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New to Veg/Vegan and Bodybuilding &having Weight Questions..


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SO, lately have been seeing a LOT of questions and topics mostly by those both new to vegetarian/vegan lifestyle and/or bodybuilding having to do with either too much weight loss, poor performance or poor results. Many of those can boil down to various common issues like:

 

- what you're eating or not eating,

- when you're eating,

- how you're working out (what exercises),

- or other health issues

 

Not to stop you all from posting your own threads/topics but thought maybe a 1 stop thread might be good.

 

Me, been vegan for almost 4 years, vegetarian for going on 13. Had my own challenges and things I had to learn, so leaning on others is a valuable resource to have. About a year ago, had chance to go to @UFCFit seminar with Rich Frankin and Mike Dolce. Rich is Former UFC Middleweight Champ. Mike Dolce is a former fighter and is the leader of healthy living, performance training and fitness in MMA. Got choked by Rich (different story! haha!) and learned a lot from Mike.

 

On the topic of diet, nutrition and weightloss. When switching to a plant-based diet (or mostly plant-based), unless you're plugged into a community or have read quite a few books, getting your nutrition right can be challenging. Throw in the change from the ingrained mantras of counting calories, protein, carbs, and fats and things can get out of whack pretty quickly. Luckily with the web, we don't have to go it alone and I'm very confident in saying that I do NOT know everything, I know some about stuff I've dealt with and have friends who know more in other areas. I read a lot, and yeah, sometimes learn something knew that I had wrong.....big deal. Life goes on.

 

For going plant-based, simply put, you need variety in your diet from 'Earth grown nutrients' (credit to Mike Dolce for the term). Eat the colors of the rainbow in your veg, ideally using locally sourced but if you life on an island like some of the members here, that's not always easy, cheap or even possible. Need diversity too to include grains, legumes and fruits. Supplements can be a touchy subject. But they CAN of course make up for shortfalls in your regular foods, but I would suggest that a calorie sufficient, diverse plant-based diet CAN give you all the stuff you need.

 

For the new to the lifestyle crowd, initially probably want to either get on-board with nutritional yeast for your B vitamins, or plan on using a vitamin B complex supplement initially. Also, learned this not long ago, working out hard needs lots of magnesium -- indications you're not getting enough would be frequent cramping in muscles like ur legs....

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On to how this relates to the weight loss/gain categories.

 

As you start (or continue) on your fitness journey, obviously you will CHANGE. Recommend starting out with a journal, measurments of all the key body points (calfs, thighs, hips, waist, chest, shoulders, biceps, neck, etc.), weight, and take some nice 'before' pics to compare with later on. Ideally, take pics in well lighted area so you can get some good shadowing and wear something you can wear again later to get true comparison pics.

 

Then comes the food part. Especially early on, keep track of what you are eating with each meal, ideally when and quantity. TRUTH TIME: measuring is a PITA to me, so I don't do it, but can keep track of how many meals I get out of a batch of lentils, or like my breakfast concoction today the measures of quinoa, lentils, pepper, onion, light-life sausage, etc. so I can adjust later on.

 

Mike Dolce suggests for his followers, using a general 3-day assessment period continually. If you're getting too lean/too light or starting to get 'soft' in all the wrong places. Time to adjust. Look at yourself in the mirror every day, watch the scale, how do you feel. Looking like your BMI is going up or down, face/neck getting leaner or fuller.

 

Then based on those findings, ONLY make a 10% adjustment to everything you eat.

 

Getting soft, 10% reduction. Getting too lean, 10% bump up.

 

Yes you can, of course, make adjustments to your workouts, but that is much harder to quantify. What would be 10% more vigor or 10% less?

 

10% adjustment for 3-days, then re-evaluate. That can take 2-3 cycles to really lock-in what your new plan should be. Small tweaks.

 

That makes a lifestyle adjustment as opposed to yo-yo dieting. SMALL increments.

 

Might suggest like many here, if you're LOSING too much weight or too much muscle mass, REALLY hit up the board here with:

 

- What/how you're working out

- What/when you've been typically eating (detail important here to know if issue is calories or nutrients, quality of foods or quantity of foods)

 

To me, nutrition is a complex equation with many variables. Some of live in very different parts of the world. Different food availabilities. Different allergies. To simply give up on going plant-based and succumbing to the rest of the world's opinion which is 'See, eating plants is rubbish, you need to eat animal products!' may be easier, but not better for you in the long run. And please, don't just start taking more random suppliments with hopes of filling in holes in your nutritional plan -- it's not hard, it's not rocket science, just takes learning stuff we weren't necessarily taught growing up.....

 

Off to clean litter trays...I know, right?

 

Hope this is helpful! Maybe with a singular thread for the topic it will make it easier in the future?

 

Out!

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