three are critical to human health.

DHA, in particular, is a primary structural fat in the human brain and eyes, representing about 97% of all omega-3 fats in the brain and 93% of all omega-3 fats in the retina. 

Vegans cannot easily obtain any direct sources of EPA or DHA without supplementation, but we can convert ALA from plant foods like flax seeds, chia seeds, and walnuts into EPA and DHA. However, these conversion rates are quite low and likely not enough for optimal health. 

In healthy young men, approximately 8% of ALA can be converted to EPA and 0-4% of ALA can be converted to DHA. In healthy young women, the conversion rates are slightly higher, which is thought to be the result of higher estrogen levels. Women can convert approximately 21% of ALA to EPA and 9% of ALA to DHA.

While this might be enough for survival, nutrition authorities recommend an additional 250 milligrams a day of pre-formed EPA and DHA. The word “pre-formed” simply means that it comes in the actual form of EPA and DHA, not the converted form from ALA. So, in addition to consuming ALA from whole plant foods, we should consume 250 milligrams of pre-formed EPA and DHA every day, which can be obtained from algae oil in supplement form. Thankfully, algae-based supplements don’t contain all of the toxic contaminants that fish oil supplements do, so there’s no need to worry about supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids when you get them in plant form. 

Vitamin D

If you don’t get adequate sun exposure, you should aim to consume 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily, ideally alongside your largest meal of the day. 

But, it is worth nothing that you can also get adequate amounts of vitamin D with sensible amounts of sun exposure. The only catch is that you should have your arms and legs exposed in a tee shirt and shorts. 

As a general guideline, aim for 15 to 30 minutes of midday sun (15 for those with lighter skin and 30 for those with darker skin). During the winter months, if it is too cold in your area of the world to wear a tee shirt and shorts, then it’s best to supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

Calcium

It’s advised to consume at least 600 mg of calcium daily via calcium-rich plant foods (preferably low-oxalate dark leafy green vegetables), which include all greens except spinach, chard, and beet greens.

Make no mistake, all of those aforementioned foods are very healthy, but my point here is that they are not good calcium sources due to their oxalate content.

Other Micronutrient Considerations

Iodine, iron, and selenium are three additional micronutrients that warrant particular focus in any well-designed diet. 

To make sure that you are getting enough iodine, I recommend incorporating seaweed as a snack or into Asian dishes like miso soup or vegan sushi. Or, if you don’t like seaweed and don’t use iodized salt, then you can take a 150 mcg daily iodine supplement. 

To make sure that you are getting enough iron, you should aim to combine foods rich in iron (such as tofu, edamame, soy nuts, and dark green vegetables) and vitamin C to increase absorption. Additionally, all menstruating women should get checked for iron deficiency anemia every few years since iron is lost through their monthly menstruation cycles. 

To make sure that you are getting enough selenium, I would recommend eating a daily Brazil nut. Or, as always, you can consider taking a supplement if you don’t consume enough dietary sources of selenium.

Summary

  • If you’re new to the vegan diet, don’t make the mistake of assuming that all vegan foods are healthy simply because they’re vegan. After all, Oreos, Fritos, and Sour Patch Kids are all vegan, but I doubt too many people are convinced those foods are the long-lost secret to health and longevity. 

  • Another common mistake of vegan dieting is consuming too few calories. By nature, many whole plant foods are much less calorically dense than animal products like beef, pork, salmon, eggs, butter, and milk. So before you go shaking your fist at a plant-based diet due to unexpected lethargy and irritability, be sure to track your calories for a few days to make sure you’re consuming enough food to support your daily activity. 

  • Don’t fall for the “clean eating” rumors. Although it will always be a wonderful idea to consume a large percentage of your daily calories from whole plant foods, “clean eating” in and of itself will not hand you fat loss or muscle-gain results. To be successful in any effort to lose fat or build muscle, you must strategically manipulate your overall caloric intake and your daily protein consumption. 

  • And to that point, be sure you are eating enough protein. Although people who don’t resistance train need much less protein than those who do, there are a host of positive health benefits associated with a diet high in plant protein. And for those to pack on as much muscle as possible, be sure to keep your protein intake around 0.8 grams of protein per day per pound of body weight. 

  • Lastly, don’t make the mistake of skipping supplementation where necessary. The most common nutrients of focus in the context of a plant-based diet tend to be vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, iodine, iron, and selenium.

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How Much Protein Can You Absorb?

THE MYTH AND THE TRUTH ABOUT PROTEIN ABSORPTION

As we all know, there are plenty of bro-science myths in the fitness industry that have little to no scientific merit.

In fact, one of the most popular myths in the body recomposition space is the idea that your body can only absorb a certain amount of protein from a single meal. 

If this is true, the rumored implications of eating more protein than your body can absorb in a single sitting are, at best, that you’re wasting precious air-fried tofu, or, at worst, that you’re actually storing said excess protein as unwanted body fat. 

But again, these are just whispers in the wind.

What does the current body of scientific literature really have to say about these alleged protein absorption limits within a single meal? 

Our current understanding is this: Your body can absorb nearly an unlimited amount of protein into the bloodstream. 

But even this statement warrants further explanation in the context of a body recomposition goal. 

My guess is that no one reading this article is reading this article because they’re interested in general protein absorption. 

If you’re here, you’re likely here because you want to build a noticeable and respectable amount of lean muscle, right?

And in that pursuit, you want to know the optimal amount of protein to consume per meal to maximize your training efforts. 

To that end, the more accurate question that actually does have scientific support is this: 

How much absorbed protein can your body use from a single meal for the purposes of building muscle?

Or, in more technical terms, what amount of protein maximally stimulates the postabsorptive rates of myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis?

Interestingly enough, research has long suggested that there is, in fact, a ceiling on muscle protein synthesis that has been termed the “muscle full effect.”

In other words, there is only so much protein that your body can use at a time to rebuild muscle.

WHAT IS THE PROTEIN ABSORPTION CEILING?

Obviously, there must be some upper limit regarding the amount of protein your body can process and use for rebuilding and growing muscle tissue, right? 

Your body almost certainly can’t utilize hundreds of grams of protein at a time for muscle growth. If it could, we’d all be slamming protein shakes into oblivion while gaining muscle at unregulated rates. 

The question is, how much protein will cause you to hit this acute ceiling? And how can we use that information to optimize our own protein consumption?

Well, according to numerous studies conducted over the past twenty years, the amount of protein that represents that ceiling isn’t very high. For more information, see these case studies from 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2015.

A 2014 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition determined that just a 20-gram dose of high-quality protein was sufficient for the maximal stimulation of postabsorptive rates of myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis in men with resistance-training experience who weigh around 80 kilograms.

The researchers concluded that any amount of protein consumed beyond 20 grams would get oxidized (meaning the amino acids would be burned for energy) or filtered out by the kidneys and excreted from the body in urine.

However, there are several important factors that this study did not analyze.

For example, while the average male fitness enthusiast probably does weigh around 80 kilograms, there are plenty of guys with substantially more muscle mass.

This begs a few questions:

  • Would heavier athletes with more muscle mass benefit from more muscle mass?

  • Does the thoroughness, complexity, and intensity of an individual’s workout warrant additional consideration of optimal protein consumption?

  • Do protein recommendations change as we get older? 

These are questions we will explore in a moment. 

WHAT AFFECTS YOUR BODY’S PROTEIN ABSORPTION CEILING?

Beyond total muscle mass, there are at least three other major factors that have a direct effect on an individual’s protein absorption ceiling:

  1. Their total amount of muscle mass

  2. The amount of muscle mass they train (full-body versus body part isolation)

  3. Their age

Let’s take a look at these factors in more detail. 

FACTOR 1: TOTAL MUSCLE MASS

In 2015, researchers from McMaster University used a linear regression analysis on previous protein research, which ultimately led them to recommend a target intake of 0.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per meal to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

That target is equal to 0.18 grams of protein per pound of body weight per meal.

Their research determined that consuming protein beyond this dose would result in no further stimulation of muscle protein synthesis.

According to their recommendation, a person who weighs 185 pounds should aim to consume 33 grams of high-quality protein per meal to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

Their findings have proven to be very helpful in determining the optimal protein feedings for a wide range of individuals with different body types. Rather than offering unhelpfully generic protein recommendations to a diverse audience, we can use these findings to more finely calibrate protein consumption on an athlete to athlete basis. 

That being said, protein recommendations based on lean muscle mass would hypothetically be the optimal measurement over protein recommendations based on total body weight, but this research does not yet exist.

Keep in mind too that these protein recommendations are most relevant for leaner individuals, which means these recommendations can be lowered for individuals who carry a considerable amount of body fat.

For women, we might consider “lean” in this context to mean a body fat percentage of 24% or less. And in men, we might consider “lean” to be below 16%. 

FACTOR 2: THE AMOUNT OF MUSCLE MASS YOU TRAIN

Over the years, one of the most notable design flaws in a host of “muscle full effect” studies has been the lack of practicality among the training programs the study participants were instructed to execute. 

Until recently, nearly all of the studies incorporated isolation-based training programs. And, in many cases, these exercise programs were limited to lower body training exclusively. 

For example, in the 2014 study that determined a 20-gram dose of protein is sufficient to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis, the subjects only performed one lower body workout that included just two exercises: leg presses and leg extensions.

The problem? 

This isn’t how most people train in practice, and it’s certainly not how dedicated bodybuilders and/or physique enthusiasts design their training programs. In fact, completing a workout consisting only of leg presses and leg extensions would only really make sense in context of a very high-frequency training split or when extremely time-restricted. 

Fortunately, in 2016, a team of researchers from the University of Stirling, McMaster University, and the University of Birmingham sought to correct this flaw by designing a “muscle full effect” study that required subjects to complete a full-body resistance training program.

Their full-body training program included the chest press, lat pull-down, leg curl, leg press, and leg extension.

And although that protocol still wasn't the most ideal training program for improving strength or body composition, it did succeed in pushing all of the major muscle groups to exhaustion, which was a step in the right direction in terms of mimicking traditional bodybuilding and powerlifting training programs. 

In other words, the total volume (workload multiplied by repetitions) and intensity of this study’s training program was, in fact, comparable to a heavy, compound-exercise-focused training program that most elite natural bodybuilders and all elite powerlifters follow.

So, what did this study find?

The researchers concluded that the ingestion of 40 grams of high-quality protein following a full-body resistance training workout stimulated a greater muscle protein response than 20 grams in young men with resistance training experience.

The clear takeaway from this study is that the amount of muscle mass you train as well as your training volume and intensity have a substantial effect on how much protein your body needs to rebuild and grow muscle.

In other words, bigger people with more muscle mass will need more protein than smaller people with less muscle mass. Similarly, people who spend more time resistance training will need more protein than people who spend less time resistance training. And lastly, people who train more muscle groups will need more protein than people who train fewer muscle groups. 

And this makes good sense. 

Consider this same idea through the lens of a car accident analogy. Smaller cars in smaller accidents likely require fewer resources for repair than larger cars in more severe accidents. It would be less expensive to repair an economy car that got into a minor fender-bender than it would be a massive truck that got completely totaled. 

On the same basic level, you can apply that same line of thinking to individualized protein needs. 

Although the specificity of these implications is nearly impossible to define on an individual basis, it seems as though most people would benefit most from consuming between 20-40 grams of protein per meal in order to maximize the immediate muscle protein synthetic response. 

FACTOR 3: AGE

As unfortunate as this may be for anyone moving gracefully into their golden years, anabolic resistance does occur as you age, which simply means it’s asymptotically more difficult to build muscle as you get older. 

To illustrate this point, let’s reference a 2015 study that analyzed the relative protein ingested dose response of muscle protein synthesis in younger and older men.

The younger men had an average age of 22 years while the older men had an average age of 71 years.

What did they find?

The researchers determined that the older men needed to consume more protein per pound of lean muscle mass to get the same muscle protein synthesis response as younger men.

If, however, you are reading this as a physique enthusiast in your later years of life, likely the best practical application of this information is simply to err on the higher side of evidence-based protein recommendations. 

You could also make the simple adjustment of adding one serving of a high-quality plant-based protein powder to your daily diet to account for any age-induced diminishing returns in muscle protein synthesis. 

HOW DO I MAXIMIZE MY PROTEIN INTAKE?

Now that we’ve addressed the nuances surrounding how much protein you should consume per meal to maximize muscle protein synthesis, let’s draw a few practical conclusions. 

In summary, most people would be best to follow the succinct advice of Dr. Brad Schoenfeld and Alan Aragon that they published in their 2018 scientific review.

As they put it, “You should aim to consume protein at a target intake of 0.4 grams per kilogram of body weight (0.18 grams per pound of body weight) per meal across a minimum of four meals.”

  • For a 180-pound athlete, this would be about 32 grams of protein per meal.

  • For a 150-pound athlete, this would be about 27 grams of protein per meal.

  • For a 120-pound athlete, this would be about 22 grams of protein per meal.

However, at the end of the day, the most important factors for maximizing muscle protein synthesis are:

  1. Total daily protein intake

  2. Protein quality 

If you’re unable to follow the aforementioned advice exactly, simply aim to hit your total daily protein each day while executing a well-designed resistance training program. 

Doing this will likely result in most of the benefits recreational lifters are looking to achieve in terms of building muscle.

Summary

  • One of the most common myths in the fitness industry is that your body can only absorb a certain amount of protein in a single meal for the purpose of building muscle. We refer to this as the protein ceiling.

  • The current body of scientific literature does show this to be true, but these protein ceilings vary depending on at least three distinct factors:

    • Total muscle mass

      • Individuals with more muscle mass will likely benefit from more protein than individuals with less muscle mass.

    • How much muscle mass is trained and the intensity of that training

      • Well-designed full-body training systems will likely require more protein than suboptimal training systems focused on fewer muscle groups.

    • Age

      • Older individuals tend to need more protein per sitting than younger individuals in order to match the magnitude of the muscle protein synthetic response.

  • Although the most important considerations for protein consumption are total daily protein intake and protein quality, it seems as though consuming around 0.18 grams of protein per pound of body weight per meal is most optimal when done a minimum of four times per day.


Are High-Protein Diets Bad For You?

Although research recommends a high-protein diet for building muscle mass and preserving muscle mass during fat loss, we must consider the potentially detrimental effects of a high-protein diet to our health.

Many vegans associate a high-protein diet with poor health, and for good reason. According to Harvard Medical School, health conditions linked to a high-protein diet include the development of high cholesterol, a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, weight gain, increased cancer risk, and kidney disease.

These concerns are valid, but they are specific to a high animal protein diet, not a high plant protein diet.

high cholesterol and heart disease


By definition, a vegan diet is cholesterol-free. There is zero dietary cholesterol in plant foods. As such, plant-based diets have been proven to lead to a significant drop in blood cholesterol, thereby reducing the risk of our number one killer, heart disease (1).

And even though your body needs cholesterol to form hormones and digest fat-soluble vitamins, your body can produce all the cholesterol it needs from raw materials such as fat, sugars, and proteins. You do not need to consume dietary cholesterol.

Furthermore, a 2010 meta-analysis conducted by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine confirmed that a low-fat, plant-based diet substantially reduces cardiovascular disease risk (2).

Weight gain

Concerning weight gain, over a hundred years of metabolic research has proven that energy balance is the basic mechanism that regulates weight gain and loss (3). A high-protein diet in and of itself has no impact on weight regulation. The only way you will gain weight following a high-protein diet is if the extra protein calories you consume put you into a caloric surplus.

Cancer

In the NIH-AARP (The National Institutes of Health - American Association of Retired Persons) Diet and Health Study, the most rigorous study of diet and mortality ever conducted, researchers observed the diets of 500,000 men and women over a period of 10 years (4). After compiling their data, the researchers came to a simple conclusion: Meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of dying from cancer, dying from heart disease, and dying prematurely in general.

This conclusion was made after controlling for other diet and lifestyle factors, thereby excluding the possibility that people who ate meat also smoked more, exercised less, or failed to eat their fruits and vegetables.

The researchers hypothesized that heme iron, which is the iron found in blood and muscle, is largely to blame. Heme iron generates cancer-causing free radicals and has been linked to heart disease (5). Plant foods contain all the iron you need in the form of non-heme iron, which doesn’t generate the same cancer-causing free radicals that heme iron does. Furthermore, phytonutrients and phytates in plant foods have been proven to slow down and even stop cancer cell growth (6, 7).

Kidney disease

Regarding kidney disease, high animal-protein intake can have a profound negative influence on normal kidney function by inducing a state called hyperfiltration, which causes a dramatic increase in the workload of the kidneys.

Now, this isn’t such a bad thing if it happens occasionally. If you have healthy kidneys, you already have quite a bit of built-in reserve kidney function, which is why you can live with only one kidney. But if you consume animal products, you are constantly forcing your kidneys to call upon their reserves, which taxes your kidneys over time.

In 1987, researchers first discovered a correlation between those who eat a plant-based diet and better kidney function (8). They first theorized that this was due to plant-based eaters consuming less protein overall. However, more recent research has proven that your kidneys appear to handle plant protein very differently from animal protein.

Within just hours of consuming meat, your kidneys are forced into hyperfiltration mode, whereas consuming an equivalent amount of plant protein causes no observable stress on the kidneys (9, 10). In fact, consuming tuna fish can cause your kidney filtration rate to jump up 36.3% within three hours, but consuming an equivalent amount of protein from tofu places zero strain on the kidneys (11).

A 2014 study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong analyzed the effects of soy protein versus dairy protein consumption on the kidney function of 270 female subjects with diseased kidneys (12). The researchers found that the soy protein helped preserve kidney function.

Then why is plant protein beneficial to kidney function while animal protein is detrimental? Because animal protein causes inflammation.

In fact, in a study conducted at the University of Internal Medicine in Italy, researchers found that their subject’s hyperfiltration response to animal protein disappeared when they administered a powerful anti-inflammatory drug along with a meat-based meal (13). So if you want to have healthy kidneys, you can either follow a vegan diet or take anti-inflammatory drugs every time you eat animal products.

In conclusion, decades of research have clearly established that a high-protein vegan diet does not contribute to high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, weight gain, cancer risk, or kidney disease.

THAT'S A WRAP! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS ARTICLE!

Do you have any questions about high protein diets? Please post them in the comment section below and I'll answer them! 👇

Your vegan fitness trainer,

Leif

How to Burn Fat & Build Muscle At The Same Time (Vegan Body Recomposition)

What is Body Recomposition?

The term “body composition” refers to the proportions of lean body mass and fat in the body. Lean body mass simply refers to everything in the body that isn’t body fat, including muscle mass, organs, and bone.

Generally speaking, a healthy body composition tends to possess higher percentages of lean body mass, and lower percentages of body fat. The better your body composition, the leaner and more ripped you are.

The trick to building a strong, fit, athletic body is pretty simple: for most people, that means burning fat and building lean muscle. Some people say that it’s possible to do both at the same time while others say it’s not. So what’s the truth?

The Truth About Body Recomposition

Let me begin by saying this... Most people cannot EFFICIENTLY shred fat and build lean muscle at the same time. But it is possible to do both at the same time if you know exactly what to eat and how to train based on your body composition and your goals.

And here's proof that it is possible…

Agata

For example, a client of ours got a DEXA scan on March 17th of this year right before beginning our program, and then got another DEXA scan on June 19th right after finishing our 90-day Vegan Superhero Academy coaching program.

And her results were pretty phenomenal! She shredded 24.7 pounds (11.2 kg) of body fat in 90 days. Pretty awesome, right? That is amazing in and of itself, but here’s the kicker…

Her body weight only dropped by a total of 13.5 pounds (6.1 kg). So how could her body weight only drop by 13.5 pounds if she lost 24.7 pounds? Because in that same 90-day period she gained 11.2 pounds (5.1 kg) of lean muscle mass.

Todd

Another client of ours, Todd, recently accomplished similar results. He got down to 9% body fat and got ripped abs at 48 years old. According to his body composition tests, he shredded 23.5 pounds of body fat while gaining about 6 pounds of lean mass in 79 days.

To get results like these, it really comes down to nailing your nutrition. When you are trying to accomplish a body recomposition goal, then nutrition is the most important part. Of course, you also have to progressively overload your muscles and give your body a reason to build muscle mass through resistance training. With the right nutrition plan and training program, you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time.

The Math of Body Recomposition

The First Law of Thermodynamics

If you are in a caloric surplus, you will be storing net energy. If you are in a caloric deficit, you will be losing net energy. Because fat and muscle tissue are separate systems, it is possible to lose fat due to the caloric deficit while building muscle due to the progressive training and sufficient protein.

But when analyzing body recomposition, the most important factor is the amount of calories you are consuming.

So how many calories do you need to burn to lose fat? Well, one pound of body fat weighs 454 grams. Approximately 85 to 90% of this weight can be attributed to stored triglycerides that can be burned for energy (the rest is water and cellular machinery) (1).

This means that you have roughly 400 grams of stored triglycerides in each pound of body fat that you must burn to lose one pound of fat. Since each gram of pure fat contains nine calories, this means that it takes about 3,600 calories of cumulative burned energy to lose one pound of fat.

And how many calories do you need to consume to gain lean muscle mass? An estimated 2,500 to 2,800 excess calories is needed to gain one pound of lean mass, though there is not any hard scientific evidence to determine an exact number. This has the effect of actually increasing your perceived deficit without having a significant impact on one's hunger levels.

So to lose body fat you need to be in a caloric deficit of 3,600 calories over time to lose 1 pound of body fat. And if you are also building lean muscle mass at the same time because your fitness and nutrition are really dialed in, that will increase your perceived deficit because your body needs to take excess calories from the food you’re eating to synthesize more muscle tissue. So you can potentially increase your rate of fat loss while also building muscle tissue.

The 3 main things that you MUST do to shred fat and build lean muscle

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #1

To lose fat and build muscle, you must focus on fat loss.

In other words, you must maintain a caloric deficit to shred fat as it is not possible to shred fat while maintaining a caloric surplus. However, your body CAN build muscle in a caloric deficit (2).

At the same time, it is possible to be too aggressive with your caloric deficit, which will slow your metabolism and result in lost muscle mass (3). There’s a sweet spot that you need to maintain between burning fat and building muscle.

I’d recommend about a 15-20% caloric deficit, which will help you shred fat rapidly, but also put you in a position to build lean muscle at the same time. You just need to be sure that you are following the exact right diet and training routine.

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #2

You must maintain a high protein diet.

Now there is nothing wrong with consuming a low protein diet, but if you want to shred body fat while gaining lean muscle, then you need to follow a high-protein diet. In a 2016 study, researchers at McMaster University split up 40 subjects into two groups (4):

Group 1 (the low-protein diet group): Researchers randomly assigned 20 subjects to a low-protein control diet (1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day).

Group 2 (the high-protein diet group): Researchers randomly assigned the other 20 subjects to consume twice as much protein as the low-protein group (2.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day).

All subjects from both groups performed resistance exercise training combined with high-intensity interval training for 6 days per week. The researchers also provided all meals and beverages for the participants to consume throughout the intervention period (with the exception of water). They all followed a caloric deficit of 40%. In other words, they ate 40% less calories than they burned every day.

Over the course of the 4-week trial, the low-protein group shredded 3.7 kilograms (8.2 pounds) of fat while the high-protein group shredded 4.8 kilograms (10.6 pounds) of fat. So the high-protein group had a slight edge in fat loss, but there wasn’t a huge difference. This isn’t surprising as a high-protein diet has been shown to increase fat loss, preserve lean body mass, and maintain your metabolism.

But here’s the true power of a high-protein diet when it comes to body recomposition. The high-protein group gained 1.2 kilograms of muscle (2.6 pounds) while the low-protein group only managed to maintain their lean muscle mass. Again, there is nothing wrong with consuming a low protein diet, but if you want to shred body fat while gaining lean muscle, then you need to follow a high-protein diet.

So how much protein should you consume?

A 2014 meta-analysis conducted by researchers at AUT University in New Zealand provided a systematic review of 6 studies with energy-restricted, resistance-trained adult subjects (5). They found that people maintaining a caloric deficit while trying to build lean muscle must consume between 1.05 to 1.41 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass).

Your intake should be scaled upwards with the severity of your caloric deficit and leanness. In other words, the larger your caloric deficit and the leaner you are, the higher your protein intake should be. Lean body mass is everything in your body that isn’t fat (i.e., organs, skeletal muscle, water, and bone).

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #3

When it comes to building muscle, there is one scientific principle that matters more than any other. It’s called progressive overload.

Your muscles must be given a reason to grow bigger and stronger. They don’t just grow because you want them to. They grow because they NEED to grow to handle the stresses that you are placing them under. In other words, you have to lift heavier and heavier weights over time. That’s how you progressively overload your muscles, which is the fastest way to build muscle.

The way I like to do this is with heavy weights at the gym. And I like to focus on exercises like the squat, deadlift, and bench press. But you can do this at home with resistance bands or sandbags too.

In fact, Todd and Agata accomplished most of their results while working out at home with minimal equipment. I should also add that you want to keep cardio to a minimum because too much cardio affects your body's ability to grow muscle.

factors that will determine whether you are able to build muscle in a caloric deficit

There are 4 main factors that will determine how efficiently your body is able to build muscle mass in a caloric deficit, while also shredding body fat.

  1. Your level of proper training experience. Meaning, the less proper training experience you have, the more likely you are to be able to build lean muscle. For people with more than 2 years of proper training experience, I recommend that you focus on cycling between periods of cutting and bulking because trying to build muscle in a deficit may result in you just spinning your wheels and making little progress.

  2. The higher your starting body fat percentage, the more likely you will be able to build muscle in a caloric deficit because you’ll have lots of body fat to lose.

  3. You maintain a moderate caloric deficit, about 15-20%. So no crash dieting where you’re in a caloric deficit of 50+% as this will make it very difficult to build muscle while you are shredding body fat.

  4. You maintain a high protein diet, somewhere between 0.7-1.0 g/lb of bodyweight depending on your body fat percentage.

How do you know if you are burning fat and building muscle at the same time?

The only way to know for sure is to track your weight and body fat percentage. In other words, you need to know exactly how your lean mass and fat mass are changing over time. The only way to know this for certain is to take regular body composition tests. The best one of these is DEXA.

However, as we’ve mentioned before, you can also get an idea of how things are going with more accessible measurement methods: taking progress pictures, weighing yourself, and taking body measurements regularly.

If you are already relatively lean, increases in your arms and calves and decreases in your waist and hip measurements are a good indication that you are building muscle. If the scale is dropping at the same time and your midsection (particularly your abs) is becoming more defined, then it’s likely that you are building muscle at the same time. But that’s not a very scientific approach, so there’s a lot of gray area there.

I would highly recommend getting regular body composition tests if you are really serious about body recomposition.

Summary

  • You CAN shred fat and build muscle at the same time

  • Your body recomposition results largely depend on your level of training experience. How much of your natural potential have you already accomplished?

  • You MUST maintain a caloric deficit to achieve body recomposition. It doesn’t have to be an aggressive deficit and should be scaled upwards with your body fat percentage. The more body fat you have, the higher your deficit can be.

  • You MUST maintain a high protein intake to support muscle growth.

  • You MUST focus on progressive overload with your training. Focus on lifting heavier weights over time - really push yourself!

THAT'S A WRAP! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS ARTICLE!

Do you have any questions about body recomposition? Please post them in the comment section below and I'll answer them! 👇

Your vegan fitness trainer,

Leif

When to Eat to Burn Fat Faster

The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss

You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss. This is called a caloric deficit. Over the course of a period of time (usually measured on a daily basis), a caloric deficit is achieved when the sum of calories expended is greater than the sum of calories consumed.

So you definitely need to be eating fewer calories than you burn every day to lose fat, but when should you eat calories for best fat loss results? Should you graze throughout the day, or should you stick with 3 main meals? Should you eat breakfast or skip it? Does eating late at night cause you to pack on the pounds?

All of these questions relate to meal timing. Meal timing refers to how your meals, calories, and macros are distributed throughout the day.

Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! In just 2 minutes, we’ll break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

Nibbling vs. Gorging

So, the question that we need to answer to determine the optimal meal timing for fat loss is: do you burn more calories over a 24-hour period by eating a bunch of small meals or a few large meals?

Well as early as the 1960s, scientists began observing an inverse relationship between eating frequency, defined as the number of eating occasions per day, and weight gain. In other words, people who ate smaller, more frequent meals tended to be thinner.

Since then, the majority of cross-sectional studies on eating frequency and body weight have shown similar results. All of this research has fueled the idea that snacking or grazing throughout the day boosts your metabolism and causes you to burn fat more easily and stay lean. However, if you peel back the research a bit more, the truth is not so simple.

A key problem of these studies is that most people are notorious for underreporting their energy intake. In 1997, scientists at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research analyzed all pertinent studies available at the time comparing the thermic effect of food in a wide variety of eating patterns, ranging from 1 to 17 meals per day (1). The thermic effect of food is the energy required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients.

The scientists discovered that the greater the magnitude of underreporting of energy intake, the less frequently individuals also report eating. In other words, these scientists discovered that the apparent inverse relationship between eating frequency and weight gain can be attributed to the underreporting of energy intake, which is correlated with meal frequency. The people who ate fewer meals consumed far more food on average than they reported.

We see this again and again in scientific literature. Self-reporting is a major pitfall of poorly designed meal timing studies. People often underestimate their bad habits like eating too much or exercising too little. For example, a 2004 study from Tufts University analyzed data from a nationwide survey conducted by the USDA that provided the food intakes of 20,607 US adults on two nonconsecutive days (2).

The Tufts University researchers found evidence that eating frequency, eating portions, and calorie density were all underreported across the board in this survey. Again, we can’t rely on self-reporting studies.

Thankfully, there are many studies conducted over the past 2 decades in which food was provided either in a laboratory environment or pre-packaged by researchers for consumption at home (3). In other words, the subjects in these studies were given the EXACT portions of food to eat for each meal and therefore do not rely on flawed self-reporting.

If you lock people in a room, feed them fewer calories than they burn, and control all other factors, everyone loses weight as predicted. So what did these tightly controlled meal timing studies find?

Well according to a 2018 study published by researchers at the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University, the more times per day people eat, the more they tend to increase their daily caloric intake (4). So eating many small meals throughout the day does NOT help you burn body fat. It mostly comes down to how many calories you are consuming regardless of how many meals you disperse those calories across.

However, the latest meal timing research clearly shows that WHEN you eat your meals can have a measurable effect on your rate of fat loss. And it all comes down to your body’s circadian rhythm.

Circadian Rhythms (AKA chronobiology)

A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings. It’s your body’s natural clock. And it has a huge impact on how your body functions.

For example, approximately 82% of all protein-coding genes in the human body exhibit circadian rhythms in expression according to a 2018 study from the University of California (5).

So What Runs Your Circadian Rhythm?

The human circadian system consists of a central clock and peripheral clocks.

The central clock is located in your brain (specifically, the hypothalamus) and synchronizes itself to light exposure (namely, sunlight), which allows your body to synchronize behavioral and metabolic rhythms to the light and dark cycles associated with normal 24-hour periods (6, 7). Peripheral clocks are influenced by physiological and behavioral factors such as sleeping and eating.

So basically, a normal circadian rhythm is about 24 hours because a day is about 24 hours and our bodies are largely programmed by sunlight. There is a rapidly growing interest in circadian biology, which has birthed a relatively new scientific field known as “chronobiology.”

Why Does Your Circadian Rhythm Matter for Fat Loss?

Our central biological clock plays a role in physiological processes in the body that impact energy regulation and metabolism. The two processes that your circadian rhythm impacts, which have an effect on fat loss, include:

  1. Your body’s resting metabolic rate (which is the total number of calories burned when your body is completely at rest - this is generally what people are referring to when they are talking about “metabolism,” though this is a bit over-simplistic).

  2. The thermic effect of food (which is the total number of calories required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients).

Both your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food vary throughout the day in a predictable manner because they correspond with your body’s circadian rhythm. In other words, we see a circadian variation in a person’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure due to predictable variations in their resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food.

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Collectively, your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food contribute approximately 80% to your total daily energy expenditure, so any changes to these two components of daily energy expenditure have the potential to significantly impact energy balance. In other words, your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food really matter when it comes to fat loss.

And here’s the interesting part when it comes to meal timing: energy expenditure both at rest (which is your resting metabolic rate) and after eating (which is increased by the thermic effect of food) is typically higher earlier during the day. This phenomenon is what ultimately influences your rate of fat loss.

(Side note: Having a sleep routine is important for maintaining your body’s peripheral clocks. You don’t want to fight your body’s natural circadian rhythm by having a chaotic or unnatural sleep schedule. This is the main reason why having a poor sleep schedule hinders your ability to burn body fat.)

So let’s now dive into a bit more of the science behind how your metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food vary along with your body’s circadian rhythm.

The Circadian Rhythm of Resting Metabolic Rate

First, let’s discuss how your body’s circadian rhythm affects your metabolic rate. Your resting metabolic rate follows a predictable circadian rhythm as demonstrated by a 1994 study conducted by researchers in Switzerland who found that the subjects’ metabolic rates peaked in the morning between 9 AM and 12 PM and dipped to their lowest point during normal nighttime hours between 12 AM and 6 AM (8).

These findings are supported by a 2000 study published in the Journal of Physiology and a 2018 study conducted by researchers at Harvard University that both demonstrated a similar circadian rhythm in metabolic rate (9, 10). All of these studies reported minimum average core body temperature values at approximately 5 AM.

And body temperature has been found to be a practical and effective proxy measure of circadian rhythms and metabolic rate according to a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2014 (11). In other words, your metabolism is running at full speed in the morning and tends to slow down through the afternoon and evening, dropping to its lowest levels between 12 AM and 6 AM.

The Circadian Rhythm of the Thermic Effect of Food

Now, let’s discuss how your body’s circadian rhythm affects the thermic effect of food. A team of researchers at Harvard Medical School studied the effect of meal timing on the magnitude of the thermic effect of food and found that the thermic effect of food was 44% lower at 8 PM compared to 8 AM, following an identical meal (12).

Assuming that your total daily energy expenditure is 2,000 calories (which is the case for the average adult) and the thermic effect of food is about 10% of total energy expenditure, which is largely affected by the macronutrient composition of your diet, that would mean that the thermic effect of food totals 200 calories per day (13).

As a brief though relevant aside, protein causes the highest thermic effect of food (with 20-30% of the energy content of ingested protein being burned) compared to carbohydrate (5-10%) and dietary fat (0-3%) (14).

If we take the 44% difference in the thermic effect of food found in the Harvard study and apply it to the approximate thermic effect of food for the average adult of 200 calories, we’d get a difference of 88 calories. These findings were supported by authors of a similar study published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2015 who reported a 90-calorie difference in the thermic effect of food between daytime and nighttime eating (15).

There is also evidence to suggest that some of the caloric burn benefit to eating more in the morning is because our bodies bulk up our muscles with glycogen, the primary fuel our muscles burn for energy (16).

So What Does The Circadian Rhythmicity of Your Resting Metabolic Rate and the Thermic Effect of Food Have to Do With Fat Loss?

Well again, fat loss mostly comes down to energy balance. Energy in versus energy out. You absolutely must be consuming fewer calories than you burn every day to achieve meaningful fat loss results. But the human body is incredibly complex and there are many confounding factors that can affect energy digestion or energy expenditure.

The research that we’ve covered definitively proves that a calorie is not always just a calorie. It depends on WHEN the calorie is eaten. So why do we burn more calories eating a morning meal than eating an evening meal? Because our metabolic rates and the thermic effect of food follow our body’s natural circadian rhythm.

Energy expenditure both at rest (resting metabolic rate) and after eating (thermic effect of food) is typically more efficient earlier in the day. And the scientific literature that we’ve discussed suggests that prioritizing energy intake earlier during the day may help with body weight maintenance and fat loss (17).

What are the practical implications?

Your largest meal of the day should be breakfast (ideally) or lunch, with little eaten in the evening. It’s okay to eat dinner, but try not to eat past 6 PM. If you don’t follow the typical 3-meal eating plan, then just aim to consume most of your calories earlier in the day.

Find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

Should Vegan Athletes Take Creatine?

When you think of creatine, you may think of a supplement meant to help you gain muscle and strength.

You may have even heard that vegans can especially benefit from taking it.

But what is creatine? Does it actually do what it claims to do? And above all, is it a supplement that’s safe and worth taking?

The following article will give you the low-down on creatine and help you figure out whether you should give it a try for yourself.

An Introduction to Creatine

Creatine is a compound that’s naturally present in your body. A small percentage is stored in your brain, kidneys, and liver, but the largest amounts are stored in your muscles (1).

The amount of muscle creatine can vary from person to person and depends on various factors, including diet. The type of food that contains the most creatine is meat, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since other animals also store creatine in their muscles.

This may be one reason why vegetarians, including vegans, tend to have lower levels of creatine than meat-eaters (2, 3, 4).

That said, eating animals is not the only way to boost creatine levels — and definitely not a necessity. Our bodies can also produce creatine internally from the amino acids glycine and arginine, which many plant foods contain.

Creatine supplements containing zero animal derivatives are another way to boost creatine levels. Plus, supplements are a much more effective strategy to increase muscle creatine levels compared to eating meat.

 
Now Sports Creatine Monohydrate
 

That’s because a person would have to eat 2.8 pounds (1.3 kg) of raw meat each day (or twice that amount if cooked) to get the same amount of creatine found in 5 grams of supplement (5).

Other factors which can influence the amount of creatine stored in your muscles include the total amount of muscle mass you have, the type of training you do, and your hormone levels.

Summary: Creatine is a compound naturally found in the body and mainly stored in muscle. Vegetarians and vegans tend to have lower creatine levels than meat-eaters and supplements are the best way to increase levels.

How Does Creatine Work?

Creatine works by providing your muscle with a quick source of energy.

It does so by boosting the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that stores the energy that your cells need to function. The higher the amount of creatine present in your muscles, the quicker ATP can be produced and used by your muscles to contract (6).

Simply put, higher creatine levels in the muscles help your muscles recover more quickly between sets. This lower fatigue generally means that you can fit in more sets or reps during the same training session, both of which can equate to better results (1, 7).

This reduced recovery time is especially useful during repeated short bursts of intense exercise, which require quick replenishing of your muscles’ energy stores. For instance, during weightlifting, sprinting, soccer, rugby or hockey.

In addition, creatine also acts in key cellular processes which can help increase muscle mass, strength, and recovery (8). 

For instance, creatine supplementation may help reduce protein breakdown and increase anabolic hormone levels in your body, both of which can promote muscle strength and growth (9, 10).

Creatine supplementation also appears to boost muscle repair and muscle water retention, both of which may also lead to improved muscle recovery and growth (11, 12).

To learn how to boost your post-workout recovery even more, click here.

Summary: Creatine works by providing the muscle with a quick source of energy. Higher creatine concentrations in your muscles can help increase muscle mass and strength. These creatine stores also help to improve exercise performance, especially during short bursts of high-intensity exercise.

Effects on Muscle Mass

Creatine is one of the most effective and well-researched supplements when it comes to growing muscle (13, 14).

Even taking creatine for as little as a week can produce significant effects. It’s important to note that most of the increase in muscle mass in the first few weeks of supplementation comes from water retention in the muscle. However, over a longer period of time, muscle fiber growth also increases (11).

Several studies support this notion. For instance, in one study, participants given creatine increased their muscle mass by an additional 4.4 lbs (2 kg) following a 6-week training program than those given a placebo (15).

In another, older individuals given creatine in combination with a muscle training program experienced significantly greater gains in muscle mass than a placebo by the end of the 14-week study period (16).

In weightlifters, creatine intake during a 12-week training program increased muscle fiber growth 2 to 3 times more than training alone. The weightlifters taking creatine also gained 5 more pounds (2.3 kg) of muscle than those given the placebo (17).

Not many studies have been done on the effects of creatine on vegetarians and vegans. However, in one study conducted by researchers at St. Francis Xavier University, around half of the participants were vegetarian and there were even three vegans.

The individuals in this study were given either a creatine supplement or a placebo and put through an intense 8-week weight training routine focused mainly on the upper body.

All participants who received creatine gained more muscles than those given the placebo, regardless of their diet. However, the vegetarians gained the most muscle — around one additional pound (around 0.5 kg) more than the non-vegetarians (4).

Summary: When combined with weight training, creatine can help individuals gain more muscle mass. This effect may be especially strong in vegetarians and vegans.

Effects on Strength and Exercise Performance

Creatine can also help improve strength and exercise performance, especially during short bouts of high-intensity exercise.

Squatting

According to a review of 22 studies, training with creatine may result in 8% more strength, a 14% increase in weight lifting performance, and a 43% higher bench press one rep max compared to training without creatine supplementation (18).

But this meta-analysis only scratched the surface of the more than 300 studies that have investigated the effect of creatine on high-intensity exercise performance.

Around 70% of these 300 studies report significant improvements while 30% found either no effects or effects too small to be significant. None of these studies found negative effects of creatine supplementation. Of those which found a positive effect, improvements in maximal power and strength ranged from 5% to 15% (19). However, creatine offers generally fewer benefits for low-intensity or endurance-type exercise (7, 20, 21, 22, 23).

Again, few studies exist on creatine intake in vegetarians. However, those which do exist tend to find similar results to those above (2, 4).

Summary: Creatine, when taken in combination with training, increases strength and high-intensity exercise performance. However, it has limited effects on low-intensity or endurance-type exercise.

Other Beneficial Effects of Creatine

In addition to its beneficial effects on exercise listed above, creatine may also have a wide range of positive health effects. The most researched include:

  • May help reduce symptoms of Parkison’s disease (24, 25).

  • May lower blood sugar levels and prevent diabetes (26, 27, 28).

  • May improve brain function and memory, although not all studies agree (29, 30, 31, 32).

  • May reduce fatigue during sleep deprivation (33).

Summary: In addition to having positive effects on muscle, strength, and performance, creatine may also provide the additional health benefits listed above.

Creatine Type and Dosage

Scoop of creatine

Several forms of creatine can be found on the market. The most common, and best researched, is creatine monohydrate.

You may come across claims that other forms of creatine are superior to creatine monohydrate. However, no studies actually support this notion (34).

The amount of creatine monohydrate you need to optimize muscle, strength, and performance gains depends on the type of loading protocol you choose.

  • Quick loading protocol: 0.1 grams of creatine monohydrate per pound of body weight per day (0.3 g/kg of body weight per day) — or you can take 5 grams four times per day — for 5-7 days, followed by 3-5 grams per day thereafter.

  • Longer loading protocol: 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day taken for 21-30 days followed by 3-5 grams per day thereafter.

By the end of either loading protocol, you’ll end up with around the same amount of creatine in your muscles. However, as the name implies, the quick loading protocol achieves this in 5-7 days rather than 3-4 weeks.

To maximize creatine absorption, try mixing your supplement with a source of carbs, for instance, juice. Absorption is slightly improved after a workout when insulin levels are elevated (35).

Summary: Creatine monohydrate is the best-researched form of supplementation. Dosages depend on whether you choose to follow a quick-loading or longer loading protocol. By the end of either loading period, your muscles will contain similar total amounts of creatine.

Creatine Safety

In terms of safety, it’s worth mentioning that creatine is considered one of the safest supplements on the market. It’s also one of the most well-researched.

For instance, one study investigated 52 blood markers following creatine supplementation for close to two years. Researchers found no adverse effects (36).

Despite fears that creatine may harm the liver and kidneys, no scientific proof of negative effects could be found in healthy adults sticking to the recommended creatine doses (36, 37, 38).

That said, if you already suffer from liver or kidney issues, you might want to check with your healthcare practitioner before taking this supplement.

Moreover, despite many anecdotal claims of the contrary, creatine supplementation appears to have a positive influence on muscle cramps and dehydration (39).

In fact, some studies even show that creatine may reduce the risk of dehydration and muscle cramps during exercise in hot conditions (40, 41). 

Several medium-term studies have also been performed and continuous creatine intake for up to four years shows no negative effects (36, 37).

That said, few studies have investigated safety effects passed four years. Thus, long-term safety cannot be guaranteed since long-term effects are not currently known. Longer-term studies are needed.

Summary: Creatine use is generally considered as safe in healthy adults following the recommended dosages. Continuous intakes for up to 4 years appear to have little negative effects. However, studies looking at longer-term effects are still needed.

The Bottom Line

Creatine is a safe and effective supplement with various proven benefits for strength, muscle mass, performance, and even health.

Creatine levels appear generally lower in vegans and vegetarians. Thus, active vegetarians and vegans seeking to grow muscle or increase strength and exercise performance may particularly benefit from creatine supplementation.

That's a wrap! Thank you SO MUCH for reading this article!

Before you do anything else, please check out Alina's plant-based nutrition tips at her website: morethanjustveggies.com. She also offers nutrition consultations. If you are interested in working with a vegan sports dietician, please contact her here: www.morethanjustveggies.com/contact.

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How Much Protein Should You Consume During A Cut?

To ensure all your weight loss comes from body fat, higher protein intakes are required to help preserve muscle when on a caloric deficit.

A joint study conducted by AUT University, California State University, and the University of Illinois found that caloric intake should be set at a level that results in bodyweight losses of approximately 0.5% to 1.0% per week to maximize muscle retention.

With this caloric deficit, the study concluded, “most but not all bodybuilders will respond best to consuming 2.3 to 3.1 g/kg of lean body mass per day of protein, 15-30% of calories from fat, and the remainder of calories from carbohydrate.”

A meta-analysis led by the same AUT University researchers provided a systematic review of 6 studies with energy-resisted, resistance-trained (> 6 months) adult subjects.

The AUT University researchers reached the same conclusion as the previous study: protein needs for energy-restricted resistance-trained athletes are likely 1.05 to 1.41 grams per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of lean body mass) scaled upwards with the severity of caloric restriction and leanness. Lean body mass is everything in your body that isn’t fat (i.e., organs, skeletal muscle, water, and bone).

A study from the Exercise Metabolism Research Group at McMaster University concluded that strength athletes on a caloric deficit should consume as much as 0.82 to 0.91 grams per pound of body weight (1.8 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day), depending on the extent of the deficit.

A study from the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham examined the influence of various dietary protein levels on lean body mass and performance during short-term periods of caloric restriction in athletes. Their findings indicate that young healthy athletes need approximately 2.3 grams per kilogram of body weight for maintenance of lean mass during short periods of caloric restriction.

Collectively, these studies suggest you should consume 0.82 to 1.40 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of lean mass) when dieting to shred fat.

Please keep in mind that these recommendations are for serious strength athletes and bodybuilders. If you do not compete in strength or physique contests, then you likely don’t need that much protein.

Here are my general guidelines for protein consumption:

Approximate Protein Requirements for 3 Types of People - The Vegan Gym (thevegangym.com)

If you follow the high carb mantra in most vegan health circles, these protein requirements probably seem way too high.

But trust me. I’d rather hit my protein and be safe than risk burning any of my hard-earned vegan muscle gains while I’m on a caloric deficit.

For example, if an experienced weightlifter (4+ years of weightlifting experience) loses just a single pound of muscle while shredding, it could take 2 to 6 months of intense weightlifting to gain that pound of muscle back during his/her next bulking period!

Assuming five 1-hour workouts per week, that single pound of muscle could take upwards of 135 hours of intense weightlifting to gain back!

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather eat a bit more protein than I probably need to avoid losing any muscle instead of killing myself for 135 hours in the gym just to get back to my pre-shredding lean body mass.

Yes, hitting 1.1 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass while on a caloric deficit is a challenge. It requires careful planning and most likely protein supplementation.

Protein powders simplify your life and allow you to eat plenty of healthy fruits and vegetables while still hitting your high-protein macros.

Are you getting enough protein?

Find out by using our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator!

The Definitive Guide To Losing Weight and Getting Shredded on a Vegan Diet

Aside from the physical struggles, losing fat and getting lean is tough on a mental and emotional level. It requires careful planning, hours of meal prep and training, intense commitment, and an iron will.

I learned this first hand when I competed in an online 90-day physique challenge held by YouTuber Christian Guzman.

The rules were simple: submit a before and after video and the most impressive transformation wins.

I didn’t win the competition, but I went from pudgy to ripped and achieved the best physique I’ve ever had. I also learned a lot through the process and wrote this article to share these lessons with you.

But first, I want to show you my transformation…

On March 6th 2017, I entered the competition at 182 pounds (82.6 kg). For reference, I’m 5 feet and 11 inches tall. Here’s the physique I started with…

Vegan shredding before picture Leif Arnesen The Vegan Gym

On June 3rd 2017, 90 days later, I finished the competition at 161.5 pounds (73.3 kg), more shredded than ever.

Vegan shredding after picture Leif Arnesen The Vegan Gym

If you doubt this transformation, I don't blame you! There is a lot of BS in the fitness world.

But I assure you this is a 3-month transformation (89 days to be precise). I didn't actually gain any muscle during this period, I just burned body fat. The lighting helped as well to give me an extra shredded look. Here is my before/after video with proof. The video on the laptop that I am holding up in my before video is Christian Guzman's launch video for the Summer Shredding 2017 Challenge, which was uploaded in March 2017. And I hold up an iPhone in my after video clearly displaying the date June 3rd.

In just 3 months, I chopped more than 20 pounds off my already-fairly-lean physique, which equates to an average weekly weight loss of 1.6 pounds.

And my strength didn’t drop at all, indicating that most of this weight loss was bodyfat.

How did I accomplish this?

Well, it required a lot of hard work and mental fortitude, but I learned that having the right plan makes things much easier.

In this article, I will tell you everything you need to know to lose fat and get lean – even shredded if that is your goal.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  • How many calories you should be eating to lose fat with ease

  • Why macros matter (even more than calories!)

  • My favorite shredding meals (that each take less than 10 minutes to make)

  • The best exercises for losing fat and getting shredded

  • Why you don’t have to kill yourself with cardio to lose fat

  • How much protein you should be eating

  • Shredding advice from two top bodybuilders (Rebecca Unruth and Zack Staver)

Before we begin, I've been working on creating a course called Vegan Meal Planning Mastery. If you are a visual learner and would like to learn how to create your own meal plan to lose fat and build muscle while eating the vegan foods you love, then you must check it out here: Vegan Meal Planning Mastery course.

I’m running an Early Bird $37 Special for this course, which will officially launch on August 28th. This price will only be good until August 28th.

Okay, now let's begin!

How To Eat To Shred Fat

When your main goal is to lose body fat while maintaining muscle mass, diet and exercise are both important. But, I’d argue that diet is far more important. In this section, we’ll cover the basics about dieting for fat loss.

Caloric Deficit for Fat Loss

You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss. This is called a caloric deficit (i.e. consume less calories than you burn).

The size of your caloric deficit and the length of time you maintain it determines how much weight you lose. Every pound of pure body fat that is metabolized yields approximately 3500 calories, thus a daily caloric deficit of 500 calories theoretically results in fat loss of approximately one pound per week if the weight loss comes entirely from body fat.

However, eating very little, known as starvation dieting, isn’t ideal for weight loss. If your caloric deficit is too extreme, your metabolism will slow, you will lose muscle along with fat, and you’ll really hate the process.

In a study of bodybuilders during the twelve weeks before competition, male competitors reduced their caloric intake significantly during the latter half and subsequently lost the greatest amount of lean body mass in the final three weeks. This study is just one of many that suggest diets yielding weight loss of approximately 0.25 to 0.5% of bodyweight weekly may be superior for lean body mass retention compared to more aggressive diets.

How do you achieve steady, sustainable fat loss? You should maintain a caloric deficit of approximately 20% to lose fat while preserving lean muscle mass, energy levels, hormone production, and general well-being. In other words, you should eat about 80% of your total daily energy expenditure.

Why Macros Matter More Than Calories

Macronutrients, often referred to as “macros,” are substances required in large amount in the human diet. There are three primary macronutrients that the human body needs in order to function properly: carbohydrates, fat, and protein.

Regardless of the sources foodwise, 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories, 1 gram of carbohydrates contains 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories.

Many of the most respected vegan medical professionals (Dr. Michael Greger, Dr. Garth Davis, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, and many others) do not advocate a specific macronutrient ratio. The ones that do tend to recommend a high carb, low protein, low fat diet with an 80/10/10 split (80% carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat). However, their recommendations do not necessarily reflect optimal dietary approaches to achieve specific physique goals.

A plethora of nutritional research indicates that a high carb, high protein, low fat diet is optimal for gaining and preserving muscle mass. This can be accomplished on a healthy, whole food, plant-based diet with perhaps some protein supplementation depending on your specific goals.

Because your specific macro intakes matter, you should focus on them instead of simply focusing on calories.

For example, let’s say that your total daily energy expenditure is 2,500 calories. Your total daily energy expenditure is simply the number of calories you body burns in a day to function and perform exercise.

If you want to shred body fat, your daily calorie target should be 2,000 calories (2,500 calories x 0.8) to efficiently burn fat.

Of these 2,000 available calories, you need to determine how many grams of carbs, protein, and fat to consume to give you the best chance of achieving your physique goals.

While calculating your macros is simple and straightforward, the process takes a bit of work.

You can calculate your macros accurately with our vegan nutrition calculator. We make it easy by doing it for you right in Facebook Messenger.

Macros are calculated for all clients of The Vegan Superhero Academy. You can apply for the VSA program here!

How Much Protein Should You Consume on a Cut?

To ensure all your weight loss comes from body fat, higher protein intakes are required to help preserve muscle when on a caloric deficit.

A joint study conducted by AUT University, California State University, and the University of Illinois found that caloric intake should be set at a level that results in bodyweight losses of approximately 0.5% to 1.0% per week to maximize muscle retention.

With this caloric deficit, the study concluded, “most but not all bodybuilders will respond best to consuming 2.3 to 3.1 g/kg of lean body mass per day of protein, 15-30% of calories from fat, and the remainder of calories from carbohydrate.”

A meta-analysis led by the same AUT University researchers provided a systematic review of 6 studies with energy-resisted, resistance-trained (> 6 months) adult subjects.

The AUT University researchers reached the same conclusion as the previous study: protein needs for energy-restricted resistance-trained athletes are likely 1.05 to 1.41 grams per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of lean body mass) scaled upwards with the severity of caloric restriction and leanness. Lean body mass is everything in your body that isn’t fat (i.e., organs, skeletal muscle, water, and bone).

A study from the Exercise Metabolism Research Group at McMaster University concluded that strength athletes on a caloric deficit should consume as much as 0.82 to 0.91 grams per pound of body weight (1.8 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day), depending on the extent of the deficit.

A study from the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham examined the influence of various dietary protein levels on lean body mass and performance during short-term periods of caloric restriction in athletes. Their findings indicate that young healthy athletes need approximately 2.3 grams per kilogram of body weight for maintenance of lean mass during short periods of caloric restriction.

Collectively, these studies suggest you should consume 0.82 to 1.40 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of lean mass) when dieting to shred fat.

Please keep in mind that these recommendations are for serious strength athletes and bodybuilders. If you do not compete in strength or physique contests, then you likely don’t need that much protein.

Here are my general guidelines for protein consumption:

Approximate Protein Requirements for 3 Types of People - The Vegan Gym (thevegangym.com)

If you follow the high carb mantra in most vegan health circles, these protein requirements probably seem way too high.

But trust me. I’d rather hit my protein and be safe than risk burning any of my hard-earned vegan muscle gains while I’m on a caloric deficit.

For example, if an experienced weightlifter (4+ years of weightlifting experience) loses just a single pound of muscle while shredding, it could take 2 to 6 months of intense weightlifting to gain that pound of muscle back during his/her next bulking period!

Assuming five 1-hour workouts per week, that single pound of muscle could take upwards of 135 hours of intense weightlifting to gain back!

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather eat a bit more protein than I probably need to avoid losing any muscle instead of killing myself for 135 hours in the gym just to get back to my pre-shredding lean body mass.

Yes, hitting 1.1 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass while on a caloric deficit is a challenge. It requires careful planning and most likely protein supplementation.

Protein powders simplify your life and allow you to eat plenty of healthy fruits and vegetables while still hitting your high-protein macros.

My Favorite Shredding Meals:

I’m a pretty simple guy. I can eat the same things over and over again. Two of my favorite meals – that I usually eat every day during a cut – are Berry Protein Oatmeal and Jerk Tofu Taco Salad.

These recipes are filling and packed with protein and micronutrients to make you lean and feeling like a million bucks.

Berry Protein Oatmeal

Berry Protein Oatmeal - The Vegan Gym

Ingredients:

  • Quick oats (I use 50 grams during a cut)

  • Naked chocolate pea protein powder (I use 60 grams during a cut)

  • Frozen berries (I use 300 grams during a cut)

Nutrition facts: 615 calories, 86 grams carbs (54%), 48 grams protein (31%), 11 grams fat (15%)

Note: I cook the quick oats in water and I do not add any non-dairy milk. If you do need to add some, I would recommend you try low calorie soymilk for the added protein boost.

Jerk Tofu Taco Salad

Jerk Tofu Taco Salad

Ingredients:

  • Organic tofu (I use 450 grams – weighed uncooked – during a cut)

  • Shredded cabbage (I use 200 grams during a cut)

  • Kale (I use 200 grams during a cut)

  • Refried beans (I use 100 grams during a cut)

  • Salsa (I use 150 grams during a cut)

  • Balsamic vinegar (I use 20 grams during a cut)

Nutrition facts: 750 calories, 72 grams carbs (36%), 69 grams protein (31%), 30 grams fat (33%)

Note: The most important part of this recipe is cooking the tofu correctly! Click here to learn how I make delicious, crispy, oil-free tofu.

How To Exercise For Fat Loss

How many people have you seen that spend hours on the treadmill every week, yet never get lean?

How many people have you seen who seem to only lift weights and never do cardio, but are ripped?

What gives? Everybody knows that cardio is required to get lean and weight lifting is just for getting bigger muscles, right?

Not exactly.

Your body fat percentage is primarily determined by your diet. Doing cardio does burn fat, but if you eat too much, your body will simply replace the fat lost with the excess calories you’re giving it.

Weightlifting actually burns about the same amount of calories per hour as low-intensity cardio, but it also burns more calories after your workout, known as “the afterburn effect.” The muscle you build as a result also helps keep you lean because it increases the total amount of calories that your body burns while at rest.

What Are The Best Exercises For Building And Maintaining Muscle?

Just like I recommend for building muscle while bulking, you must emphasize heavy compound weightlifting in your workouts to maintain muscle mass while shredding as a natural weightlifter.

What exactly is a compound exercise?

A compound exercise is an exercise that involves multiple joints and muscle groups. If you maintain proper form and do not overtrain, heavy compound exercises are not harmful to your body.

The best compound exercises are the squat, deadlift, bench press, dip, row, and overhead “military” press.

Deadlifting

These exercises are highly “functional” meaning that the strength you develop from them is far more applicable to daily life than targeted isolation exercises like bicep curls.

For example, lifting a heavy 100-pound box will be fairly easy if you are repping out 300-pound deadlifts in the gym.

No matter who you are and what your fitness goals are, compound exercises deserve far more attention than isolation exercises.

What Makes Compound Exercises So Effective?

Because compound exercises employ multiple muscle groups and allow you to lift heavier weights through a large range of motion, compound exercises better progressively overload your muscles than isolation exercises. And the more you can progressively overload your muscles (with proper rest), the faster they will grow.

Although compound exercises are most effective at building muscle, isolation exercises are really important too. Without isolation exercises to fill in the gaps, compound exercises can create imbalances in the mass and strength gains of your muscles.

To avoid imbalances, I use isolation exercises to target muscle groups like biceps and calves that are difficult to hit in heavy, compound movements.

For example, if all you did for leg training was back squats, you’d likely develop an imbalance between the strength and size of your quadriceps (the prime muscle group in the exercise) and hamstrings (the secondary muscle group in the exercise). In the long-term, the result of this imbalance could be hamstring injury or knee problems.

A well-designed weightlifting routine for strength and aesthetics includes both compound and isolation exercises.

Depending the muscle group I am training, compound movements comprise about 60 to 75% of my lifting routine while isolation exercises fill in the remaining 25 to 40%.

How Much Should You Train?

For the first 9 weeks of my cut, I lifted weights 5 to 6 days a week for 50 to 75 minutes. For the last 3 weeks, I ramped this up to 6 days of lifting per week with five 45-minute StairMaster sessions per week.

But the amount of time you spend in the gym isn’t a great metric to follow because it doesn’t really correlate with results.

For example, you could spend 60 minutes in the gym on the flat bench press hitting 5 lightweight sets with 10-minute rest periods spent scrolling Instagram.

Obviously, your results would suck.

Instead, volume is the important metric. Volume, or the total amount of total reps performed, is the determining factor in your muscle and strength gains.

If the volume of your training for each major muscle group is too low, then you will struggle to gain size and strength.

If your volume is too high, then you’ll run into problems related to overtraining. You have to bring the intensity, but take rest days and be careful to not overtrain.

Get the volume right and you will be able to gain muscle like clockwork over time.

According to various experts and studies, optimal volume appears to be in the range of 60 to 180 reps per major muscle group per week. The heavier the training, the fewer reps you should do every week.

Since I focus on heavy compound lifts in the range of 75 to 85 percent of my one-rep max (1RM), I stick to the lower range of the 60 to 180-rep spectrum. I usually lift around 60 to 80 total reps per major muscle group per week.

Should You Do Cardio To Burn Fat?

While I recommend cardio for its many health benefits, if you’re willing to be strict with your diet, you can get lean by that alone and not even bother with cardio.

That being said, I do like cardio because I find it easier to increase my caloric deficit with cardio than by eating less. I feel deprived when I don’t eat a certain amount each day.

Still, I keep my cardio to a minimum because I frankly don’t like it and research indicates that it inhibits muscle growth.

In a 2016 study conducted at the Academy for Sports Excellence in the UK, researchers divided 30 resistance trained men into 4 groups and they completed a 6-week training program in which they trained 3 days per week. 

Group 1: Only strength training 3 times per week

Group 2: Strength training 3 times per week and endurance training (treadmill running) once per week

Group 3: Strength training 3 times per week and endurance training (treadmill running) 3 times per week

Group 4: Didn't train at all (control)

At the end of the program, Group 1 and Group 2 had the highest lower body strength increases, but Group 1, the strength only training group, had a significantly higher lower body power increase than all the other groups. Upper body strength increased similarly in Groups 1-3.

What do these findings tell us?

If muscle growth and strength are the primary goals, then you should keep cardio to a minimum.

HIIT vs. Steady State Cardio

If you decide to include cardio in your training routine, you have a few options. You can do high intensity interval training (HIIT) like sprinting or you can do steady state cardio like hitting the stair climber, treadmill, or elliptical with low to moderate intensity.

So which type of cardio is best for fat loss?

A 2017 meta-analysis showed similar reductions in body fat from HIIT vs. steady state moderate intensity cardio when protocols were matched for energy expenditure.

This indicates that personal preference should be the determining factor in which form of cardio to perform from a fat loss standpoint. Importantly, cardio should only be considered a supplement to enhancing fat reduction as neither type of cardio produced clinically meaningful reductions in body fat.

As I’ve said, reducing calories through diet should be your primary focus in getting lean.

What About Fasted Cardio?

I don’t want to get into a huge debate about whether fasted cardio does or does not have a place in anyone's shredding program, but I personally have never done it myself or for my clients. I don't see a reason why I would ever implement it, unless future published research changes my mind.

As it now stands, current research shows that fasted cardio does not cause any significant improvements on weight loss or body composition versus fed cardio.

If you prefer to do your cardio very first thing in the morning for personal/schedule reasons that is absolutely fine, just be aware that you're not doing some magical form of cardio that is going to help you lose more fat than non-fasted cardio.

If you still prefer fasted cardio, I would at least recommend some type of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) or pea protein shake either before and/or during cardio to help maximize muscle retention.

Should You Take Supplements?

I’ve left the supplement section for last because I think that it is the least important. Hard work and diet produce 99% of the results. Depending on your goals and current level of fitness, you might consider using supplements, but keep it to a minimum.

Beyond my regular supplements – I take vitamin B12, zinc, DHA/EPA, iodine, and vitamin D (only during the winter months) – here are the supplements I take while shredding:

Protein Powder (I take this all the time)

A high-protein diet is absolutely vital for building muscle and maintaining lean body mass when dieting. You don’t need protein supplements to gain muscle, but considering how much protein you need to eat every day to be “safe” in maximizing muscle protein synthesis (MPS) response, getting all your protein from whole food can be impractical.

If you want to learn about the best vegan protein powders for building and maintaining muscle, check out my article: What is the Best Vegan Protein Source for Building Muscle?

Pre-workout

I don’t usually take a pre-workout because I think they are pretty bad for you, but it was a huge struggle to drag myself to the gym on a caloric deficit, especially toward the end of my cut when I was doing 45 minutes of StairMaster 5 times per week. If you need a boost of energy, there are healthier alternatives (e.g. coffee).

BCAAs

According to current research, the required “leucine threshold” to maximize muscle protein synthesis is somewhere between 3.2 and 4.4 grams (for most people). This is easily reached with a soy/pea protein shake and some tofu. However, I believe BCAA supplements are beneficial during a caloric deficit (particularly at low body fat) or during fasted training as a muscle sparing strategy.

If you have a few minutes, check out my article on BCAA supplementation: Should You Take A BCAA Supplement?

BCAA pic

Tracking Your Progress

In order to know for certain whether you need to make a change or not, you MUST weigh yourself on a daily basis. Doing so is the only way you will know for certain whether your health and fitness approach is succeeding in reaching your goals. I recommend you weigh yourself at the same time every day (preferably morning) and track your weekly average weight to ensure you are consistently losing weight over time.

Additionally, you must track your calories and macronutrients. The best method I’ve found to track these is an app named Cronometer. I highly recommend Cronometer over other fitness apps such as MyPlate and MyFitnessPal as it tracks your micronutrients as well as individual amino acids in the free version.

Advice From The Shredding Experts

Rebecca Unruth, IPL Bikini Pro

Rebecca Unruth, IPL Bikini Pro

How tall are you?

5'5"

What is your approximate pre-cutting weight?

121.5 lbs

What was your most recent stage weight?

116 lbs

What are your staple cutting foods?

Bananas! I rarely go a morning without my banana smoothie and salads too. You can add protein, carbs, and fats, whatever you want into a salad to make it work for your prep. And you can eat a ton that way.

What is the most difficult part of contest prep?

For me personally it was my schedule. I was working two jobs, going to school 5 days a week with a few surgery rotation days, and trying to train 4-5 days a week. It got rough and I ended up slacking a bit towards the end of prep when finals came around. 

What’s your favorite cheat meal after a competition?

There's a local breakfast place near me and I would always get their tofu scramble and sweet potato hash browns! So amazing!

Do you have any tips for people starting their first contest prep?

Do what works for YOU! A lot of people see what other girls are doing for their prep and try to mimic that but every body responds differently. I did the complete opposite of what I've ever learned about prep. I kept eating carbs in abundance but I kept it super clean, fruits, veggies, rice, quinoa, and potatoes. It worked for me so I went with it.

Follow Rebecca on Instagram: @beccau.fit

Zach Staver, NPC Competitor

Zach Staver, NPC Competitor

How tall are you?

5'6"

What is your approximate pre-cutting weight?

188 lbs

What was your most recent stage weight?

148 lbs

What are your staple cutting foods?

My staple cutting foods are vegan protein ice cream, big salads, flatbread pizzas, and puffed rice cereal.

Did you do cardio when cutting?

I use cardio as a tool for weight loss I only implement it when needed. If my calories become too low to where I feel I don't have enough energy to function well I will add cardio in instead of dropping more calories to break weight loss plateaus.

What is the most difficult part of contest prep?

The most difficult part of contest prep is mentally and physically feeling horrible day in and day out at different times of the day. You go through many highs and lows and battling them is hard. Also when you get really lean you're constantly cold so that was a huge struggle.

What’s your favorite cheat meal after a competition?

I don't believe in the term "cheat meal" it provides a negative connotation and leads people to often times over eat or have quilt associated with a certain meal. No food in moderation is bad for you and I follow a flexible dieting lifestyle so I can fit in any "cheat" foods daily into my caloric goals. I had no urges to have a cheat meal after my show I simply just wanted more food. I went to a restaurant but that was just to spend time with family, to me I just wanted more of the food I was already eating.

Do you have any tips for people starting their first contest prep?

Give yourself more time than you think you need. All too often people think they're bigger or less fat then they really are and they don't realize the amount of weight that's needed to cut to actually be stage level leanness. Also I'd tell them to trust the process and not get too bogged down by little fluctuations. Take it slow and make sure you're maintaining as much hard earned muscle as possible.

Follow Zach on Instagram: @veganmeathead

Final Thoughts: Adjust Your Plan Based on Your Results

If a weight loss program gets you results, but cannot be sustained over the long term, then it is not the right program for you.

Let’s be honest, everyone wants to look and feel great, but we don’t want to achieve our goals with a daily regimen of tasteless slop and tortuous workouts.

What we really want are diet and training plans that are enjoyable, effective, and sustainable. The goal here really isn’t short-term fat loss, the goal is to create a healthy, sustainable, fit vegan fitness lifestyle.

If your body is responding well and changing as desired, just keep doing what you are doing.

Need some help to get in the best shape of your life?

You can apply for The Vegan Superhero Academy online personal coaching program here.

That's a wrap! Thank you SO MUCH for reading this article!

Was this article helpful to you? Please be sure to share this article with your vegan fitness friends by clicking the share buttons below! I'd really appreciate it and so would your friends!

Should You Take A BCAA Supplement?

Article Summary

Are branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) worth taking? Is there scientific evidence that they help to build or maintain muscle mass?

Suffice it to say that there is a lot of conflicting research on the topic of BCAA supplementation. After you cut through the marketing BS and BCAA manufacturer-funded garbage studies, there’s still a pretty muddied scientific stance on BCAA supplementation.

On the whole, however, BCAAs likely fall short of their marketing hype. You simply do not need BCAA supplements to build muscle because many vegan foods like tofu and pea protein are abundantly rich in BCAAs (and far less expensive!)

Although diet and training are by far the most important drivers of muscle growth and fat loss, BCAAs do have their place in a proper bodybuilding regime.

According to the latest research, BCAA supplements are beneficial in two specific circumstances:

  1. Supplementation during a serious caloric deficit in which you are at a low body fat percentage and struggle to get enough protein (specifically the amino acid leucine).

  2. Supplementation during fasted training as a muscle sparing strategy.

Please read the rest of the article to learn everything you need to know about BCAAs.

What are BCAAs?

There are nine essential amino acids – the building blocks of protein – that must be consumed in your diet because your body cannot produce them. Three of these essential amino acids – leucine, isoleucine, and valine – are called branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) because of their branched molecular structures.

While most amino acids are broken down in your liver, BCAAs are primarily broken down in your muscle and therefore believed to improve exercise performance and reduce muscle breakdown, particularly during fasted training.

Leucine, in particular, is the MVP of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) because of its star role in building muscle and reducing muscle breakdown.

Should You Take BCAA Supplements?

If you are skeptical of the supplement industry, you have good reason to be.

Bodybuilding supplements are not regulated by the FDA and are often backed by loose pseudoscience. It is alarmingly easy to get a supplement on the market.

But if you look around at various fitness YouTube videos, BodyBuilding.com forums, and “broscience” blogs, you'll find plenty of bodybuilders who swear by their use of various supplements.

Don’t buy into the hype. Many of these same people sell supplements or have been brainwashed by jacked steroid users who shill supplements as their secret to getting ripped.

To be fair, BCAA supplements are one of the most useful, research-backed supplements on the market. There are many studies that tout the legitimate benefits of consuming BCAAs. But don’t be fooled by poor study designs and manufacturer-funded research.

For example, there is plenty of research demonstrating the benefits of BCAA supplementation for subjects following a caloric deficit or consuming low-protein diets.

The most widely cited pro-BCAA supplement study was conducted in 1997 with thirty-one competitive male wrestlers who followed a moderate caloric deficit for 19 days.

The researchers found that BCAA supplementation, in combination with the subjects’ low-protein, energy-restricted diets, induced significant and preferential losses of visceral adipose tissue (i.e. fat) and allowed maintenance of high levels of physical performance.

All this really tells us is that we should use a BCAA supplement if we are consuming less protein than our bodies need during a period of caloric restriction to avoid muscle catabolism.

A meta-analysis of BCAA supplementation literature arrived at the same finding: BCAA supplementation in combination with a moderate caloric deficit has been shown to optimize fat losses without losing muscle or strength.

Again, this isn’t very helpful information. If you aren’t consuming enough protein during a caloric deficit, ingesting amino acids in the form of a BCAA supplement will obviously help you maintain lean body mass.

What we really need is a study that analyzes the effects of BCAA supplementation for resistance-trained athletes consuming high-protein diets!

Thankfully…there are two such studies!

In one of the most comprehensive studies on BCAA supplementation, researchers at Baylor University analyzed the effects of eight weeks of heavy resistance training combined with BCAA supplementation on body composition and muscle performance of 19 non-resistance-trained males.

The researchers concluded that BCAA supplementation failed to alter body composition, muscle strength, or muscle endurance.

Another study from Leeds University analyzed the effects of L-leucine supplementation alone (not all three branched chain amino acids) on strength, lean tissue mass, and fat mass of 26 untrained men following a non-energy-restricted diet during a 12-week resistance training program.

As a brief aside, L-leucine is simply the left rotated form of the amino acid leucine. The body more easily absorbs left rotated amino acids, which are also commonly called “free form” amino acids.

Just like the Baylor University study, researchers found no effect of L-leucine supplementation (4 grams per day) on body composition over the twelve weeks of resistance exercise training.

But in partial contradiction to the Baylor University study, the Leeds University researchers did find improvement in the L-leucine group subjects’ 5 repetition maximum (5RM) strength for five out of the eight exercises tested. The percentage total 5RM strength gains were 40.8% and 31.0% for the L-leucine and placebo groups, respectively.

If you’ve seen BCAA ads stating that a 4-gram daily dose of L-leucine has been shown in a clinical study to increase 5RM strength by over 40% in just 12 weeks, then this is the study they are using.

While this is technically a correct statement, you should take it with a grain of salt. The subjects were novice weightlifters with zero prior training experience. Furthermore, the placebo group experienced a similar, albeit lower, explosion in strength gains over the same 12-week period (31.0% vs. 40.8%).

The study concludes that 4 grams per day of leucine supplementation may be used as a nutritional supplement to enhance strength performance, but these findings aren’t necessarily applicable to experienced strength athletes.

So although there’s a pretty muddied stance on BCAA supplementation in the scientific literature, we can reach a few conclusions from the peer-reviewed studies above:

  1. BCAA supplementation is an effective muscle sparring strategy if you are following an energy-restricted diet (i.e. a caloric deficit). BCAA supplementation might also enhance strength performance.

  2. If you are consuming enough BCAAs from dietary protein (including protein powder), then supplementing with BCAAs is unlikely to provide additional benefit.

  3. Leucine supplementation alone appears to be nearly as effective in stimulating muscle protein synthesis as when all branched chain amino acids are consumed.

When You Should Consider Taking a BCAA Supplement

You’ve likely heard that if you do too much cardio, don’t ingest enough protein, or if you over train, then you risk cannibalizing your muscle.

While there is truth to these concerns, the science isn’t quite so simple. Your body breaks down and utilizes free BCAAs in your muscle first before your body cannibalizes muscle tissue. Your body takes these BCAAs and converts them to glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis (GNG) and uses the glucose for energy.

This process ensures BCAAs do have a muscle sparing action, but this is only helpful in certain situations, namely, if you are in a moderate caloric deficit or engaging in fasted training.

Specifically, the benefit of free form BCAA supplements lies in their ability to quickly flood the blood stream and muscles with high amounts of BCAA, especially leucine, to prevent muscle catabolism.

While your body absorbs amino acids from vegan protein powders (like pea protein) rather quickly (it takes around 45 minutes after consumption before your body begins to extract and absorb amino acids from protein powder), the ingestion of 5 grams of BCAAs from protein powder does not create the same metabolic response as the ingestion of 5 grams of free-form BCAAs from BCAA supplements.

Taking a BCAA supplement before intense cardio, particularly fasted cardio or cardio while following a caloric deficit, will help to preserve muscle mass.

For example, a study from the College of Charleston showed that BCAA supplementation in trained individuals performing resistance training while on a hypocaloric diet maintained lean mass and preserved skeletal muscle performance while losing fat mass.

Although informative, it is worth noting that the subjects didn’t receive a normal dose of BCAAs. The BCAA group received a whopping 28 grams of BCAAs daily (14 grams pre-workout and 14 grams post-workout) while the placebo group received 28 grams of a carbohydrate/electrolyte supplements (14 grams pre-workout and 14 grams post-workout).

Personally, I rarely train fasted and only use BCAAs when I drop below 10% body fat during a cut. While I maintain nearly all of my strength and muscle mass during deep cuts, I cannot attribute my lean body mass (LBM) retention to BCAA supplementation. I carefully plan my diet and training to achieve these results.

Even if you are following a caloric deficit, you can get all of your BCAAs from high-protein vegan foods to prevent muscle catabolism.

For me, supplementing with BCAAs is just to be safe so I don’t risk burning any of my hard-earned vegan gains during a caloric deficit. If an experienced weightlifter (4+ years of weightlifting experience) loses just one pound of muscle while cutting, it will likely take 2 to 6 months of intense weightlifting to gain that pound of muscle back during his/her next bulking period! I'd rather play it safe and supplement with BCAAs to ensure I am doing everything in my power to maintain LBM.

I have also experimented with leucine supplementation for the purpose of LBM retention during cuts, but cannot directly attribute any positive benefits to it either.

Doesn’t BCAA supplementation assist in reducing exercise-induced muscle soreness?

Nope, current research doesn’t support this common belief. A study funded by MusclePharm Corp (a manufacturer of BCAA supplements), which was surprisingly unbiased, found that BCAA supplementation does not reduce muscle soreness, nor does it appear to aid in attenuating the reduction of muscular performance following intense resistance training.

What You Should Take Instead of BCAAs

There is plenty of research that proves raising BCAA levels (leucine in particular) before and after exercise helps us build more muscle and maintain lean mass. However, there is little evidence that consuming BCAAs through supplementation is more effective than a high protein diet.

I think this excerpt from a review of BCAA research literature sums it up well:

“No data support the finding that oral supplementation with amino acids, in contrast to dietary protein, as the source of amino acids is more effective.”

If you are in a caloric surplus and eat enough protein, particularly leucine, you do not need a BCAA supplement. See my general targets for protein consumption in the table below.

How Much Protein Do Vegan Bodybuilders Need

The truth of the matter is that there are plenty of high-protein vegan foods and less expensive vegan protein supplements that are loaded with BCAAs.

For example, pea protein powders can be as high as 20% BCAAs by weight, surpassing even most whey protein powders!

Essential Amino Acid Profiles of Popular Vegan Protein Powders

On top of that, every 30 gram serving of pea protein gives you the required amount of leucine that is optimal for muscle growth, which is about 2.5 grams for the average male bodybuilder.

This is what makes pea protein such a great protein source! It is packed with essential amino acids, especially BCAAs!

What Are The Best Food Sources of BCAAs?

BCAAs are found in a number of protein-rich foods, including quinoa, pumpkin seeds, alfalfa seeds, kidney beans, tofu, sesame flour, and sunflower seed flour. One of the best sources, however, is pea protein concentrate, which has one of the highest concentrations of leucine compared to other vegan protein sources.

As previously mentioned, leucine is a particularly important amino acid because it acts as a trigger for muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Most plant proteins have a relatively low leucine content, which reduces their anabolic properties. Therefore, it is very important to consume a variety of high-leucine foods.

A 100-gram serving of pea protein concentrate has about 9.2 grams of leucine compared to 0.8 grams of leucine in 100 grams of dry quinoa, 0.7 grams of leucine in 100 grams of tofu, 1.6 grams of leucine in 100 grams of pumpkin seeds, and 0.7 grams of leucine in 100 grams of kidney beans.

The Bottom Line on BCAA Supplementation

There is no doubt in the scientific literature that adequate levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) are vital to building muscle, improving strength, and maintaining lean mass. However, there is little evidence that consuming BCAAs through supplementation is more effective than a high protein, BCAA-rich diet.

That being said, if you are at a low body fat percentage (less than 10% for men and less than 15% for women) and following a moderate caloric deficit or training in a fasted state, then BCAA supplements might be beneficial. I use and recommend CleanMachine BCAAs.

Clean Machine BCAAs

Just getting started on your fitness journey? Or want to make sure you’re heading in the right direction?

Try our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator to be sure you’re giving your body the nutrients it needs to meet your goals!

Do you have any questions about BCAAs? Send us a DM on Instagram or Facebook!

That's a wrap! Thank you SO MUCH for reading this article!

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How To Eat The Vegan Foods You Love And Still Get Fit (IIFYM)

If you want to learn how to use flexible dieting, also known as IIFYM, to lose fat, gain muscle, and stay healthy while eating the delicious vegan foods you enjoy, then you want to read this article.

What Is IIFYM?

IIFYM is short for “If It Fits Your Macros.”

Macros, short for "macronutrients," is the term used to describe the 3 main macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

Rather than placing all of your attention on counting calories or demonizing certain macronutrients, IIFYM focuses on meeting daily macro goals. Done correctly, this provides a consistent calorie intake, but one that can be personalized in many different ways.

In other words, IIFYM is a diet trend that allows you to eat anything you want whenever you want it and still reach your weight goals! The catch? You have to eat the right amount of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.

Does IIFYM Actually Work?

Is IIFYM effective for both losing fat and gaining muscle? Is it true that you can eat the foods you love while improving your physique?

In short, the answer to these questions is yes.

The principles of IIFYM, when properly applied, allow you to get the body you want by eating the foods you really love.

VEGAN IIFYM MEME

IIFYM is NOT a diet that consists of only eating junk food. It is a counting system used for accuracy so you can fit junk foods into your diet in moderation while consuming the bulk of your macros from healthy whole foods.

When done right, IIFYM is a solid balance of moderation and flexibility.

Try our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator to figure out your macros in less than 5 minutes! Find out what you need to eat to meet your goals..

The 4 Principles of Vegan IIFYM Dieting

  1. The number of calories you eat is more important than the source of those calories

  2. Macronutrients matter just as much as the number of calories

  3. You should get at least 80% of your calories from minimally processed, nutritious food

  4. There is no need for “meal timing” so you can eat whenever it fits your schedule and preferences

Principle 1: The number of calories you eat is more important than the source of those calories

Many diet “gurus” – even in the vegan community – claim that a “calorie isn’t a calorie” and that dieting is all about what you eat, not how much.

Well, this is complete garbage.

You gain weight by eating more calories than you burn and you lose weight by eating less calories than you burn. The relationship between how many calories you are consuming versus how many you are burning is called your energy balance.

It’s that simple.

You can’t eat 50 bananas a day and expect to lose weight and get the body of your dreams. You can be the “cleanest” eater in the world, eating the most nutritious foods, and still be weak and skinny fat if you eat too much and don't work out.

I must admit I really like the idea of being able to eat as much fruit as I want and still be able to lose weight, because I freaking LOVE fruit, but the reality is not so simple.

Dieting is all about how much you eat, not what you eat.

To prove that pure calorie counting is what matters most, not the nutritional value of the food, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, Mark Haub, lost 27 pounds eating Twinkies, Little Debbie snacks, Doritos, and Oreos.

Extreme? Most certainly. Unhealthy? Of course. But he proved his point.

When you feed your body fewer calories than it is burning, it must get those extra calories from somewhere, so it turns to its fat stores. When you keep your body in a calorie deficit over time, your body fat will decrease.

Principle 2: Macronutrients matter just as much as the number of calories

A calorie is not a calorie when we are talking about body composition. Whether your main goal is to gain muscle or lose fat, you need to do more than just maintain a caloric surplus or caloric deficit.

  • You must eat enough protein every day to gain muscle while bulking and preserve muscle while cutting.

  • You must eat enough carbs to give you the energy to push through gruesome workouts and progress in all your lifts.

  • You must eat enough fat to maintain proper hormone production.

You should consume most of your dietary fat from monounsaturated fats like avocados, seeds, and nuts. Furthermore, you must pay close attention to your EPA/DHA intake, especially as a vegan. Your body can convert ALA to EPA and DHA, but the conversion ratios are very low. Consequently, I use an EPA/DHA supplement and I recommend all vegans do the same.

So protein, carbs, and fat all play an important role in your health and body composition goals. This is why counting macros is superior to just counting calories. Personally, I follow and recommend a high protein, high carb, low-fat diet for both bulking and shredding.

If you want to calculate your macros to reach your fitness goals, try our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator!

Principle 3: You should get at least 80% of your calories from minimally processed, nutritious food

Macros are all that matter for fitness results, but micronutrients are arguably more important for overall health. So the only problem I have with the IIFYM group is that many people tend to use it as an excuse to eat crap. And this is a serious problem because - as Professor Mark Haub demonstrated with his Twinkie diet - you can actually eat crap while improving your physique.

The reality is that your body turns carbs from Oreos into glucose and glycogen just like the carbs from kale.

But, using the principles of IIFYM as an excuse to eat junk food while getting in shape is completely stupid.

Just because you can eat a half gallon of Non-Dairy Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cookie ice cream every day and still get shredded doesn’t mean you should.

I use the principles of IIFYM to achieve my physique goals, but I don’t use it as an excuse to eat junk food all the time. I stick to a diet of mostly whole plant foods whether I am bulking or cutting and I recommend you do the same.

As a general guideline, you should get at least 80% of your calories from nutritious whole foods - preferably more. Here’s a brief list of the healthy foods you should be eating:

Protein sources:

  • Lentils

  • Beans (black, pinto, kidney, etc.)

  • Sweet peas

  • Chickpeas

  • Hemp hearts (seed)

  • Buckwheat

  • Quinoa

  • Pumpkin seed

  • Spirulina

  • Organic tofu

  • Tempeh

Fat:

  • Almonds (or almond butter)

  • Walnuts

  • Cashews (or cashew butter)

  • Brazil nuts

  • Macadamia nuts

  • Hazelnuts

  • Chestnuts

  • Pecans

  • Pistachios

  • Sesame seeds

  • Pine nuts

  • Pumpkin seeds

  • Avocado

  • Flax seed

  • Coconut

Fibrous Carbohydrates:

  • Kale

  • Cabbage

  • Broccoli

  • Asparagus

  • Artichoke

  • Bok Choy

  • Eggplant

  • Sweet bell peppers

  • Zucchini

  • Brussel Sprouts

  • Cauliflower

  • Mushrooms

  • Parsley

  • Onions

  • Tomato

  • Spinach

  • Cucumber

  • Collard greens

  • Lettuce

  • Leeks

  • Celery

Starchy Carbohydrates

  • Sweet potatoes

  • Quinoa

  • Couscous

  • Rice

  • Pasta

  • Oats

  • Carrots

  • Legumes

Principle 4: There is no need for “meal timing” so you can eat whenever it fits your schedule and preferences

You don’t have to stick with “feeding windows,” eat protein every 2-3 hours to avoid “going catabolic,” or avoid carbs after 6PM.

And your metabolism won’t slow down if you eat 2 meals instead of 6.

I happen to prefer to eat more, smaller meals every day, but it doesn’t have any effect on my metabolism. If you prefer calorie dense foods, you can easily work them into your macros by eating fewer, higher calorie meals.

Hitting your macros is all that matters. Meal timing does not matter.

That being said, I should note that there is a slight exception to this rule. A high-protein post-workout meal or shake is a good idea if you are trying to build muscle and strength.

I also recommend that you consume some pre-workout carbs to give you the energy to crush your workouts, which in turn helps you progress in all your lifts to gain muscle and strength.

Do you have any questions about IIFYM? Send us a DM on Instagram or Facebook!

The Definitive Guide to Calculating Vegan Macros

The question I get asked more than any other is: “what should my macros be?”

This is a great question! Knowing your macros is the only way to be certain you are on the right path to achieving your fitness goals.

BUT...there isn't a straightforward one-size-fits-all answer to this question. So, I’ve written this comprehensive guide to teach you the exact process I use to calculate macros for my clients and myself.

Try our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator to figure out your macros in less than 5 minutes! Find out what you need to eat to meet your goals.

Why Online Macro Calculators Suck

Most people use online macro calculators like IIFYM Online Macro Calculator to determine their macros. In my opinion, the main problem with these online macro calculators is that they use very general activity multipliers to calculate your daily energy expenditure.

In other words, if you describe your activity level as “sedentary” or “very active” then the calculator will assign you a number from 1.0 to 2.0. The calculator then multiplies your basal metabolic rate (BMR) (the amount of calories someone of your gender, age, height, and weight burns, on average, when at rest) by this number to arrive at your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

So while these calculators can seem very convenient, they can be quite misleading in reality.

Based on my experience, I’ve found these calculators can be off by as much 30%!! If you are trying to lose weight and you are aiming for 2,000 calories per day, this 30% error could translate to you overeating or undereating by 600 calories!!

This will obviously make it nearly impossible to achieve your fitness goals.

So I recommend you calculate your macros more accurately by doing it yourself. And don’t worry, the math is simple and I will show you the steps in the rest of this article.

Step 1: Determine Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)

The first step in calculating your macros is to determine your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). As the name implies, your TDEE is the total number of calories you burn each day.

Many factors determine the total amount of energy that your body burns every day, such as body weight, age, total lean mass, body temperature, the thermic effect of foods (the amount of energy it “costs” to process food for use and storage), stimulant use such as caffeine, and physical activity.

We can group all of these factors into two general categories:

  1. Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): the amount of calories required to keep your body functioning at rest. BMR is more commonly known as your body’s metabolism.

  2. Your Average Activity Burn per Day: the amount of calories you burn each day from activities like walking the dog, cleaning the house, weightlifting, and anything else that gets you moving.

To calculate your TDEE, you simply calculate your BMR and Average Activity Burn per Day and add these two numbers.

As you can imagine, these calculations aren’t an exact science, but we’re going to do our best to determine your TDEE based on your physical characteristics, lifestyle, and fitness goals.

Let’s begin by calculating your BMR.

Step 1A: Calculate Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

There are three widely used and accepted formulas in metabolic literature: the Harris-Benedict equation, the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and the Katch-McArdle equation. These formulas approximate a person’s BMR.

For simplicity, you can just use the Katch-McArdle calculation. The equation is simple and it gets the job done.

BMR = 370 + (21.6 x LBM), where LBM is your lean body mass in kilograms

To calculate your Lean Body Mass (LBM), you must estimate your body fat percentage. The easiest way to estimate your body fat percentage if you have no idea what it might be is to look at pictures of people whose body fat percentages you know and make an educated guess.

Yes, you really can just guess your body fat percentage by a picture of someone else. It is the easiest way and just as accurate as most inexpensive methods like biometrical impedance analysis.

Contrary to popular belief, biometrical impedance analysis isn't very accurate. I have a rather expensive scale that sends electrical currents through my feet and I know for a fact that it can be off by upwards of +/- 5% when measuring my body fat percentage.

There are very accurate ways to measure body fat percentage: Bod Pod ($75 for a scan), DEXA scan ($50-150), and water displacement tests (also very expensive). If you happen to have results from one of these tests, use that body fat number instead, but these tests are unnecessary for our macro calculation purposes.

Example BMR Calculation

As an example, I will run through my own BMR calculation.

Here’s a picture of me that I took last week.

Leif Arnesen The Vegan Gym Shredding Physique (9 weeks in)

Based on the pictures of example body fat percentages for males, I’d guess that I am about 9% body fat. My fasted body weight (measured in the morning) is 170 pounds.

So let’s plug these numbers into the Katch-McArdle equation:

BMR = 370 + (21.6 x LBM), where LBM is your lean body mass in kilograms

First, I need to know my LBM. LBM is simply your total body weight minus fat weight.

So, my lean body mass (LBM) = 170 pounds x (100% - 9%)

LBM = 170 pounds x 91%

LBM = 170 pounds x 0.91

LBM = 154.7 pounds

So now I have my LBM in pounds. But for the equation, we need LBM in kilograms. There are about 2.2 pounds (lbs) in a kilogram (kg). So to find my LBM in kilograms, I must divide 154.7 pounds by 2.2 (pounds per kilogram).

So, my LBM is 70.2 kilograms (kg).

Now I’ll plug this into the Katch-McArdle equation.

BMR = 370 + (21.6 x 70.2 kg)

BMR = 370 + (1516.32)

BMR = 1886.32

This means that my BMR is 1,886 calories.

Now that we’ve calculated our BMR, let’s calculate our activity burn.

Step 1B: Calculate Your Average Activity Burn per Day

Your energy balance each week, total calories consumed vs. total calories burned, is extremely important in achieving your fitness goals (i.e. cutting, maintaining, or bulking), but your daily energy balance can vary a bit as long as you are consistent over long periods of time.

In other words, your average energy balance over time matters most in achieving your fitness goals. Don’t sweat the small dietary road bumps. We all have them.

To calculate your Average Activity Burn per Day, you should first list all of the activities you do during a typical/average week and the amount of time you spend doing them.

For example, here’s what my average activity each week looks like right now:

  • Weight training day 1: Chest and calves (75 minutes)

  • Weight training day 2: Back and biceps (75 minutes)

  • Weight training day 3: Legs (75 minutes)

  • Weight training day 4: Arms and shoulders (75 minutes)

  • Weight training day 5: Chest and calves (75 minutes)

  • Weight training day 6: Legs (75 minutes)

  • Walking the dog (90 minutes per week)

  • StairMaster (60 minutes per week)

  • Cleaning the house (120 minutes per week)

After you have listed all of your total activity, we will now calculate the number of calories you burn from each of these activities.

When I calculate the activity burn for my clients and myself I use MET (Metabolic Equivalent) data for physical activities from "The Compendium of Physical Activities Tracking Guide" by B. E. Ainsworth.

Each individual activity from my database of over 600 activities has a MET value associated with it. A MET value represents the ratio of energy (i.e. calories) required to perform a particular activity relative to your BMR. My macronutrient calculator estimates your calorie burn by multiplying the MET value for your chosen activity by the duration time of your activity and by your calculated BMR.

Since I cannot easily share this database with you, please use one of the following sites to calculate your activity burn for each of your activities.

My Fitness Pal Calories Burned From Exercise

Using these resources, I found my activity burn to be as follows:

  • Weight training day 1: Chest and calves (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Weight training day 2: Back and biceps (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Weight training day 3: Legs (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Weight training day 4: Arms and shoulders (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Weight training day 5: Chest and calves (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Weight training day 6: Legs (75 minutes) = 485 calories

  • Walking the dog (90 minutes per week) = 230 calories

  • StairMaster (60 minutes per week) = 620 calories

  • Cleaning the house (120 minutes per week) = 300 calories

Now, add all of your activity burn calories together to arrive at your Total Activity Burn per Week.

My Total Activity Burn per Week is 4,060 calories.

Now remember, our goal is to determine our Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), so we need to know how many calories we burn per day from activity.

Your Average Activity Burn per Day is the average number of calories you burn each day from your total exercise per week (your Total Activity Burn per Week divided by 7).

My Average Activity Burn per Day is 580 calories (4,060 calories divided by 7).

So, we now know our BMR and Average Activity Burn per Day. We simply add these two numbers together to arrive at our TDEE.

My TDEE is 1,886 calories + 580 calories = 2,466 calories.

And that’s it!

Once again, this isn’t an exact science, but it is much more accurate that the online macro calculators that use general activity multipliers.

The 3 Principles of Body Composition

There are three foundational principles when it comes to building muscle and shredding fat that are well established both scientifically and anecdotally:

  1. A caloric surplus is necessary for maximizing muscle growth

  2. A caloric deficit is necessary for shredding fat

  3. A high-protein diet is vital for both maximizing muscle growth and minimizing muscle loss while shredding fat

Caloric Deficit for Shredding Fat

You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss. This is called a caloric deficit (i.e. consume less calories than you burn).

However, eating very little, known as starvation dieting, isn’t ideal for weight loss. If your caloric deficit is too extreme, your metabolism will slow, you will lose muscle along with fat, and you’ll really hate the process.

Caloric Surplus for Muscle Growth

Contrary to shredding fat, you must consume more energy to achieve meaningful muscle growth. This is called a caloric surplus (i.e. consume more calories than you burn).

If you don’t eat enough calories, you will struggle to gain muscle. This is because a caloric deficit decreases your body’s ability to synthesize skeletal muscle proteins, reduces anabolic hormone levels while increasing catabolic hormone levels, and impairs workout performance which in turn impairs progression in your workouts and therefore muscle growth.

I recommend that you maintain a slight 10% caloric surplus when bulking. In other words, you should eat around 110% of your total daily energy expenditure to be in the “sweet spot” for gaining lean muscle.”

It is worth noting that most gym “newbies,” people with less than a year of weightlifting training under their belts, can build muscle and lose fat at the same time, but can’t optimally do both simultaneously. The rest of us will do best by alternating between periods of cutting and bulking.

Step 2: Determine Your MAIN Fitness Goal

Most people I know want to both shred fat and gain more muscle, but unless you are a newbie weightlifter, you cannot both shred fat and gain muscle at the same time.

Doing so would violate the 3 Principles of Body Composition. In order to maximize muscle growth, you must maintain a caloric surplus. In order to shred fat, you must maintain a caloric deficit.

So which one should you pick? Here’s my rule of thumb:

If you have a body fat percentage greater than 15% as a male, you should cut down to 10-12% before beginning to bulk (i.e. gain muscle). If you are a female with a body fat percentage greater than 20%, you should cut down to 15-17% before beginning to bulk.

If you are a male around 10-12% body fat or female around 15-17% body fat, then you’re ready to begin a lean bulk.

Starting to build muscle with a shredded physique is ideal for several reasons:

  1. High body fat levels reduce insulin sensitivity, thereby suppressing muscle protein synthesis (known as MPS, which is a vital component of hypertrophy, the muscle growth process).

  2. High body fat levels create imbalances in hormonal levels, causing testosterone levels to drop and estrogen levels to rise in men.

  3. Bulking from a shredded physique until you reach 15% body fat as a man or 20% as a woman, then cutting back to 10-12% or 15-17%, respectively, saves you from long, grueling cuts.

So here’s the bottom line: body fat makes you fatter, makes it more difficult to build muscle, and creates hormonal imbalances. If your goal is to gain muscle, you should start with a lean physique, 10-12% body fat for men and 15-17% body fat for women.

Step 3: Determine Your Daily Calorie Target

Now that you have determined your main fitness goal, this step is easy. If you decided that it is time to shred fat, then you should aim for a 20% caloric deficit every day. Simply multiply your TDEE by 0.8 to figure out how many calories you should eat every day for fat loss.

For example, I am currently shredding. My TDEE is 2,466 calories, so my Daily Calorie Target should be 1,973 calories per day (2,466 calories x 0.8) to efficiently burn fat.

If I decided to start a lean bulk right now to build muscle, I would aim for a 10% caloric surplus every day. If you also want to lean bulk, simply multiply your TDEE by 1.1 to determine how many calories you should eat every day.

For example, if I stopped shredding and began a lean bulk, I should aim to eat 2,713 calories (2,466 calories x 1.1).

Step 4: Calculate Your Macros

Macronutrients, often referred to as “macros,” are substances required in large amount in the human diet. There are three primary macronutrients that the human body needs in order to function properly: carbohydrates, fat, and protein.

Regardless of the sources foodwise, 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories, 1 gram of carbohydrates contains 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories.

Step 4A: Determine how much protein you should be eating

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight) for healthy adults. This amount is “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.”

As long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet, this recommendation is extremely easy to meet.

However, many decades of research and anecdotal evidence proves athletes, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

Still, the truth is that I can’t tell you exactly how much protein you need. Only expensive nitrogen balance testing can tell you for sure. However, when it comes to fitness, people tend to fall into one of three groups. Here’s my simple chart:

Approximate Protein Requirements for 3 Types of People

As things stand right now in the scientific literature, if you are serious about putting on as much muscle mass as possible, and you want to be safe in terms of consuming enough protein to promote that muscle growth, I recommend 0.9 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for bulking and 1.1 grams per pound of lean body mass (LBM) for cutting.

Keep in mind that my recommendation is likely more than anyone needs to maximize muscle and strength gains, especially for people without serious physique or strength goals.

Since I am a vegan bodybuilder currently in the process of shredding and I want to maximize my muscle mass and strength, I am aiming for 1.10 grams of protein per pound of LBM during my cut.

Given my LBM of 154.7 pounds, this means that I should aim for 170 grams of protein per day.

I know, I know. This number probably sounds really high. And it likely is higher than necessary.

But I’d rather hit my protein and be safe than risk burning any of my hard-earned vegan muscle gains when I’m on a caloric deficit. For example, if an experienced weightlifter (4+ years of weightlifting experience) loses just a single pound of muscle while shredding, it could take 2 to 6 months of intense weightlifting to gain that pound of muscle back during his/her next bulking period! Assuming five 1-hour workouts per week, that single pound of muscle could take upwards of 135 hours of intense weightlifting to gain back!

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather eat a bit more protein than I probably need to avoid losing any muscle instead of killing myself for 135 hours in the gym just to get back to my pre-shredding LBM.

That being said, hitting 1.1 grams of protein per pound of LBM while on a caloric deficit is difficult. It requires careful planning and most likely protein supplementation, but if you stay within the body fat percentages I recommended earlier, then you won’t be cutting for extended periods of time.

Step 4B: Determine how much fat you should be eating

You should only consume enough fat to maintain optimal health. Eating more fat wouldn’t necessarily be harmful to your health, but it would limit the amount of carbohydrates you could eat, which form the bulk nutritious foods like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables.

Generally speaking, replacing carb calories with fat calories makes it more difficult to build muscle and strength. Remember, lower carb intake equals lower insulin response and less energy during workouts.

Still, many so-called “experts” claim eating dietary fat is the key to losing body fat. The reality is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. A caloric deficit along with high protein consumption is the best way to lose fat.

A 2015 study by scientists at the National Institutes of Health found that calorie for calorie, low fat dieting is more effective for fat loss than low carb for obese individuals.

Free fatty acids, which come from excess dietary fat and circulate in the bloodstream, cause inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance in our muscles.

When you put people on a low-carb diet, fat builds up in their muscles within two hours and insulin sensitivity drops.

In conclusion, I recommend consuming enough dietary fat to maintain optimal health, but no more. This should be approximately 0.3 grams per pound of bodyweight. When shredding, I typically eat a bit less than 0.3 grams per pound of bodyweight because my calories are low and I don’t like to drop my carbs very low.

Following the 0.3 grams of fat per pound of bodyweight rule of thumb, I should be consuming 51 grams of fat each day (170 pounds x 0.3).

Ideally, you should consume no oil and limit your saturated fat intake to below 10% of your daily calories. You should consume most of your dietary fat from monounsaturated fats like avocados, seeds, and nuts.

Furthermore, you must pay close attention to your EPA/DHA intake, especially as a vegan. Your body can convert ALA to EPA and DHA, but the conversion ratios are very low. Consequently, I use an EPA/DHA supplement and I recommend all vegans do the same.

Step 4C: Allocate the rest of your calories for carbs

So by this point, you know your Daily Calorie Target and the number of grams of protein and fat that you should be eating each day.

To calculate the grams of carbs in our macros, we will calculate how many calories we have left in our Daily Calorie Target after subtracting protein and fat calories then divide by 4 because there are 4 calories in a gram of carbs.

To determine the number of calories you are spending each day for protein, simply multiply your grams of protein by 4 because there are 4 calories in a gram of protein.

Since I am aiming for 170 grams of protein per day, this means I should be consuming 680 calories of protein per day (170 grams x 4 calories per gram).

To determine the number of calories you are spending each day for fat, simply multiply your grams of fat by 9 because there are 9 calories in a gram of fat.

Since I am aiming for 51 grams of fat per day, this means I should be consuming 459 calories of fat per day (51 grams x 9 calories per gram).

As a reminder, my Daily Calorie Target is 1,973 calories per day. To determine the number of calories I have for left for carbs, I must subtract my protein and fat calories from my Daily Calorie Target.

So my carb calories = 1,973 – 680 – 459 = 834 calories.

Just divide your carb calories by 4 (4 calories per gram) and you have your total carb macros.

For me, this means I should eat about 208 grams of carbs per day (834 calories divided by 4).

At this point, I know what my calories and macros should be to achieve my main fitness goal!

Daily Calorie Target: 1,973 calories per day

Target Macros: 170 grams of protein, 51 grams of fat, and 208 grams of carbs

Once you've done these calculations for yourself, you can use Cronometer or My Fitness Pal to track your calories and macros each day. I prefer Cronometer, but you can use whatever you prefer.

Have questions about vegan macros?

Send us a DM on Instagram or Facebook!

That's a wrap! Thank you so much for reading this article!

Was this article helpful to you? Please be sure to share this article with your vegan fitness friends by clicking the share button below! I'd really appreciate it and so would your friends!

What is the Best Vegan Protein Source for Building Muscle?

If you want to build muscle as a vegan, you’ll also want to know which vegan protein sources are going to help you meet your goal physique as quickly as possible.

Nearly all plant foods have protein, but not all vegan protein sources are the same in terms of quality. Understanding protein quality will help you choose the best vegan foods for building muscle, which we will explain thoroughly in this article.

What you’ll learn in this article:

  • Are vegan protein sources “complete?”

  • What is protein quality and why is it important?

  • What are the best vegan protein powders?

  • How much protein does your body need to build muscle?

  • Are protein supplements necessary for building muscle as a vegan?

Are Vegan Protein Sources “Complete?”

No. Vegan protein sources are all incomplete. This is why vegans like Patrik Baboumian, Torre Washington, Derek Tresize, Fraser Bayley, Ryan Nelson, and Will Tucker suffer from severe protein deficiencies.

Joking aside, some “experts” claim that plant foods are missing essential amino acids that your body needs, and thus must be combined in special ways to form “complete” proteins.

This myth and the faulty research that spawned it was thoroughly debunked by MIT years ago, but it still lingers. All protein found in vegetables is “complete.”

What is true, however, is that some forms of vegetable proteins are lower in certain amino acids than others, making certain sources better than others.

“High quality” versus “low quality” proteins are terms generally used to distinguish the relative proportions of the different essential amino acids found in certain foods. The more closely the proportion matches our own proteins, the higher its “quality.”

In the next section, you’ll learn exactly how nutrition researchers measure protein quality.

Are you getting enough protein to build muscle?

Try our FREE Vegan Macro Calculator to find out how much protein your body needs!

How Do We Score Protein Quality?

The best measure of dietary protein quality is the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS). I explain why this is the best measure of protein quality in my article Animal VS. Plant Protein: Which is BEST for Muscle Gains?

Contrary to its predecessor, the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS), DIAAS assesses protein quality based on true ileal digestibility values of individual amino acids versus the overall digestibility of protein. In other words, DIAAS is a new, more accurate method of measuring protein quality.

DIAAS is defined as: DIAAS % = 100 x [(mg of digestible dietary indispensable amino acid in 1 g of the dietary protein) / (mg of the same dietary indispensable amino acid in 1g of the reference protein)].

The values are calculated for each essential amino acid (EAA) and the lowest value is designated as the DIAAS.

Researchers at Massey University and the Fonterra Research and Development Centre of New Zealand analyzed the amino acid digestibility of 14 high-protein food sources using both DIAAS and PDCAAS methodologies. Here are their results:

PDCAAS and DIAAS Scores of Common High-Protein Food Sources

The main takeaway here is that all protein isn’t equal. For example, a gram of protein from rice protein concentrate (DIAAS = 0.371) doesn’t provide the same essential building blocks for optimum muscle growth that pea protein concentrate does (DIAAS = 0.822).

What Are the Best Vegan Protein Powders?

In this section, I will analyze the muscle-building potential of the 4 most popular vegan protein supplements: soy, rice, pea, and hemp.

Soy Protein

Soy protein is a protein isolated from soybean meal that has been dehulled and defatted. The macronutrient composition of the soybean differs markedly from other legumes as it is much higher in fat, moderately higher in protein, and much lower in carbohydrate.

Despite its impressive amino acid profile, soy faces quite a bit of controversy, particularly for its purported “feminizing effects” that come from isoflavones in soy foods.

Isoflavones belong to a class of compounds generally known as phytoestrogens, plant compounds that have estrogen-like structures. Each gram of soy protein in soybeans and traditional soy foods is associated with approximated 3.5 mg of isoflavones.

However, research has proven that isoflavones should not be equated with the hormone estrogen. Medical literature is replete with clinical examples of differences between these two molecules. For example, no effects on estrogen levels have been noted in numerous clinical studies in which men were exposed to as much as 150 mg/day of isoflavones.

That being said, eating too much soy may neutralize some of the beneficial effects of avoiding animal protein. As Dr. Michael Greger writes, “To maintain the low IGF-1 levels associated with a plant-based diet, one should probably eat no more than 3-5 servings of soy foods per day. Vegans consuming 7 to 18 servings of soy foods a day may end up with circulating IGF-1 levels comparable to those who eat meat.”

Additionally, genetically engineered soybeans have significantly higher pesticide residues than organic or conventional non-GMO soy, so you should definitely buy organic soy products.

Rice Protein

Rice protein is a protein isolated from rice meal that has been dehulled and defatted. Rice protein is easily digested, gluten-free, and hypoallergenic.

Pea Protein

Pea protein is typically extracted from yellow peas and boasts an impressive amino acid profile. As with most plant-based proteins, pea protein is hypoallergenic and generally has few additives or artificial ingredients. It has a complete array of amino acids, including high levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). While its amino acid profile is similar to whey protein, pea is particularly high in arginine, lysine, and phenylalanine.

Hemp

Generally regarded as a potent superfood, hemp protein comes from ginding the tiny, nutrient-rich seeds of the hemp plant, the same plant of which marijuana originates from, but without intoxicating components. Hemp provides the essential fatty acids (EFAs) omega-3 and omega-6 in a healthy 3:1 ratio. However, hemp protein’s amino acid profile is rather humble in comparison to rice, pea, and soy protein.

Essential Amino Acid Profiles of Popular Vegan Protein Powders

In the table below, I have analyzed rice, pea, and soy protein powders, and compared them to the "gold standard" of protein powders in traditional bodybuilding circles: whey protein.

Essential Amino Acid Profiles of Popular Vegan Protein Powders

As you can see, pea protein is a clear winner, even surpassing whey protein for EAAs/gram across the board. Vegan FTW!

Amino Acid Requirements per DIAAS Guidelines

Recommended amino acid scoring patterns (i.e. amino acid pattern of the reference protein) to be used for calculating DIAAS are as follows:

Recommended Amino Acid Targets for Infants, Children, and Adults

If you want to learn more about the recommended amino acid scoring patterns, please see page 29 of the FAO Report of Dietary protein quality evaluation in human nutrition.

*Please note that while the researchers used the recommended amino acid scoring pattern for children ages 6 months to 3 years, their DIAAS and PDCAAS calculations are highly relevant to the amino acid requirement pattern for adults.

**Also note that the FAO has established 0.75 on the DIAAS as being the minimum value allowed for nutrient claims to be made for “high-quality proteins.”

How Much Protein Does Your Body Need?

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight) for healthy adults. This amount is “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.”

As long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet, this recommendation is extremely easy to meet.

However, many decades of research and anecdotal evidence proves athletes, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

But the truth is that I can’t tell you exactly how much protein you need. Only expensive nitrogen balance testing could tell you for sure. However, I believe that when it comes to fitness, people tend to fall into one of three groups. Here’s my simple chart:

Approximate Protein Requirements for 3 Types of People

As things stand right now in the scientific literature, if you are serious about putting on as much muscle mass as possible, and you want to be safe in terms of consuming enough protein to promote that muscle growth, I recommend 0.9 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for bulking and 1.1 grams per pound of lean body mass (LBM) for cutting.

However, this recommendation is likely more than anyone needs to maximize muscle and strength gains, especially for people who lack serious fitness goals (aesthetics or strength).

Are Protein Supplements Necessary For Building Muscle?

Nope! Protein supplements are not necessary at all for building muscle. You can get all of your protein from whole plant foods. In fact, while I use protein supplements, I recommend you use them minimally.

Many vegans don’t use protein powder, claiming it is unnecessary, perhaps even unhealthy. Well they are right in stating that protein powders are unnecessary, but depending on your fitness goals and physique they could help.

Protein supplements have some advantages over whole foods:

  • When you are cutting, protein supplements help you hit your high-protein macros without overeating.

  • Protein supplements can easily be added to many meals to increase their protein content. For example, I love chocolate protein oatmeal for breakfast after my morning workouts!

  • Protein supplements are convenient for on-the-go eating when you don’t want to stray from your macros.

How to Find the Best Protein Powder For You

I use pea protein because it ranks highest in terms of amino acid profile and amino acid digestibility.

While there are other pea protein powders on the market that have added superfoods and consequently boast higher micronutrient profiles, I use Less Naked Chocolate Pea Protein because I love the protein content, taste, price, and short list of ingredients (just 3 ingredients!).

If you aren’t quite sure what protein powder to choose for yourself, check out my ULTIMATE VEGAN PROTEIN POWDER REVIEW.

Do you have any questions about vegan protein sources? Send us a DM on Instagram or Facebook!

How Much Protein Do Vegans Need To Build Muscle?

It’s time to finally put the vegan protein debate to rest.

A high-protein diet is absolutely vital for building muscle and strength.

While it might be possible to build some muscle with a relatively low protein intake around 10% of total calories, a plethora of sports nutrition research and anecdotal evidence proves you are fighting an uphill battle.

But still there remains so much confusion and controversy about this topic!

For example, there was once a vegan who told me I could get all of my protein from bananas and that I should not worry about it.

Sure, fruits and vegetables have protein, but I have yet to see someone with impressive banana gains...

How Much Protein Do You Need To Build Vegan Muscle?

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight) for healthy adults. This amount is “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.”

As long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet, this recommendation is extremely easy to meet.

However, many decades of research and anecdotal evidence proves athletes, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

Still, the truth is that I can’t tell you exactly how much protein you need. Only expensive nitrogen balance testing can tell you for sure. However, when it comes to fitness, people tend to fall into one of three groups. Here’s my simple chart:

How Much Protein Do Vegan Bodybuilders Need

If you are bulking - which means that your main fitness goal is to gain muscle and strength - I recommend you consume 0.9 grams of plant protein per pound of body weight per day (2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight per day).

I know, I know. This number probably sounds really high. And it likely is higher than necessary even if you are following an intense weightlifting regime.

But trust me. When you are working your ass off in the gym to gain muscle, you want to be sure you are getting all of the protein you need to be sure you aren’t leaving any gains on the table. At the same time, you don’t want to go overboard.

Let’s Take A Look At What The Research Says

As I will cover in the following paragraphs, numerous nutritional studies indicate that a high carb, high protein, low-fat diet is optimal for muscle mass and strength gains.

This can be accomplished on a healthy, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet with some protein supplementation depending on your specific goals.

A study by the Exercise Nutrition Research Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario confirmed that regular exercise increases daily protein requirements by as much as 100% vs. recommendations for sedentary individuals.

Given that the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight (0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight) for healthy adults, the researchers suggest 0.73 to 0.82 grams per pound of body weight per day (1.6 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight).

A study by the Exercise Metabolism Research Group at McMaster University found that protein intakes in the range of 0.6 to 0.82 grams per pound of body weight per day (1.3 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day) consumed in 3-4 equal amounts each day will maximize muscle protein synthesis. The researchers suggested that experienced athletes likely require less protein.

A study from the McMaster University Medical Center concluded that athletes working to maximize bulk and strength while resistance training should consume foods with high biological value with a maximum protein requirement of approximately 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight per day (0.77 grams per pound of body weight per day).

While protein is vitally important for muscle hypertrophy, there is very little support for the super high protein intakes recommended by traditional bodybuilding diet plans (e.g. > 2.5 to 3.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or > 1.14 to 1.36 grams per pound of body weight).

So as things stand right now in the scientific literature, if you are serious about gaining muscle and strength, and you want to be safe in terms of consuming enough protein to promote that muscle growth, then the ideal range to aim for is 0.73 to 0.82 grams of protein per pound of body weight (1.6 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight), understanding that this is just to be on the safe side.

So why do I recommend 0.9 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight (2.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day)?

As I discussed in last week’s article Animal VS. Plant Protein: Which is BEST for Muscle Gains?, studies prove that gram for gram, animal-based protein is more effective at building muscle than plant-based protein.

Although the bodybuilding studies cited above do not specify the protein source used for analysis, I am assuming that most of the protein was animal-based (likely with whey protein supplementation), therefore I am adding 15% more protein to compensate for the lower digestibility of plant-based protein sources as we discussed in the previous sections.

I know it can be difficult to hit 0.9 grams of protein per pound of body weight (2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight per day) while eating only whole foods, especially if your diet is high in raw plant foods.

But I’d like to take a second to repeat something I said earlier:

I know, I know. This number probably sounds really high. And it likely is higher than necessary even if you are following an intense weightlifting regime.

But trust me. When you are working your ass off in the gym to gain muscle, you want to be sure you are getting all of the protein you need to be sure you aren’t leaving any gains on the table.

If you are not supplementing your diet with protein powder, you will definitely have to plan out your meals and focus on high-protein foods. Protein powders simplify your life and allow you to eat plenty of healthy fruits and vegetables while still hitting your high-protein intake.

How To Train to Take Advantage of That Protein

Without the proper lifting routine, it doesn't matter how much protein you eat. If you hit bicep curls for 10 sets of 30 reps and chug 5 protein shakes a day hoping to become jacked, you need a reality check.

Many gym goers make the mistake of doing way too much volume and focusing too much time on isolation exercises.

Whether your goal is to shred fat, maintain your physique, or bulk, you must incorporate a lifting routine focused on heavy, compound weight training.

What exactly is a compound exercise?

A compound exercise is an exercise that involves multiple joints and muscle groups. The best compound exercises are the squat, deadlift, bench press, dip, row, and overhead “military” press.

These heavy compound lifts form the basis of my typical weekly workout routine.

If you dedicate yourself to following a high-protein, whole food vegan diet and a proper weightlifting routine focused on heavy compound exercises, I promise you’ll make muscle and strength gains faster than ever!

Are you getting enough protein?

Try our FREE Vegan Nutrition Calculator to be sure you’re giving your body the nutrients it needs to meet your goals!

That's a wrap! Thank you so much for reading this article!

Was this article helpful to you? Please be sure to share this article with your vegan fitness friends by clicking the share button below! I'd really appreciate it and so would your friends!