newbie into

[kuramus]

First i'd like to say hello and introduce myself. I am male, 17 years old, almost 2 metres (6.5 feet?) tall and I weigh 75 kilos (165.345 pounds?). I live in Estonia and am a lacto-vegetarian for the fourth year (hoping to become a vegan in a year when i'm off on my own...).

 

EDIT:

If there are some professional bodybuilding trainers or other skilled people, maybe that'd help if i'd put my fitday reports for the past few weeks here which i had questions about.

 

nutrients:

(the numbers are how much percent i take from the RDA(100%) )

Vitamin D 84.78%

Vitamin K 78.98%

Zinc 79%

I take B12 supplement daily, and recently started taking zinc and quit the FERROMAX iron.

 

Average Calories

grams cals %total

Total: 2621

Fat: 64 578 23%

Sat: 24 220 9%

Poly: 14 124 5%

Mono: 21 188 7%

Carbs: 454 1646 65%

Fiber: 42 0 0%

Protein: 80 322 13%

Alcohol: 0 0 0%

(as you can see i also don't use any alcohol )

/EDIT

 

Recently I've had some thoughts on putting some muscles on my skinny body. (twice a week i do some tai chi, and i'm planning to go a gym maybe 3 times a week + the tai chi...)

I'm currenty in the process of finding a gym nearby and I had some questions about nutrition (like all newbs...). I can search the web on all kinds of vegan bodybuilding recipes with strange foreign names in them, but the point is that in my country, there are about zero of them for sale. So I just have to accept the regular stuff minus the meat. And acknowledge the fact that i don't do the shopping nor do i cook. It's a rather challenging experience to be surrounded by meat-eaters and being dependent on them.

Didn't expect the intro to be that long, just wanted to say hi.

 

Peace,

k.

Edited May 27, 2006 by kuramus

[dorothy]

Hi and I can understand how hard it is to practice veganism, when you can't find what you need. When I started 20 years ago it was the same way. It will get better, when you get out on your own and can cook for yourself. Just try to stay as true to yourself as you can, and it will get easier.

Good luck and WELCOME

[jonathan]

Welcome Kuramus

 

Nice to have another tall vegan on the board - I am 2.03m, and 116kg.

When I was 19 I was also very skinny, and weighed about 77kg (this was after toning up for Taekwondo too, so I might have been a little lighter before).

 

The main key to gaining weight, and this may sound obvious, is to eat ALOT. For you this will mean eating virtually anything that you can get your hands on.

Thankyou for the breakdown of your diet - this is very useful. I would say that you need to do several things:

 

a) Generally eat alot more. You don't want to gain too quickly (1-1.2kg a month is good) but at the same time you don't want to let your weight stagnate. I would suggest going for 3500 cal a day to start off with, and for every 10kg that you gain, add about another 500cal.

 

b) Eat a bit more protein. 80g is OK, but you will see better gains if you can push this to 120g + a day. 2g per kg of bodyweight is ideal.

 

c) Eat more fat. This is a great way to get more calories without really noticing them. Nuts and seeds are the best way to get more fat (except for adding more oil in cooking). For instance, eating 150g of mixed nuts will give you about 900cal and over 30g of protein. A great snack

 

I accept that you just have normal food at the moment without meat, and I admire your dedication. I think nuts would be a really good thing for you to add to your diet every day - very easy to buy, gives you the extra calories and protein too

 

What kind of weight training do you do??

 

Jonathan

[kuramus]

Thanks for the welcomes.

 

//advice//

Sweet, i'll start by following that.

What kind of weight training do you do??

currently none (well, a few lifts of dumbbells a day which clearly isn't enough), but maybe after, maybe during the summer i will try to find a gym. I just wanted to make sure that i wont just waste my time in the gym because of not having the right prerequisites to gain muscles.

 

And any comments on the nutrients (zinc, vit.D and K) i seem to be lacking? Guess the zinc pills i eat make that up, but D and K?

Edited May 27, 2006 by kuramus

[jonathan]

Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with vitamin and mineral supplementation - I just take a basic multi vitamin.

 

Even with just a few dumbell exercises you will gain for a little while, but to start seriously training, a gym would be much better

 

Jonathan

[kuramus]

Okay, i'm back from my vacation and feel that now is the time to start going to the gym, and i had some more questions about it. First - how many days a week and hours a day would be enough to trim the body and build some muscles? During the summer i did some bodyweight exercises - 3 times a day, 20-30 reps each (pushups, crunches, calf raises, neck curls, squats and bench dips), and maybe did gain some muscle but not really much.. so was that because i trained too little or is 1.5 months too short to see some results? I'll try to google the answers for the other questions i had but if that doesn't help... I'll be back!

[Guest]

Everyones Different...if I wanted too I could do all cardio and do a crash diet losing 10-12 lbs in two days(it would mostly all be water but I would still look better even though its not healthy) and I'd feel fine but I'd lose some strength. If you've never really worked out hard before you can see great benefits in just a week or two(with a couple hours a day 4-5days a week) but if you've worked out for years it may take months to see any differences at all.

[flanders77]

And any comments on the nutrients (zinc, vit.D and K) i seem to be lacking? Guess the zinc pills i eat make that up, but D and K?

If you eat a lot of nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables (if possible raw) and get some sunlight you really do not need to worry about certain nutrients (maybe except B12, but use the search function for that).