3 Action Steps to Becoming a Stronger Vegetarian

The other day I meet a vegetarian at a speaking event and afterwards he approached me to ask, “How do I get arms like you?”  Jokingly, I responded, “Ignore pain and eat small children.”  After he humored me with my horrible joke I asked him what he eats.  Usually people go straight to asking “what exercise is good for this part of my body?” which is important, but if you don’t have a foundation to build on it’s all in vain, my little muscle heads. He replied, “I’m a vegetarian.” Damn, I thought.  I’m not going to blog about why I think all people should be eating meat (yes, everyone), I will save that for another time. But I will say regardless of the reason you are a vegetarian, you have to do a bit more work than the rest of us carnivores when it comes to retaining lean body composition.  He and I had a great conversation about how our agriculture system is going to hell, and I gave him 3 action steps to become a stronger vegetarian. 

Step 1.

Stop Eating Soy!

Seriously, get that out of your house immediately. At the beginning of my career I was nice about soy. Later I began to advise against it. Now I call it poison. The more I read and study, and the more clients I teach the more I dissuade people from ingesting soy. For me personally it tears up my stomach, and let me just say you would rather not be in the same room as me when I have had a heavy serving of soy.  Next, it’s fake. Yep.  More than 95% of soy is genetically engineered, according to the Robert Kenner, maker of “Food Inc.”, and other sources.  Genetically engineered food has harsh effects on the body, to say the least. Monsanto is evil. According to the Institute for Functional Medicine, soy contains protease inhibitors that bind with proteolytic enzymes that help in digestion and inhibit their job, which may explain why I can clear out a room after drinking a glass of Silk. Gah….

Also concerning is the presence of Phytic acid, which can bind with minerals in the gastrointestinal tract and dramatically decrease their absorption rate. I haven’t gotten around to reading any studies about how it may affect men’s testosterone, but I do know that they have studied menopausal women adding it to their diet and leveling their estrogenic-dependent conditions out. In other words, they gained estrogen levels, which means your arms probably won’t be getting any bigger.

Step 2

Understand Protein

When I say vegetarians have more work than carnivores I mean that meat is so dense with protein that getting your daily needs is easy to accomplish. Now, I never judge anyone’s moral beliefs when it comes to meat.  But if you don’t have any moral objections to eating meat, and you just think or heard it was healthy to avoid it, then I would strongly recommend you add it back into your diet. If you are going to eliminate meat from your diet, then you have to be sure to seek out “complete proteins.” You see, protein is made of smaller components called amino acids, 12 of which are manufactured by the human body. Another 9, called essential amino acids, must be obtained from food. Vegetarians will be happy to know that complete proteins can also be found in certain plants, such as spirulina, hemp seed, amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa. That’s the good news. The bad news is you have to eat a ton of those things to get the protein your body needs.  Your jaw is probably going to cramp up by the time you’ve hit your recommended daily allowance. How much protien you need depends on your age, weight and how active you are. There are a lot of free references online you can check out. This one is extremely comprehensive:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/the-protein-book

Step 3

Think about energy

This last step has to do with that awesome hot topic everyone likes to put in the headlines: Stimulating the metabolism. Okay, whatever.  Let’s boil this down. If you’re eating 1200 calories a day and you eat 3 times, you are eating 400 calories every time you eat. If you eat 6 times a day you are now eating 200 calories every time you eat. Taking in fewer calories per meal means you are less likely to convert blood sugar (from carbs you ate) into fat. If you are consistent with this way of eating, you will teach your body to use the energy you are taking in, rather than storing it, you will shift your metabolism, and will get leaner and have more energy.

For vegetarians fat is often lost.  Because they are not getting animal fats or because they may be neglecting other sources of fat, they miss this important macronutrient. Fat is the bodies’ main energy source and is important when it comes to energy. First, it is the main macronutrient that satiates us (makes us feel full). This is important because if you feel full you’re not producing insulin, and if you’re not producing insulin you are less likely to store fat. Lastly, fats are important when it comes to endocrine functioning, and if you’re concerned with gaining a little size in your guns, fat will help.

Well I hope that helps all you green folks. It takes a little work to get your diet right, and reassessing how you feel on a monthly or bimonthly basis is a good idea to get you adjusted. Everyone is different so there is no ‘plan’ or template you should go off of. Trial and error with intelligent measuring can yield good results.