Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Hi there!

I'm 23 years old and I've practised gong-fu for 5 years, done lots of cycling (up to 90km trips), walking (up to 40km trips) and gone to the gym now and again. Mostly I do HIIT and circuits. I'm 184cm tall, weigh 88kg and am probably around 16% fat. My goal is to get to 8% BF, which would mean dropping around 15kg.

Currently I am doing:

CIRCUIT 1
Close-grip push-ups x 12 reps (0kg)
Inverted rows x 12 (0kg)
Kettlebell swings x 25 (12kg)
Rest 1 minute
Repeat 5

CIRCUIT 2

Close-grip push-ups x 10 (0kg)
Russian Twists x 10 (12kg)
Air squats with hands behind head x 20 (0kg)
Rest 1 minute
Repeat 3 times + (10-10-14) + (10-8-13)

SPRINTS (2 times a week)
10x 13km/h 20 sec + 12% incline with 10 sec break
---> Last 6 holding frontal bar


So, now my diet consists of lots of veg (in the form of vegetable puree-soups), meats, eggs and some seeds + nuts, albeit not many. My problem is manyfold... I'd like to do eat only 100g salmon a day for my b12 vitamin and 2 eggs daily. Other than that, I'd eat plant sources. However, seeing as my stomach cannot take pulses or grains (I seem to be sensitive to starches, especially resistant ones), my kcal amounts would go to about 3000 a day inorder to get 160g (about) protein. That's from eating veggies, seeds, nuts, berries etc in forms of shakes and pureed veg-soups and and just as is.

So, as you can see, 3000-3500 kcal /day is quite a helluva lot and will land me in blubber-land again.

I know I have some time to think about this still, as I will be starting a full-blown elimination diet in about a month's time, which will last for up to two or three months (including re-introductions), during which I will really find out what I can and cannot eat.

I also believe that I cannot handle whey, which will make the protein stuff even harder. Furthermore, I KNOW that I am carbohydrate-sensitive (High insulin production). How do I know that? If I add potato or any other high-carb source to my diet, my weightloss stalls and even begins to go backwards very quickly.

So, what do I do?

Thank you very much.

P.S.

I also know that currently as I am trying to lose fat, I don't need 1 g / 1 pound of protein, so I'll be ok with around 100-120g of protein + BCAA.

Still, when trying to get mass, I'd probably get a helluva lot of fat as well if I go with that aforementioned way.

Maybe I should then use hemp protein powder?

Well if you don't have a problem with soy you could try soy protein powder and tofu. I loove tofu

Soy isn't good for men, especially in higher quantaties, as it is

a) mostly GMO (thus not good for anyone)
b) a product that has large amounts of plant estrogens that disturb testosterone amounts in the body, amongst other things.

a) is correct, but you can deffinetly get certified non GMO soy.

b) is incorrect. That's completely false, phytoestrogens don't disturb in any way our testosterone levels. Even in large amounts. There's a guy in other internet forum that got tested before and after taking large amounts of soy derived products and even after years consuming these products his testosterone levels are normal.

So, if you keep distance from GMO Soy you don't need to worry =)

Try swapping out the high-glycemic foods for low-glycemic foods. Have you tried sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes?

From Precisionnutrition.com

"extremely high levels of PEs have an unfavorable influence on hormone levels for both men and women, and may inhibit muscle gain and fat loss to some degree."

However,
"A traditional daily intake of soy for someone may include 6 ounces of tofu, a half-cup or soy milk, and a ½ cup of edamame. That would provide roughly 75 mg of PEs. This is well below the amount necessary for having an unfavorable influence on hormone levels."

Still, that's only about 20g of protein. Not much to talk about, really. Albeit, it all helps, of course.

Sweet potatoes are a good idea, which I will definitely have to give a go after my elimination diet.

Your elimination diet you mentioned is basically like a food allergy test right? How are you going about testing yourself? Will you be following a set planned diet that you eat only 1 type of food at a time? How long do you stick to each item, 1 meal? 1 day? a week?
I am really curious about this I was considering seeing a physician and getting an allergy test done. I have heard somethings are much harder to test for than others, like gluten for example I was told is extremely hard to test for. You have to basically be gluten free for months and then eat a whole bunch of gluten over a period of time for the tests to even give quantifiable data. This is just what I was told from someone who recently went to a doctor wanting to test themselves.
So whatever information you have on the process, it would be great if you would share it with us here on the forum. Maybe start a new thread for it. I think that would be really helpful for many people here.
Welcome to the group and good luck with your quest to go vegetarian.

-Dylan

Sorry for taking so long, Dylan!

I've had 3 weeks of mashed veggie soup + meats (no bloating at all). Then I slowly added an item here and there for about 2-3 days. If all was fine, I kept it.

now, I've found about 8 things that I can't eat... which sucks..

Still continuing, but I need to keep a small break from introducing foods, as I am bloated from the last one.

Interesting, I am surprised your body can so easily tell what its allergic to. I think my symptoms are better at slow release and making it difficult for me to track.

Soy being bad for men seems to be a myth here is somthing I just found tonight on bb.com: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/can-add ... enutrition
I've been eating a lot of tofu, with whey powder, greek yogurt and I'm not having any troubles keeping my levels around 150g's.