romac

it sounds like you are trying to do 2 things at once - very difficult imo - i think to both gain significant muscle and lose significant fat your diet and workouts have to be totally dialed in and consistent your workouts and diet seem to be geared towards losing fat - not gaining muscle - although a few people might make gains on a perfected diet while losing fat, the more common method you'll find is that people slightly overeat in order to gain muscle and ensure they have adequate calories, fat, and protein to build muscle - very hard to lose fat if you are slightly overeating also exercises for muscle gain are the big classic HEAVY lifts - everything with freeweights - deadlifts, squats, presses etc. HEAVY weights so that reps go no higher than a dozen, but even better is to stay below 8, the reps stay low not because you quit at 8, but because the weight is so heavy you can't do any more - it is my belief that the last one or two reps before failure stimulate most of the muscle growth - these lifts combined with slight overeating is the classic, standard way bbers pack on muscle - and many/most bbers don't do any cardio at all when they are bulking up. I don't understand how you can fully work a muscle when there's no rest - not to say this isn't a valid training method - just that i don't understand it. If i don't pause for 60 or 90 seconds between sets or exercise, whatever i do next will be diminished. For instance, if i'm bench pressing to failure i'm exhausted after my last rep, and if i jump right into curls i'll do less reps than if i had waited 90 seconds. Sometimes on my last set i'll go to failure, and with no rest drop 10lbs, go to failure again, and repeat that 3 or 4 times, and i get an insane pump from it, but that's not switching exercises, it's just overpumping one muscle group. then i fully rest before i hit the next group. I also question the testing methods as chrisjs has already said - if you've only lost 4lbs I don't understand how anything can be tested with any sort of accuracy. how much of that 4lbs is fat loss? how much is LBM? how much is water? not to be crude, but 4lbs is not much more than a few glasses of water and a bowel movement - hydration levels alone can account for 4lbs of water in 24 hours. my advice would be to not worry too much about losing LBM, and to focus on fat loss - while consistent and accurate testing methods are possible, an increase in strength over time has always been my best measure, but that also assumes consistent training and performing exercises in a normal way with adequate rest between sets - sure sometimes strength will go up and down a tiny bit, but over time it should always increase or at least maintain - if you're getting weaker, then it's time to make adjustments

thanks for the additional suggestions arion! but why did you have to mention hexane!? having never heard of it before, i've started to read about it, and yikes, it seems that 90% of soy isolates and any other processed soy foods that require the oil to be removed from the bean use hexane in the process. what a can of worms i've opened! i suspect that the reason we all aren't experiencing extensive peripheral nervous system failure is that we pass the hexane? idk - haven't been able to find that info

found this on sprout nutritional information: http://sproutpeople.org/sprouts/nutrition/science.html note the articles called 'Rejuvenation and Protein Revolution in Your Kitchen' and 'proteins in bean sprouts' edit: also found this awesome list that ranks vegetable protein sources along with animal sources in a list sorted by protein content as a percent of total calories: http://www.soystache.com/protein.htm it doesn't get into protein profiles for each food, but i did find out that some beans (lentils) that do not have all essential proteins when fresh or cooked DO have all proteins when sprouted. i realize that it's not necessary to worry about complete protein profiles, but it's nice to know anyway!

i was watching a few vids on youtube last week - i think they were called ghetto workout or something like that found the vid: and there are lots more like that pullups, chin-ups, dips, pushups - flat and decline, leg-raises, planks, one legged squats and you can get a crazy pump in many muscles just from flexing over and over also if you have time to shop or order them you can get those resistance bands: or easily make your own out of bungie chords which come in all kinds of thicknesses which you can combine or link for infinite combinations since you mentioned an emphasis on legs - in addition to one-legged squats (fill a back-pack with water for increased resistance - of course put the water in something! lol) you can do stiff-legged deadlifts for a crazy ham workout - especially if you stand on a step so the weight is lower than your feet - just need to find something heavy and figure out a way to lift it - rope or something like that - there's another workout i just saw in muscle and fitness for hams that i think just requires a short pole (sturdy stick?) here's a vid called ham killers -you could even do this on the floor with your feet under a bed or something:

welcome! i'm so glad you made the change and i'm sure you'll be glad too. You're 49, but about to get younger as a vegan! i'll be 42 in a few months, but i seem to be getting younger so i'm not too worried about it lol. anyhoo...welcome!

welcome! Your protein reaction is quite common - i hear it all the time, and whenever i do i just send the person a link to the 'profiles' page on the main site here. It saves me a ton of debating! welcome to the forum and welcome to excellent health!

your goals: 1. gain muscle 2. lose fat are simple enough, but depending on your body-type, diet, and workout routine, might make them very difficult to achieve at the same time, and of course that's why most people separate them into cutting and bulking cycles. With years and years of experience, and fine tuning your diet I think you could do both at the same time - or at least stay lean while adding muscle - there's a guy who runs a website called leangains.com (i think) who does exactly that utilizing a diet called intermittent fasting, but i have a hard time wrapping my head around the scheduling of rest/workout/fasting/eating. The problem is muscle-building requires ample calories, and nutrients - not just protein - to meet this requirement, most people tend to slightly over-eat, which means body fat will slightly, slowly increase. Sorry I can't direct you towards a specific program to meet both goals at once.

thanks for all the helpful replies! I've ordered a tub o' soy isolate. I'm not really trying to bulk, I'm just trying to eat a disproportionately large amount of protein while cutting in an attempt to save LBM while aggressively restricting calories. I misused the phrase 'simple carb' to refer to foods that are higher on a glycemic index than i would like, and i lump beans into the same category as rice and potatoes, which is probably unfair since potatoes are often higher than common granulated table sugar while beans can be as low as 14 (soy) although other legumes can get into the 50's if they are canned. In my wrong mind I lump all green vegetables into the 'complex' carb category since most are so low they don't even register on a glycemic index. I think these wrong categories i've set come from my days as a meat eater when an effortless bbing diet was "tons o meat, tons o green vegetables" and "don't eat it if it's not meat or green" - bread, rice, beans, pasta, potatoes were my enemies. I shall try to use "high glycemic" and "low glycemic" instead of "simple" and "complex" But in revisiting these glycemic lists i see that a few beans can be low on the index if they are either fresh or dried, like kidney and lentils. And I presume that sprouted beans would be lower than all others glycemically( is that even a word? lol) (anyone know where i can find nutritional data on raw, sprouted beans?) Thanks again all - i'm off to soak some beans!

great suggestion - thanks! i make my own all the time, but had not thought of it as a potential protein source, and it looks nearly comparable to soy isolate which i was totally not expecting: Seitan: per serving, 85g calories: 90 fat: 1g protein: 18g carbs: 3g iron: 1.2mg, 6% RDA Selenium: 10 mcg, 14% RDA Phosphorus: 65mg, 5%RDA that helps greatly

YOOOOOOOO ! ! ! Yeah man - that's what I'm talking about ! I love beer, who wants to be that lean anyway Where do you brew it? do you have micro brewery? Welcome to the forum! Thanks! I brew it mostly in my kitchen. All-grain brewing doesn't require much equipment, just a big pot (i mean reaaaaly big), a big cooler, and a few 7 gallon buckets to ferment in. It's great if you like expensive beer - with practice you can duplicate all those $10 4-packs you see for about 50 cents.

ello ello vegans i'm a 41 year old father of two, husband of one currently residing in NC, originally from canada i'm just getting back into lifting weights (with any sort of regularity) after about 6 years off, but i've since become vegan so i need to redial in a weight lifting diet that used to be extremely meat-centric i've been vegan for about 5.5 years - my children and wife are also vegan in my spare time i like to knit, and quilt (kidding!) i brew plenty of all-grain beer in my spare time (not good for staying lean!) i love music (rooted in manchester, shoegazer, indie stuff), i also ride my road bike about once per week, and am a totally incredible vegan cook (modest i know , but i should be an awesome cook as i've been a stay-at-home dad for 7 years now, and cook nearly everything our family eats anyhoo - nice to meet y'all

First thread! Hi all i've been away from consistent bbin for about 7 years - back when i was a meater. (been vegan for about 5.5 years now) Of course i've put on some blub and removing it is my first and top priority - i've done this before, but i was a meater back then so it was pretty easy to find foods that were protein dense so i could maintain a very aggressive caloric deficit. I lost 26lbs in two months and got down to about 8% BF. Before and after pics are located here: (not trying to drive traffic there - it's just where my junk is stored) Fatloss thread: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=311486 Fatloss post with attached diary: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=657290963&postcount=117 If you look at the diet part of that log, you'll see i was intaking mostly all protein, with nearly no simple carbs at all. I am a bit dumbfounded as to how to get such a ratio as a vegan. I have quinoa and quinoa flakes, but for 222 calories i get only 8g of protein - soy isolate gives me 23g for 85 calories, but i'd love to do this with real food if possible. Beans to me seem like a simple carb bomb! I'd like to stay under 1500 cals per day, intake as little simple carbs as possible while focusing on meeting protein requirements for working out nearly daily. (please don't lecture me on going so low with calories - i've done it before, and the results were phenomenal (see the pics in the links above). Anyhow - I'm sure there are some vegan bbers who have already researched this and their findings would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!!