Nayr747

Thanks for the great responses. (OT)The basics of nutrition are pretty straightforeward though and could (and should) be taught to everyone. I'm mainly wondering because I'm trying to make the biggest possible gains from working out. I'm half-assing it right now but I'd like to go from my present weight of 138 to 170 within a year (if that's possible). I'm a bit of a hard gainer so it won't be easy. I'd like to find out stuff like timing of certain foods, amounts, quality, etc though so I can get the best gains.

Yeah, I think VERY few nutritionists would agree with that statement. There's also a fruitarian on here who seems to be doing pretty well.

Yeah, I think VERY few nutritionists would agree with that statement. There's also a fruitarian on here who seems to be doing pretty well.

I used to drink those too when I wasn't vegan. The ingredients are pretty crappy, same as in cake mix. If you want to gain weight there are pretty much two things you can do: Eat more, and eat more calories per amount of food you eat. For the second one, the only thing that can do that is fat (although alcohol will work too) since is has more than twice the cals per gram of the other two nutrients (carbs, protein). Most vegans lose weight because they aren't getting the fat that you normally would when you eat meat. But you can make up for it with plant oils like olive oil. I use a lot of it!

Ok, so I'm hearing Vega and something like Nutiva hemp. When I looked at the Vega it was way out of my price range so I guess I'll give just the hemp a try. Can anyone tell me if the Nutiva dissolves or at least mixes well in a blender? Is it noticeably worse to drink than the vanilla soys? I usually just do a banana, soy milk, water, ice and protein powder in a blender and it tastes pretty good. And one other thing. I've noticed a couple of the essential amino acids are a lot lower than the others in the soy and hemp, etc. Can your body only use up to the amount of the lowest amino acid, if you know what i mean? Like if all the other ones are are 1.0 and tryptophan is 0.3, does that mean your body can only use up to 0.3 of the other amino acids too?

Did some searching but couldn't find my answer so thought I'd just ask. I'm ditching the soy protein powder (trader joe's) because I've heard it's bad. Hemp seems good but I've tried packets from Whole Foods and it tasted a lot worse than the vanilla soy stuff. It didn't dissolve either (pretty sand-like). Plus all the ones I've looked at like Nutiva are not that high in protein (~10 grams per 30g), while most soys are ~20-25. I am thinking that it would also be good to get the protein from many sources to balance things out, etc. So I'm wondering if there's a powder that's a mix of like hemp, pea, rice, etc. where maybe the hemp protein is isolated to increase the amount of protein. Does anyone know of a reasonably priced powder like this? Thanks!

There are only four things in the world that your body can get energy out of: protein, carbs, fat, and alcohol. Protein has 4 cals/gram, Carbs (simple to complex): 4, fat: 9, alcohol: 7. So fruit juice only containing carbs and water should not be high in calories. You can calculate the cals in any food if you just know the amounts of these 4 things (if you don't feel like looking at the label ) Your body can't digest and use synthetic vitamins from pills as well as those in actual foods. So replacing fruit juice with vits. won't be the best. Juice doesn't replace actual fruits either though since important components like fiber are missing. Just thought I'd add that.

Yup. Yum yum!

Thanks for the help! I know your body makes creatine but I thought you normally needed some from your diet. I know non-vegans get it from meat but we don't. When I took it when I wasn't a veg. it seemed to improve my strength. I've heard such different things for protein amounts it's confusing. I've heard a lot of people say you have to eat 2g per kg of bodyweight or something like that, so like 100+ grams for me. But others say to eat less... I'm what you might call a hard gainer though. I've always been pretty skinny and I have to eat A LOT just to maintain my weight, so I'm thinking I might just need more cals. Has this happened to anyone else out there?

Thanks all for the warm welcome!

Well I've been weight lifting on and off for 6 or so years now but I've just started for the first time on a mostly vegan diet. I've just been having this problem though that's really aggravating me! After maybe the first set I can't do more than about five reps of almost any weight. The first five reps are easy, but then all of a sudden I can't even lift half the weight. It's like my muscles just don't have any more fuel after 5 reps. I figured it had something to do with not getting enough sleep or creatine or something so I started on 5g a day of creatine, at least 50g protein (90+ around workout days), lots of calories, multivitamin, and Omega 3, for a couple weeks before I tried to workout again (and 8+ hours of sleep the day before I worked out). But the problem hasn't seemed to go away. I worked out before I became a vegetarian and I didn't seem to have this problem. Even when I took a weight training class at school, working out every other day and getting ~5 hours of sleep every night I don't remember having this problem. Can anyone help me?

Hi everyone! I met a couple people from here at Vegfest in Seattle a couple weeks ago, and so I decided to register. I was the guy asking what kind of protein you liked the best. I became a vegetarian when I was 6 until I was 8 and then became one again about 4 years ago (when I was 20 or so). I have since tried to go totally vegan but it's a lot harder than going vegetarian. I'd say I'm about 98% vegan though. I've weight lifted off and on for at least 6 years now, and I'm just starting again after about a month and a half of slacking. Anyway, just glad to see there's a forum like this!