Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

....unnatural???

When I tell people I am into body building. They often tell me they just want to be healthy and are not interested in an unhealthy lifestyle of consuming above average calories and protein and adding unnatural amounts of weight and muscle. I hear this quite often and it is frustrating.

Are we misunderstood or are we missing the big picture?

9 out of 10 times people say things such as what you mentioned, it's because they simply want to justify their current behavior of not trying to improve themselves physically. They cling to laziness as if it's a proper defensive argument to use for keeping the status quo vs. actually having to do work and get out of their comfort zone. Remember, most of these people are the same ones who will say, "I don't lift weights because I don't want to get huge", partly because they're lazy, partly because they are ignorant of what it takes to actually get great results from training.

Ask these same people if eating fast food is "natural".

Ask them if it is "natural" to be obsessed with cell phones, Facebook, television shows, etc.

Ask them what is "natural" about most folks sitting on their butts all day staring at a computer or working a desk job, to where they wheeze and gasp from having to climb a flight of stairs because they're so out of shape (quite often, even when they don't appear to be in bad physical condition!)

And, finally, ask them if it's "natural" that we're significantly weaker than we were a hundred years ago when we actually had to go out and move/lift heavy crap on a regular basis, back when life wasn't so cushy and people actually had to be physically capable of doing physical work on a regular basis.

When people have made statements about things such as "I don't see what's so good looking about being big", I just retort that I don't understand what's enviable about being small and frail. When people say they think big muscles are "gross", I simply say that I feel the same way about seeing people who have minimal musculature who make excuses for never doing physical activity. I mean, if someone's going to take a shot at what I enjoy, I may as well say back exactly how I feel Of course, not everyone needs to find a big, muscular physique to be their perfect ideal, but typically, it's laziness combined with envy that leads people to make derogatory comments about lifting heavy and building an impressive physique.

Not to mention, it isn't as if you have to live some crazy, unhealthy lifestyle to enjoy training to get bigger/stronger. Some people, of course, need to pack in food by the truckload to get bigger, but some of us can eat within what's considered a reasonable amount and still make progress. Most people have a lot to learn about training and what goes along with it, they're still in a mindset that's akin to when kids talk about sex on the playground when they're young; they might have a few actual facts, but most of it is just a lot of gibberish and stories they heard from questionable sources, making their general opinions pretty well uninformed and based on fallacy and illogic more than anything else.

I also have people say, vegetarians are vegans are always so frail and skinny, sick. They are always shocked when they hear how I eat!

I see people having lots of not needed extra fat on them, people getting headaches, stomach ache, back pain, using loads of pain killers. That's not being healthy.
People just being socially conditioned that normal is being messed up and doctors/drugs dependent.
Also there were made some studies who asked how people feel about their weight. And like 30% of them actually have a distorted perception about their weight! People judge others by their own socially conditioned standards.

veganessentials you really are right on. AleNLP, exactly about drug dependency, I see it all too much especially in my line of work (social worker). I want to be a trainer instead!!

i got attacked on facebook last night by two veteran body builders who say i can never make it with just tofu...and need to eat "chicken, eggs, fish, and chopped meat" ew. they really didnt listen when i responded that i get 250grams of protein a day...

Did you tell those so called veterans they don't what they are talking about? Ask them why? What is sooooo magical about animal protein as compared to plant protein? Protein is protein and calories are calories. The animals people eat, get their protein from the source...why not do the same?

What can I say people are addicted to drugs and they just don't know it. I am talking about young people at their 20's, 30's. The older are all fat sick and messed up. Western medicine is blind to prevention and is blind to the process that created the sickness. I mean people notice they are sick only when something already happens. But they forgot they had bad habits for years!
Some people are so narrow minded and socially conditioned they just won't accept any new idea. It breaks their perception of the world. Ego protection that's how I call it.

I'm not even actually building right now and I still have gotten a few o.O

The only reason it may be considered "unnatural" is because our society no longer has to do hard labor, otherwise having large muscles and needing to eat substantially to maintain a healthy body would be perfectly normal.

"Ego protection" sounds like the perfect description as well!