Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Hi there, I am writing my first forum introduction so please forgive me if it's silly. I'll try to make a very long story short. I became vegan, mostly raw vegan because of my complete love for animals. It started with a litany of autoimmune diseases, very serious- lupus, vasculitis, etc. I found the MS diet helped as soon as I stopped gluten.. I then found veganism about 6 months later. By that time I was in remission (steroids & chemo drugs did not work for me). However, since I can't have soy, gluten, alfalfa, I'm limited for protein. My blood test showed a very poor albumin, globulin and immunity protein status so I started to become vegetarian (eggs, no dairy) which worked out pretty good, then a few months ago I started fish oil which also had great results. I started reading blogs and paleo sites that seemed very convincing that I might not be well on a vegan diet. So I finally did it and (please don't be too harsh with me ) I ate 3 slices of Wellshire turkey bacon the other night. I am self loathing myself and paying for it. Yes, I woke up with a flare, a vasculitis flare which could be very serious. I can't believe it, just 1 slip in 3 years and my body is screaming. At least i can say i now know the truth that I can never have a meat product for my own life as well as others.
So if I still have your attention.... I need help and encouragement on getting a lot of protein and lifting weights to get my body strong.
Thanks for reading, Beth

Please, never listen to those paleo idiots again, their theories are majorly flawed. As for protein... Legumes, Hemp seeds, seaweeds (you have to consume a lot of them though), chia seeds (although having less protein then hemp seeds, they have an omega 3 to 6 ratio of like 3 to 1), nutritional yeast (around 8 grams in 2 tbls), quinoa, oats (Buy gluten free certified ones), potatoes, chlorella and spirulina, and I know that a lot of people recommend peanut butter, but I prefer pistachios (They're a complete protein, whereas peanuts are not), leafy greens and other various vegetables, and that's everything I can think of off the top of my head. Most of the things on the list are complete protein sources (not sure about seaweed and nutritional yeast), even though it's really not that important to pay attention to that if you eat a decent variety of food. You could probably formulate a diet plan out of these foods alone because, along with being great sources of protein, alot of these foods contain healthy fats and carbs too. I hope I can help, and just so you know I've been vegan my whole life (20 years), and although I personally consume soy products and advocate them, they're not a necessity to the vegan diet. I won't claim to be a nutritional expert by any means, but I'm pretty good at being vegan lol.

Protein shakes are a good way to make sure you get what you need. Vega makes some great stuff. Its all soy and gluten free. There are other good companies too but that's my favorite. The put some many great ingredients into their products.
Welcome to the site. There are a lot of like minded people on here for support. There are a lot of us that aren't 100% vegan on here as well and we are working on it too

-Dylan