Thread: Vegan Diet Questions

I am more than a year on a vegetarian diet and am transitioning this week to a full vegan diet starting next week. That is the plan at least. I know that a plant-strong diet will never lack in protein. I also know that I stick to the old-school idea of loading up on protein for bulking purposes. My main concerns are how much of the old-school ideas are applied to a vegan diet. Mainly concerning tracking macros and total calories. Who is doing it? What are your intake levels as far as carbs and proteins? Are you tracking calories? Who is supplementing their protein? Who is not? I would like to here from some current vegans on this. I know this works but I am still stuck on needing to research stuff to death so I know what to expect.

Originally Posted by KelJu

Get ready to eat a fuck-ton of beans. I eat Garbanzo beans at every meal. It is the only way I can keep my protein high enough.

Originally Posted by Kenny Croxdale

Protein

Protein is one of the problem with a vegan diet. It is hard to consume the quality or the quanity of protein necessary.

Lacto-Ovo

If you a Lato-Ovo Vegetarian, you should be able to get both the quality and quanity you need.

Kenny Croxdale

As much as I appreciate the input, that is still some of the old-school thinking that I subscribe to. Some of the research I am doing has shown that too much protein exists in the typical diet of athletes and body builders. Too much protein is bad for the kidneys since they have to filter all of it out. My sources of information are reliable but I am having difficulty in getting past the idea that tons of protein are needed in our diets.

As far as protein being lacking in the vegan diet, or vegetarian diet, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yes, protein chains are probably lacking. What is not lacking is the amount of amino acids that make up those proteins. Without getting into a discussion of the composition and break down of amino acids, how they are utilized by the body, etc I would like to know if anyone has put good faith in this and just jumped in and what were the results.

I already eat a lot of beans on my vegetarian diet along with anything else that is high in protein to keep my levels up. I am honestly starting to believe the stuff I am reading about how we consume too much protein in our diets. One person even suggested that the average person only need 22.5 grams/day to maintain muscle mass. I over the last year I have had low levels and also higher levels and have shown no decrease in lean mass. That has me thinking heavily about the conventional methodology and if it is in fact based in truth or not. After reading about protein utilization from various sources I have a better understanding of how things can come to be more widely accepted. The percentage of protein utilization from animal sources is relatively low when compared to that of plant sources.