Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Hello all. Any advice you can offer me would be greatly appreciated. I have been a vegan since late 2008. When I first became a vegan I weighed about 195 lbs. I am 5 foot 7 and at my heaviest I was 206 pounds of pure mush. I became a vegetarian and a vegan shortly afterward. I really got into running and biking. After about 2 years of lots of cardio and eating well I got down to 152 lbs. I felt pretty good until I messed up me knee and had to have surgery on it Feb of 2012. I spent about a month and half recovering and got back on the ball in mid summer. I ran a half marathon and rode a century so I thought that I was doing ok. For some reason my weight started creeping back up in about May of this year. No matter how well I ate, fasted, or exercised, I kept hovering between 163 and 165 pounds. I thought that maybe I wasnt doing enough strength training. For the last 4 weeks I have been following the vegan bodybuilding workout designed by Jeremy Lapro on bodybuilding.com . Last week I decided to up my calorie intake to about 2500/day and Im trying to get my calories at 50% carb 30% protein and 20% fat. I have been eating every 2-3 hours and I have been eating whole foods. I don't do near as much cardio as before. Now I only do about 45 min of cardio a week. For my pre-workout I eat some fruit and I take creatine. For my post workout I have vega one with creatine and l-glutamine. I try to follow Robert Cheeke's advice when it comes to the foods I eat. I do cheat on occasion though. Not much. Maybe a cookie once or twice a week. The issue I am having is my weight is starting to really creep up now and I'm looking chunky. I weighed 168 pounds today. I want to get stronger and build more muscle mass but I'm really afraid of being a fat kid again. Can anyone tell me what I should do? I hear conflicting stories everywhere I turn. Some say I should only eat 1300 calories a day. Other says 3000+. I'm really confused.

Yo! With bodybuilding you are going to gain weight, most of which will hopefully be muslce though and its difficult to not gain a bit of fat too. As for looking chunky, it may be water weight from the creatine you're taking as creatine makes your body hold onto water, don't sweat it man and keep at it

I hope it is some muscle! I have seen some gains in what I can lift. Im gonna do what I'm doing for the next 12 weeks and see how it goes.