Thriving on a Vegan Diet

Speaker 1 0:00

Can you thrive on a vegan diet with zero animal-based foods ? In other words , can you get all of your essential nutrients on a vegan versus an animal-based diet ? Find out on today's weekend Q&A bonus episode . Welcome to the Whits and Weights podcast . I'm your host , philip Pape , and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger , optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition . We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement , metabolism , muscle and mindset , with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry , so you can look and feel your absolute best . Let's dive right in .

Speaker 1 0:45

Hello and welcome to the special weekend Q&A edition of the Whits and Weights podcast , where we supercharge your Saturdays and Sundays with an answer to one burning question so you can put it into action this weekend . These questions are taken from the weekly Ask Philip thread in our Free Whits and Weights Facebook community . If you're feeling overwhelmed by the endless amount of information and , let's be honest , misinformation online , and just want a straight up answer without the jargon , that's what this free service is for . With the weekly Ask Philip thread , you can post a specific question relevant to your unique individual situation that week and have it answered live by me on Friday If you'd like to experience it yourself . I invite you to use the link in the show notes to join the Whits and Weights Facebook group . It's totally free and you'll quickly find out what a positive and supportive community it is .

Speaker 1 1:41

With that , let's get to today's Q&A what nutrients are essential for life and can only be found in animal products ? Now , for anybody that follows Dustin and his show , the Working Weights LLC podcast , he talks a lot about specific nutrition topics in each episode and then dives into the science in detail . If you watch a YouTube video , he shares the papers and he shows graphs and spreadsheets and all that . If you're a data nerd , you're going to love it . Then he ties that to practice . He gets way more into analyzing the studies than I ever do , and that's our thing . Go for it , man . You own that space . That's why I responded . I feel like you're testing me .

Speaker 1 2:22

Is there any more context ? I'm suspecting he's basically saying , hey , you can be vegan , right , you don't have to have animal products and still survive and even thrive . I think that's what he asked me . It's kind of rhetorical . I get it , dustin , but you're giving me the platform here and also fulfilling one of the boxes and the habit tracker for the challenge . Then you said I guess it would be more about vegan and vegetarian diets and the assumptions that you can't get certain nutrients from plants . Maybe more context would be what essential nutrients are often regarded as only coming from animal sources , and are there plant sources of those nutrients ? Could a vegan person without supplements diet without supplements and get all their essential nutrients from food ? Then Chrissy added to this and said I'm interested in this .

Speaker 1 3:08

I've been eating vegan for 27 years . I supplemented with B12 , take a multivitamin , zinc , magnesium , adding creatine . My eating habits make it hard for me to gain weight , muscle . All these things are definitely what I see , chrissy . When it comes to vegans , which here's the general gist of it , it's going to be harder than if you have animal products . That's like saying it's harder when you cut anything out that's available to eat in the world versus including that thing . Generally , that's just a principle because of diversity and availability and all that , but not impossible . Maybe it doesn't even have to be that crazy hard once you develop the habit and the things that you need . I put together a document I'm going to go over in a second here . My goal has been to add weight , muscle and overall strength and endurance . I lose weight so quickly without meaning to anxiety is just not feeling hungry . Some of these are more behavioral things that , chrissy , we can talk about .

Speaker 1 4:02

I was not going to answer them here specifically because it can go on and on and on . I want to answer Dustin's question , then you I can personally go down the rabbit hole of specific things . Then you mentioned Huell , which is a meal replacement product , and started seeing and feeling muscles . I feel stronger already . You said earlier you just started to lift . That's going to be huge . Lifting itself is a major key to unlock performance and health for vegans . Big time , big time . I'm glad you're doing that .

Speaker 1 4:34

Here's what I put together , dustin . I think you're going to love this . Based on your question . I did exactly what you asked which nutrients are mainly in animal products , but then can you get them from vegan sources ? And then some general recommendations to go with that . Okay , vitamin B12 . And for some of these I listed what they're for . I'm not going to go into all that today , but vitamin B12 , I think we've all heard of that . For vegans , you can get it from four to five plants , foods and supplements . Now , yes , you did say can you do it without supplements . I think you can . I think you could get close without supplements . I wonder how practical it is . In other words , you get very little room for error , I believe .

Speaker 1 5:14

Now , dustin , if you have like an example meal plan that and you probably could create on chat GPT , I'm sure that you like that includes just plants and satisfies everything quote unquote optimally . I think it can be done , based on my own understanding and working with a few vegans and some of this research . But usually there's supplementation involved and that's the case for omnivores too . We have supplements like I take magnesium because I just no matter . Even when I track it and try to consume lots of foods with magnesium , you just can't seem to get to that number while doing everything else . It's this real fine balance and we're going for thriving and performance and optimization here , we're not going for just the bare minimums . So , having given you all those caveats , omega-3s are the other one usually found in fatty fish . You can get them from Algal Oil for sure .

Speaker 1 6:03

Iron now , whether you call that supplementation or food that's maybe splitting hairs , iron for sure it can be tough to get , but it's still available in plants , the non-heem version of iron . So if you have a diverse diet lentils , spinach . If you have vitamin C and citrus and other foods of vitamin C to help with absorption , I think you'd be okay there . Now , granted , pre-menopausal or I should say menstruating women need the most iron of anyone , right , like double or more of the iron that post-menopausal women or men need . So it's just that much more important to watch that . But if you're using something like macrofactory , you can know exactly how much iron you're consuming and you can set a target .

Speaker 1 6:44

Calcium of course that's the big one . It's in dairy , but you could also eat calcium from plenty of plants Broccoli , also plant milks , and then , of course , supplements . Zinc a lot of this has to do with bioavailability , I think in the animal products and again , dustin , you might pick on this and I'm not asking you to do that , I'm just pointing out that that's the consensus , so to speak , and it doesn't really matter because , again , you can get it from nuts , seeds , legumes , if you soak and sprout . That improves absorption as well . Vitamin D many of us are deficient in that .

Speaker 1 7:16

I supplement with vitamin D . I live in the Northeast , I walk outside , I still don't get enough , and I test my vitamin D and it's smack dab in the middle , having taken supplementation . 5,000 IU a day is what I take . Some people take up to 10 . Some people say , oh , five's too much , I only need one or two . Depends on you , right ? Vegans can take vitamin D2 and then they're lichen sourced D3 supplements . So this is one where you probably want to take supplementation .

Speaker 1 7:41

And then creatine everyone should take creatine , in my opinion , like I mean , you don't have to , but everyone can benefit from it . It is found in meat , but all of us omnivores , included in the lifting world , tend to supplement with creatine monohydrate 5 grams a day . And then torene is also primarily meat and fish , but it's not essential . The body can produce it and for that you can take supplements . Maybe this shouldn't even be on the list . So I think I covered the big ones .

Speaker 1 8:03

Dustin , I wasn't going to go too detailed for the ask Philip type of deal . It could basically become a podcast episode at that point , and maybe you want to do that . Maybe you're going to come up with an episode on this . It'd be awesome . Recommendations Okay , definitely supplementation . Again violating Dustin's question , can you do it without supplementation ? But you may need it . Creatine , for sure .

Diverse, Balanced Diet Tips

Speaker 1 8:24

The biggest thing is a diverse variety of whole foods . It's about the matrix right , how everything comes together . This is omnivores and vegans and vegetarians , having a lot of different things , not limiting yourself to like two foods that you like , you know . Try to really incorporate a lot of different things and get that variety in Test . You know , take blood work , track all that , all of that . You know tracking via food logging , micronutrients and blood work right , you should have included that in there . And then this is another big one , especially for you , chrissy is eating enough , just having enough calories and protein . So protein would be legumes , tofu , tempa , seitan , all that good vegan sources of protein . Calorie dense foods would be things like nuts , seeds , avocados , oils , and this is always what I recommend to everyone .

Speaker 1 9:10

If you could spend most of the year not dieting , you're probably going to be better off from a health perspective Once you've gotten down to a kind of a range of healthy weight . You know , assuming you're not very overweight , that's usually a good strategy when you can get there . Meal replacement is one final option , which would be , of course , powders . Pean rice protein blend is my favorite for vegans , if you can tolerate those vegan protein bars Hul you mentioned , I know there's a special version called Black Edition that's higher in protein . That's it for today's weekend Q&A bonus episode . Remember this is just a small part of the weekly Ask Philip live Q&A in the Wits and Wates Facebook group , which you can join totally free using the link in the show notes . I invite you to join us as we improve our health and physique together . Thank you .