Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

I decided to go vegan diet 2.5 months ago. At the end of my meat eating cycle, I was benching 255 x 3. Today I struggle with 225 x 1. When I first transitioned the diet, I lost almost 10 lbs. I got worried so a vegan trainer recommended I eat more quinoa and buckwheat to compromise lost of protein. I did, and now I weigh around the same but I look more out of shape.

Now I look like I'm more out of shape physically, weigh the same, and am much weaker. Any advise on what I can do?

I've stopped consuming all that quinoa and buckwheat. My diet pretty much consists of all raw vegetables. Spinach, kale, broccoli, carrot and lots of fruits. Only cooked food i eat are beans and sweet potato/yam. I don't eat soy. But will once in a while.

Being vegan is sucking the protein out of your muscles making it impossible for you to lift. Pretty soon you'll look like a victoria's secret cover model minus the nice big expensive boobies.

Seriously though, I would recommend using www.cronometer.com for a few day's, maybe a few weeks to see what's what with your diet. It sounds pretty good, but when i first decided to become a vegan and do the raw foods thing I thought I was eating a ton of food, and it turned out I was only getting around 2000 calories a day, and most of it was from fat. Now I keep my fats pretty low, eat around 4000 calories/day from primarily fruits, and make sure I eat 1-2 pounds of greens/day (Kale, spinach, chard, some lettuce). I also eat a lot of corn, sprouts, tomatoes and that kind of thing. 4000 calories/day from mostly carbs should make me obese, but I think my body just burns through the fruit really well.

Any major transition in your diet will naturally effect your lifts, usually adversely, but by now you should be seeing things turn around, so track your diet so that at least you know what's going on with it, and keep us posted.

I agree with Justin, in the beginning I quickly lost weight (around 15lbs) and while strength stayed relatively the same my recovery wasn't as good as it used to be. After upping my protein a bit and adding some creatine back into the mix I felt back to my old meat eating self. I haven't used creatine in years, but felt a substantial difference more than usual. I'm wondering if the little amounts of creatine found in meat actually had something to do with it. I also keep the fats relatively low and try to follow a more simplistic McDougall approach. I definitely still consume cooked food such as variety of beans, potatoes, rice dishes, noodle dishes, indian lentil soup, and vegan mexican.

i started using the calorie counter app on android phone. i ate pretty light today and it counted 3,500 calories. im probably pushing 4,000 calories on normal days and probably 4500-5000 calories twice a week when i hit the salad buffet. the app did note that my protein intake is lower than my meat eating days. im averaging 80-100g of protein now. before i was doing 150-200 a day. i weigh 185-190 now.

Wow - these stories are interesting. I went vegan (from vegetarian) in Feb this year and experienced zero change in my weight, fat % or inches, fitness or strength. I don't know why. I was hoping I would lose fat and inches (from the omission of dairy and eggs.) I'm a martial artist and train about 3 hours a day. Though I guess it wasn't a drastic change for me I never really ate eggs or milk - a fair amount of cheese was the last thing to go as I think it can be for some veggies.