I just switched to a vegetarian diet. I am keeping watch on what I consume and making sure I get everything I need. This is my first time trying a veggie diet and I notice that I always feel hungry. Should I be doing something that I might not be doing? Any vegetarians triathletes on st care to lend some pointers my way?
my girlfriend is a vegetarian athlete, and I’m nearly so (I still eat meat, just not much)
you just have to eat a lot of freaking food. you dont have dense 1000 calories per square inch meat anymore.
get a lot of milk/cheese/eggs/beans/tofu/avacado/hummus etc in your diet. try indian food, they make dense vegetarian food.
no supplements are required, but if you want whey or soy protein shakes can be an easy way to stuff down more calories.
Can’t help with the diet. I’m not sure why someone would voluntarily move themselves to the bottom of the foodchain. If you ever decide to move yourself to the bottom of the economic chain give a call I can take any excess wealth off you hands ;-).
Styrrell
well theres 3 reasons why you might
- cleaner arteries
- less use of the planets resources (admirable, but useless unless you also are working to stop people from breeding too)
- you like animals
there isn’t much downside if you don’t love eating meat. before you say that meat/protein is critical to athletic performance
I say dave scott
=)
Can’t help with the diet. I’m not sure why someone would voluntarily move themselves to the bottom of the foodchain. If you ever decide to move yourself to the bottom of the economic chain give a call I can take any excess wealth off you hands ;-).
Styrrell
Not to discourage you from your change, but my father-in law tried this and started getting sick and always tired. He gave it up. Obviously a sample of 1 means nothing.
Item 1: Drink more bourbon. it cleans the arteries.
Item 2: Where are your vegetables and other foods coming from? Are they local?
Item 3: Animals are great, especially cooked rare.
Is Dave Scott the exception or the rule?
While I cannot suggest it… actually would discourage it for anyone to be honest. IF you are going to do it you WILL become DEFICIENT in a few things most notably the following;
- Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids… Omega-3 Fatty acids in particular
- Protein… many vegetarians cannot eat enough beans, quinoa, nuts to supply adequate protein for their basic needs
- Folic Acid
I have never met a vegetarian who consistently meets the bodies demands, especially endurance athletes, with a vegetarian diet. I know a few vegetarian endurance athletes exist who train and race at a high level but not many. The ethical argument re: killing of an animal for consumption I fully understand and will not argue. However, the argument that humans are not omnivores is kinda well… wrong. basic principle I follow… if we can chew it readily, we can digest it readily for the most part. I wish you the best on your quest! ERIK
My advice to you is eat, eat and eat! I’ve been a vegatarian for ten years now and a pretty fast athlete for two. As has been said before, you really cannot eat enouph on this diet. Supplement with Flax oil to help with your Omega’s, Whey protein is great, I take a tip from the body builders and down a protein smoothie before bed when i’m training heavy, and when I do weight sessions. Quiona should be your best friend, as should beans, broccoli, spinach, and red onions. Eat fruit, you can get a lot of good calories from fruit.
And lastly, eat! I seriously can’t stress that enouph. I always carry at least two Cliff bars with me (more because it takes an act of God for them to go bad so I can throw a hanful in my gym bag and forget about them untill I need them), and have a stash of nuts and dried fruit at work just in case I get hungry in between my many meals.
Feel free to P.M. me if you have any concerns.
Personally I think a vegatrian diet is great for a lot of people, and would be great for a lot more if people would just make a concous effort to think about what they put into their bodies.
P.S- If your in a pinch, just about all Kashi products are vegi friendly and taste good too. I recomend the trail mix cookies and cinnamon wheat cereal!
I’ve been doing this for a year, no change in how I feel at all.
Girlfriend has qualified for boston mary and finished first overall in her first event as a vegetarian using no supplements.
dave scott is neither the rule nor the exception.
it doesn’t freaking matter.
=)
Not to discourage you from your change, but my father-in law tried this and started getting sick and always tired. He gave it up. Obviously a sample of 1 means nothing.
Item 1: Drink more bourbon. it cleans the arteries.
Item 2: Where are your vegetables and other foods coming from? Are they local?
Item 3: Animals are great, especially cooked rare.
Is Dave Scott the exception or the rule?
are you in the business of doing blood profiles of vegetarian athletes or something?
if so, do they only come to you when something is wrong?
if not, how the hell would you know?
have you met any of these people?:
Ruth Heidrich, Three-Time Ironman
Bill Pearl, Bodybuilder
Brendan Brazier, Ironman Triathlete
Sally Eastall, Marathon Runner
Andreas Cahling, Mr. International Bodybuilder
Carl Lewis, Olympic Track Star (Vegan!)
Pat Reeves, Power Lifter
Lucy Stephens, Tri-athlete
Stan Price, World Record Bench Press
I have never met a vegetarian who consistently meets the bodies demands, especially endurance athletes, with a vegetarian diet.
Let me know how you feel after 20yrs of being a vegetarian. No, I do not look at the numbers gleaned from taking blood samples and testing for vitamin levels etc. I do however SPECIALIZE in treating endurance athletes and non-athletes alike with chronic illness, chronic fatigue, chronic illness and when one has enough education on what the human body needs they begin to make decisions for the betterment of the individual. I WILL REPEAT MYSELF: I am not saying that ALL vegetarians are deficient… it is just the norm as getting what they need tends to be extremely difficult if they are a ‘true’ vegetarian and this is not even discussing vegans. I know this is a touchy subject for you and I am sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities. And yes, I have met some of “these people.”
And no, athletes/people do not only come to me when something is wrong but that is also the norm unfortunately. Again, sorry to offend you but there ALWAYS exists an alternate perception/opinion. You are allowed to have yours. Its just a shame that you have to be a prick in the process.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 15 years and can’t imagine how awful I’d feel if I started eating meat again. There are many successful endurance athletes, Scott Jurek for example, who are vegans. Brendon Brazier is another.
Claiming that vegetarians will ALWAYS be deficient in anything is a load of crap. Vegans will have a problem with B12 because the only source of it is in animals but as long as you consume dairy you are fine. For Omegas, people who don’t eat fish have problems. That isn’t specific to vegetarians. Folic Acid is B9 and there are a lot of good vegetarian souces including leafy veggies, beans and peas.
There is a ton of info out there. Read read read. I high recommend The Vegetarian Sports Nutrition Guide: Peak Performance for Everyone from Beginners to Gold Medalists
Getting the right amount of protein isn’t as difficult as most people think it is. I eat Fage, Greek yogurt, as a snack. One cup of 2% has 17g of protein. Standard servings of protein power are 20g. I’m almost willing to get that a vegetarian who is careful of protein gets more than a carnivore who assume they get enough.
Tons of stuff to talk about and it would take a long time to go over it so I recommend you dig into some books.
Whoa, so much vitriol here. I’ll try to bring it back on target:
Changing your diet is hard. Like, traveling in a foreign country and eating their food all the time is hard. Your mind has to get accustomed to feeling full with what you’re eating. So, this’ll take time.
Veggie food is typically not as calorie-dense as meat, so that can take some getting used to. You can supplement with high-calorie foods to offset that. Fats in particular have lots of calories: peanut butter, olive oil, nuts, and cheese are all choc-full-o-calories. Some sources of calories are better than others, so experiment. When I was younger and my caloric needs were ridiculously high, a shot of olive oil would cure my hunger like nothing else. I don’t recommend going to such extreme measures, I’m just pointing out there are ways to get full. Find out what works for you.
Be sure that your main meals are balanced. I find a “beans and greens” dinner is usually tasty, balanced, and filling, so my girlfriend and I eat this sort of thing often. (She’s not vegetarian, but she eats like one around me.) A standby for me is Mexican food: a main of some sort, e.g. enchiladas, and rice, beans and salad as sides fills me up nicely.
You may need to snack more often than you did before. Again, look for calorie-dense things here, otherwise you’ll just eat too many calories as you get hungry all the time. Perhaps I should say, look for moderate to low glycemic index foods for your snacks. Examples: handful of nuts, half an avocado filled with cottage cheese.
Oh, and don’t listen to the naysayers. If The Man isn’t enough to convince people, nothing will. Screw 'em.
I know a few vegetarian endurance athletes exist who train and race at a high level but not many.
vegetarians make up around 3% of the population…why would there be a huge amount of high level vegetarian athletes?
to the OP…this topic always brings out the ignorant. there will be lots of responses basically equal to ‘meat=manly’ with anything
else being ‘suspect’. i’ve been veg. for around 15 years and all is well.
as long as your getting your protein and taking a good veg. multi vitamin, your good. vegan is where things can get a little trickier.
im not a vegetarian.
i have no problem with killing animals
people seem to often have an irrational stance that being vegetarian is difficult or unhealthy when so many counterexamples exist. those of us that interact with normal people know lots of vegetarians who are fine and healthy. When we know (many) people who haven’t eaten meat for 20 years who are perfectly normal physically and someone who is not a vegetarian snaps back with “omg thats unhealthy” well that does seem a bit crazy to us.
now if you are aware of some sort of robust data as to the health of vegetarian athletes compared to non vegetarian athletes, im all ears.
i apologize for coming off like a prick. part of the problem is I am a prick, and also there is no way for me to know your level of expertise or what you base your claims on =)
Your first reply was exceedingly categorical and rather misleading (the protein issue is a non-starter, even for heavily-active endurance athletes); your second post was more careful inasmuch as you acknowledge that your statements shouldn’t be taken categorically.
Informed vegetarians and vegans can and do meet their dietary requirements, and they can do so with ease. Informed meat eaters can also. Uninformed vegans/vegetarians and meat eaters often have trouble meeting basic requirements. A meat-based diet might make it somewhat easier to meet those requirements, but many, many meat eaters fail miserably at that task. There are also downsides to meat eating that are just as serious and problematic, if not more so, than those that go along with being a vegetarian. I’m sure you know that, but like most people, you don’t make a point of that. You, like most folks, imply that any meat-based diet is somehow healthier in terms of meeting dietary requirements. But the devil is in the details–which kind of meat-based diet? They are not all alike. Nor are all vegan/vegetarian diets.
I have been a strict vegan for 20 years. I have also been a top-level competitive cyclist on a vegan diet–no illnesses, no chronic fatigue, no nutrition requirement issues. And I am hardly alone–there are thousands of us. I think your sample group of endurance vegetarian athletes is somewhat unusual.
im not a vegetarian.
i have no problem with killing animals
people seem to often have an irrational stance that being vegetarian is difficult or unhealthy when so many counterexamples exist. those of us that interact with normal people know lots of vegetarians who are fine and healthy. When we know (many) people who haven’t eaten meat for 20 years who are perfectly normal physically and someone who is not a vegetarian snaps back with “omg thats unhealthy” well that does seem a bit crazy to us.
now if you are aware of some sort of robust data as to the health of vegetarian athletes compared to non vegetarian athletes, im all ears.
it’s nice that you have no problem killing animals and yet can still think logically 
the world could use (a part of) more of that.
Stock up on TP.
I’m not yet ready to say that anyone here isn’t thinking logically. I mean the man does work closely with endurance athletes, im curious to learn more.
and yet can still think logically the world could use (a part of) more of that.
I have been a vegetarian for about 5 years. I eat lots of eggs, beans, and some other things as well. My diet would be plenty for a moderate lifestyle, but as of late its just not cutting it. Broke down a few weeks ago and started eating meat again and Im feeling stronger than I have in well, 5 years. Im an animal loving PETA type guy and its killing me to do so. People respond to different regimens, in different ways, food and training. So yes, it works for some people for sure. As for eDeroche, last time I drilled you on the Parkway, I was protein deficient!
I’m not yet ready to say that anyone here isn’t thinking logically. I mean the man does work closely with endurance athletes, im curious to learn more.
and yet can still think logically the world could use (a part of) more of that.
i wouldn’t hold your breath for any solid evidence.