Not a vegan now, but I did try it our for a close to six months a few years ago while marathon training. I took:
- B12
- D3 (partially just because I live in the NW and don’t see much sun in the winter)
- Calcium (partially because I had a history of stress fractures on my foot)
- Protein Power (usually Vega brand, but also used one from Costco has one called Orgain and also made my own mix from truenutrition.com
- Maca powder

I actually still use all of those things except the B12. I tried spirulina powder (which has b vitamins and protein) in my smoothie, but couldn’t stand the smell. I’d recommend picking Brendan Braziers book Thrive. He is a former professional triathlete and in one of his sections he talks about supplementation and what foods to make sure to include so you’re not missing out on key macros, vitamins or nutritients.

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Matt

1) protein powder with greens in it for quicker recovery, ease of consumption, and digests easily before my next workout. Also it’s great to keep in my desk drawer at work if I get swamped with grading or student emails
2) iron because I very quickly become anemic without it (even when I ate meat I never absorbed it well)
3) magnesium to help with soreness
4) turmeric for inflammation

Steak and eggs...

All of those, because even as an occasional egg and cheese eater (ie not a "vegan") who lives in Australia it's good to be sure you're getting what you need. Magnesium to deal with tight muscles, but that's not a necessity.

Eat enough fats and proteins. Too many vegans eat just carbs and vegetables and become skinny and unhealthy.

Other than that eat a lot of variety in your vegetables and try to grow your own from healthy soil. Most people are deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, no matter if they're meat eaters or vegans, because we eat so little that's actually grown from rich earth.

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'It never gets easier, you just get crazier.'

I've been vegan (>98%) for six years. Had trouble recovering after workouts without protein supplementation. I've tried a lot of things but have come to rely on protein powder (Vega Sport brand primarily) and B12 with no known issues.

Good luck!

Roy

I take B12 daily, and calcium & D3 regularly. I use protein powder (Vega) post-workout, but also make my own protein bars. Beyond that I get plenty of complete protein in all my meals, eating lots of legumes, hemp, oats, quinoa, etc. When I first took the plunge I was a little worried about getting enough protein, but realistically it's not that hard as long as you give your meals some thought.

yummmmmy! hahahah

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

What did popeye eat before whopping ass?

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"The person on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - unkown

also rule 5

Protein

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I'm vegan-ish (90%) and my wife is straight-up vegan, whole-food plant-based. Our approach is:

• Hammer's vegan Recoverite (so good after a long, hot training session)
• Vegan B-12 complex (Mega Food)
• Turmeric for inflammation
• Wife takes iron

During heavy training weeks, I end up eating a lot of broccoli and beans and rice. I also make smoothies with bananas, soy milk, the Hammer powder, chia, flax, and handfuls (plural) of baby kale. Only way I can eat kale. Generally, people don't need as much protein as they think they need, but it's important to watch it as you found out. The Hammer stuff helps with protein and BCAAs.


If you haven't already, check out No Meat Athlete and Rich Roll's podcasts. Rich Roll is an older vegan ultra endurance athlete (Ultramans, etc.) with lots of free podcasts and videos on his approach to nutrition.

Good luck!

It's a complete food, as opposed to a supplement, but I normally have Huel as a breakfast. I mix in something like soy milk and a banana because it's a bit thin without it, IMHO. But it seems well thought out so I figure I'm starting the day with some good nutrition. There are other similar complete powdered foods and I'm not qualified to weigh the benefits of one over another but I like it and I'd find being a Vegan much harder without it.

That was a cartoon, and they can make pigs fly too.

This is an honest question. 80% of what I eat is raw veggies, in the 2lbs per day range. But, if an eating lifestyle doesn't provide the correct nutrients and you have to take supplements, doesn't that mean humans weren't made to eat that way?

Not being rude, just an honest question. I eat veggies cause I love them and can eat a ton without getting fat, but I also eat turkey and eggs... Cause I like those too... And a ton of cottage cheese which I assume is also not vegan.

Yes probably true but remember that's also assuming humans with Stone age longevity probably dying from disease or trauma by age 50.

You gotta make more.adjustments when your new standard.ia 90+ which nature hasn't at all adapted us for.

I have been vegan for about 18 years now and having been doing tri's for about 12....i am 52. I also wondered about protein intake and B12 at the beginning and took a B12 supplement and worked on combining the correct foods to get all the amino acids that i read i would be missing not eating meat. But over time for various reasons i just thought about it less and less and stopped taking the supplement and stopping thinking about protein completely. So at this point i probably get 20-30 grams a protein per day (i weigh 145lbs) mostly from nuts and some incidental protein from tofu, seitan and dairy-free yogurts. And for me it has not made any difference...i doing mostly IM's and 1/2's (low 11hr IM/low 5hr 1/2IM...not spectacular but decent)....i race a fair amount (2 IM's...3 1/2 IM's from May to Sept) I recover extremely well....have zero run injury issues...and also sleep very well. So my point is that in some cases and the protein/supplement thing just may not matter. But i would also say that it really depends on each persons own biology..for me it works great but maybe for others it doesn't so you just have to find how your machine responds. I am a big believer in the power of our mind/placebo thing so if you can let your body tell you how its working and not let your mind worry about it too much that might be the way to go. I just want to show an example of where it didn't matter so you know that that is also possible. Good luck.....

There is no reason a Vegan diet couldn't provide everything a person needs to be healthy. A lot of people (whatever your dietary preferences) supplement as a form of insurance. It sounds like the OP is quite thoughtful about this so it'd be interesting to see his workings. For instance is he going with a high protein requirement because of a sporting lifestyle? But his protein supplements will be vegan - that's kind of the point - it's just in a more convenient form.

A lot of vegan sources of protein don't contain all the essential amino acids by themselves. Some do but they are the minority. So vegans should be a bit mindful of that. I think I'm right in saying, peanuts and wholegrain wheat have some protein but not all the essential amino acids individually. But together (peanut butter on wholewheat toast) they do. Maybe that's why it tastes so good. Having said that cashews or chickpeas are complete.

What we are made to eat is an interesting question and there will be lots of articles that point to characteristics of our teeth or something then make a conclusion. Most seem, to me, to have a bias because people get worked up about this stuff. But it would be silly of me sitting here with forward facing, hunting, eyes to argue they developed so we can target the best broccoli more accurately. To my mind the important question is can I be healthy eating the way I want to.

And just our sanitized world... ex: you can get plenty of B12 if you grew your own veggies and didn't wash them very well, as bacteria in soil is pretty rich in B12.

Understood. From what I had studied when looking at being vegan a few years ago was that you should eat beans and also something wheat in order to complete the process chains.

Assuming that, it would be a great way to get a good balance of both carbs and protein.

I could get on board eating black bean tacos on wheat or whole grain tortillas... Because I already do, but not to be vegan. I eat it cause I like it.

Totally honest here - I was (am still am, but more restrained now) a total meat lover. I had a huge appetite from age 1-38 and was lucky enough to have good enough genetics that somehow despite eating really large amounts of calories and virtually no regard to quality of diet, I never got fat. I'm also lucky enough to not have a family history of early heart disease.

Still, a few years ago a friend of mine recommended I watch Forks over Knives on Netflix, as he went vegan for health reasons (his dad had a heart attack at age 45 and he was now age 39) - and with 3 months of sticking to a good vegan diet, his cholesterol dropped from 220 to 120, and his entire lipid profile went from mildly high to low-normal/excellent. That's apparently very typical for those that adopt the vegan diet, he was not an outlier.

Given that I also have borderling high cholesterol, that idea was appealing to me, but the vegan diet totally was NOT. I never consumed beans in any significant quantity and I found tofu gross! Still, I HTFU'd up, and watched Forks over Knives, expecting it to suck as another fad-diet video, but it was the total opposite - packed with evidence from a true vegan cardiologist, solid outcome data from lots of big studies, and real-world examples of it working just as it did to my friend. Honestly, it was hard for me to intellectually justify eating meat just after watching that video, it was so convincing for me, at least from a scientific and ethical standpoint. I actually wasn't sure I was just duped by the good production values so I partially watched a few other vegan-videos on Netflix/other, and they weren't as good, but I was still sold.

My main stumbling block now is that my wife adores cheese and will never, ever give it up, although she has given up meat mostly. And my <10 year old kid, who adamantly refuses to eat any faux-meat protein, refuses greens, refuses beans, and you can't just let her 'get hungry enough to eat' as she's still so young that her temper and mood will uncontrollably explode before she gets to that hunger point (anyone with a <2year old knows what this is like, she's better than that, but not when she's super hungry.)

Still, I've had a lot of fun learning the vegan diet, subbing in lots of tofu, seitan, beans, and reconfiguring my diet. I haven't switched all the way over, but I pretty much only cook vegan options for myself, and eat <4oz of meat /wk, and more often than not, zero oz per week. Check out the movie if you're at all interested in what I'm talking about - at least for me, it was really convincing (and I friggin' hate any fad diet.)

Vegan is an eating disorder.

Plenty of ways to eat healthy without going meat free.

This is pretty similar to me - wife and kids not into veganism, so when I'm on my own (breakfast and lunch) I'm 100% vegan, and dinners are a bit of a mix. I do the cooking so I prepare as many vegan suppers as I can get away with. When we do eat meat I don't very much, but realistically it's probably 3-4 meals a week where there is some meat on the table, and it's usually about once each of beef, chicken, and fish.
If I'm out at a nice restaurant or on vacation somewhere, all bets are off.

What is a 90% vegan? What makes up the remaining 10%?

I don't eat meat (except for very rare occasions) and really not cheese. I, however, eat TONS of eggs. I tried veganism and felt like shit every time. With that said, I take a methylfolate/b12 supp and a pea/rice/hemp blended protein powder.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Estimate <4oz of meat per week. Honestly I have no idea if it's 90%, but it may very well be a lot less than 10% meat since we don't buy any meat,chicken. I think last week, my wife made my kid BLTs, so I had a few slices of bacon leftover, and that was my entire meat intake for the week. We never cook meat as a main or even side serving. My kid mainly has turkey/ham slices in lunch sandwiches so I don't eat those.

Sushi fish is the only real meat load that we eat, but again I usually eat <4oz at a time and not even 1x/wk on avg.

When I first did the vegan thing, I didn't feel satisfied and was worried about it, but realizing I wasn't getting enough protein was REALLY helpful in stopping that. I would realize when I ate a lot of quinoa/bean meals, that I'd feel fine even on caloric deficits, whereas other days even with caloric surpluses, I felt like I had to keep eating.

I'm now using an orgain protein powder on a daily basis as a supplement, not main protein source, but it's +21g per day, also seems to help.