Vegan Dieting: Maintaining Muscle, Maximizing Nutrition

Maintaining muscle on a vegan diet is possible, but it requires careful planning. A vegan diet can be just as effective as an omnivorous diet for building muscle, but it's important to ensure you're getting enough calories, protein, carbohydrates, and other essential nutrients. Here are some key considerations:

- Caloric Intake: Building muscle requires a caloric surplus, which means consuming more calories than you expend. This is important for providing the energy needed to support muscle growth.

- Protein: Protein is crucial for muscle growth and repair. Include a variety of plant-based protein sources, such as tofu, tempeh, beans, lentils, nuts, and plant-based protein powders, to ensure you're getting all the essential amino acids.

- Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates are the body's preferred energy source during high-intensity workouts. Include complex carbohydrates like whole grains, legumes, and fruits, as well as simple carbs like fruit for a quick energy boost.

- Healthy Fats: Include healthy fats like nuts, seeds, and avocados in your diet. These provide essential fatty acids and support overall health.

- Supplements: Consider taking supplements like creatine, beta-alanine, and vitamin B12 to support muscle growth and overall health.

- Progressive Overload: Incorporate progressive overload into your strength training routine. This involves gradually increasing the weight, reps, or sets over time to challenge your muscles and promote growth.

- Variety: Eat a variety of plant-based foods to ensure you're getting a range of nutrients. A diverse diet can also help prevent burnout and make your vegan journey more enjoyable.

Eat adequate calories, fats, and carbohydrates

Building muscle on a vegan diet requires more attention to detail than an omnivorous diet. It is important to eat adequate calories, fats, and carbohydrates to build muscle.

Building new muscle is an energetically demanding process, and your body needs enough energy to create new tissue. While beginner lifters may be able to gain some muscle while eating maintenance calories, most people will need to be in a caloric surplus. A caloric surplus means you are eating more calories than you use during the day.

Fat sources are a great way to increase caloric intake as fat is the most calorically dense macronutrient at 9 kcals per gram. There are plenty of delicious vegan fats, including nuts, seeds, avocados, and dried fruit. Carbohydrates are also key to building muscle as they are the body's preferred energy source. Carbohydrates can be grouped into refined and unrefined. Refined carbohydrates break down quickly and are a great idea for a quick energy boost before or during a workout. Unrefined carbohydrates have more fibre and break down more slowly for an extended energy release, making them a better choice after workouts.

It is important to eat regularly throughout the day, balance meals, and choose lower-fibre food options if you feel overly full. It is also important to pay attention to the quality of the food you are eating. A properly designed vegan diet can meet the protein needs of an endurance athlete, but this may not be enough to maximise muscle growth. Combining different plant protein sources can improve the overall quality of protein meals as the amino acid composition of various plant proteins can complement each other.

Vegan diets are known to promote early satiation and reduced appetite due to the high amounts of fibre and low-calorie density in plant foods. While this can be beneficial when trying to lose weight, it can be challenging when trying to build muscle.

Eat enough protein

Protein is one of the essential substances required to build muscle. Proteins are made up of smaller building blocks called amino acids. There are 20 amino acids considered essential to maintaining your body's healthy functioning. Meat from animals contains all of these amino acids, but plants do not.

While plant-based diets often contain all of the essential amino acids, any one plant-based food item will not. This means taking extra care when choosing the composition of your meals.

Protein needs vary based on your height, weight, fitness goals, activity level, and age. The current recommended daily allowance is around 0.73-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. However, experts advise that this recommendation be viewed as a minimum to meet your body's basic needs. Athletes should aim for around double that amount, 2.2-3.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

Getting Enough Protein on a Vegan Diet

You can get all the protein you need from a vegan diet, even when your goal is to build muscle. However, it is important to eat protein at every meal. Luckily, all plants contain some amount of protein, which adds up over the day.

It is also important to eat a variety of protein sources, as humans cannot synthesize 9 of the amino acids, meaning we must get these from food sources. Plants typically do not contain all essential amino acids (soy is the exception), so it is wise to eat a variety of protein sources to get all the amino acids you need.

Some examples of vegan protein sources include:

• Tofu
• Tempeh
• Beans
• Legumes
• Nuts and nut butters
• Seeds
• Avocados
• Dried fruit
• Plant-based protein powders
• Plant-based protein bars

Plant-Based Protein Food Combinations

You can also mix and match plant-based foods with various incomplete proteins to provide your body with a complete protein. For example, most grains contain almost no lysine, but legumes, such as peanuts, beans, and lentils, include a decent amount of this amino acid. On the other hand, legumes don't have much tryptophan, methionine, and cystine, but those amino acids are found in grains. By eating both, your body can get all the amino acids it needs to build muscle.

Some examples of plant-based protein combinations include:

• Brown rice + beans, lentils, or chickpeas
• Oatmeal + nut butter or seeds
• Whole grain toast + peanut butter
• Pita + hummus and veggies

Consider creatine supplementation

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound in our bodies, made from three amino acids and mostly stored in our skeletal muscles. It plays a crucial role in energy generation for quick, high-intensity movements like lifting by recycling ATP through phosphocreatine. You may remember from high school that ATP provides energy to our muscles.

Since creatine is stored in muscle tissue, people who eat meat are also consuming creatine at the same time. For vegans, creatine supplementation can be beneficial to help increase strength through higher power output. Creatine is not a steroid or a banned substance and is backed by many research studies showing positive benefits. It may even help with cognitive function!

If you’re interested in supplementing with creatine, there's no need to buy the fancy brands or run loading protocols. 5 grams of creatine monohydrate mixed into a shake or smoothie works just fine.

Creatine is the number one supplement for muscle building, backed by hundreds of scientific studies. It is primarily found in animal foods, but the supplement is synthesized from vegan-friendly sources. The capsules can be made from gelatin, so you might want to use the powdered form. It’s much less expensive, anyway.

Some research suggests that vegans benefit more from supplementing with creatine than omnivores since a plant-based diet provides very little creatine.

Implement progressive overload in a strength training routine

Progressive overload is a strength training strategy that involves gradually increasing the intensity of your workout. This can mean increasing the load or volume of your training, or the stress placed on your muscles and nervous system. It is important to apply progressive overload to continuously increase your strength and avoid plateauing.

• Increase the weight you're lifting. This is the most common way to apply progressive overload. However, it's important not to increase the weight too quickly, as this can lead to injuries and overtraining. A good rule of thumb is to never add more than 10% weight per week.
• Increase the number of repetitions. You can do this by adding a few reps to each set or increasing the number of sets you perform. For example, you could increase from 2 sets of 10 reps to 2 sets of 12 reps, or switch to 3 sets.
• Increase the number of sets. Similar to increasing the number of repetitions, adding more sets will challenge your muscles and promote growth.
• Increase the difficulty of the exercises. You can do this by increasing the range of motion or combining different resistance attributes. For example, you could perform a deficit deadlift, which involves standing on an elevated surface while keeping the bar on the floor, increasing the range of motion.
• Decrease the rest time between sets. Reducing the rest time will increase the overall intensity of your workout and challenge your muscles.

It's important to note that progressive overload should be implemented gradually to avoid injury. It's also crucial to listen to your body and not push yourself too hard. Working with a certified personal trainer can help ensure that you're using proper form and progressing safely.

Eat a variety of plant-based protein sources

Eating a variety of plant-based protein sources is essential for building muscle on a vegan diet. While it is possible to get all the essential amino acids from plants, any one plant-based food will not contain all of them. Therefore, it is important to eat a variety of plant-based protein sources to ensure you are getting all the essential amino acids your body needs to build muscle.

Soy is a great plant-based protein source as it contains all the essential amino acids. It is also a good choice immediately after a workout as it is high in leucine, a branched-chain amino acid that is important for stimulating muscle protein synthesis.

• Tofu
• Tempeh
• Beans, peas, and lentils
• Nuts and seeds
• Plant-based protein powders
• Quinoa
• Seitan
• Spirulina
• Grains like brown rice, whole grain bread, and oatmeal

Frequently asked questions