Hi everybody,
best sports/cycling related vegan/vegetarian guides around? Websites, books, podcasts (apart from FasCat’s)?
Need help understanding this topic, especially how to survive meat and dairy free…
Thanks!
Riccardo
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Sonya looney is a plant based pro mtb racer and has a weekly podcast that often covers plant based topics
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Hey @dermate -
I have lots of resources for you. Yeah definitely +1 on @JakeL for the shameless plug for my podcast, In The Flow, which is definitely nutrition focused for athletes with a plant-based emphasis. Check out nutritionfacts.org and his cookbook/book How Not to Die.
My old podcast, Thought For Food, has a couple episodes on getting started with plant based diets, here’s part 1 if you’re interested.
And finally, definitely check out the brand new documentary that was just released on Netflix and elsewhere called The Gamechangers, good place to start if pretty biased and a little dramatic. If you have more specific questions, feel free to shoot me an email to jackson@intheflownutrition.com
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The Gamechangers has motivated my wife and I to try a plant based diet after the holidays. We want time to prep and clean out our house. We will be checking these resources out, THANK YOU!
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I watched Game Changers yesterday too - eye opening, especially on the recovery aspect of a plant based diet.
What’s cool is our Winning in the Kitchen is 70-80% there - you’d just need to sub out the eggs, salmon and chicken. We already advocate dairy free to I’m gonna give it a go and will report back at the end of November.
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Good luck Frank. I look forward to hearing about your experience. I went plant based over several years then 99% Vegan August of 2018. I’m not perfect. (when my 80 year old mother makes Beef Barley stew, I eat it. pick out the meat and say thank you Mom). I will say, the biggest thing I noticed being plant based is WAY less if not completely gone joint pain. Particularly after doing push ups planks, and a hard ride in the drops. I have yet to watch Gamechangers as I don’t like the “V” word. However, I do feel really good about NOT eating meat or dairy in terms of our environment. Truthfully, that’s what keeps me on track.
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It’s not a “guide” per se, but my wife orders Purple Carrot boxes sometimes if she’s uninspired, we are really time crunched, or they have something interesting. We also had a delivery once while on vacation and it saved us having to eat out and get the groceries for at least a few days.
They include the cookbooks for all of the options that week regardless of how many you order supplies for so it’s a good way to get some new interesting recipes you can recreate later with groceries. And you’ll want to, because getting it from them comes at a premium but is nice from time to time and the Coaches here advocate low-tech and in-person when it comes to grocery shopping. There are more than a few PC recipes in our regular rotation.
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I would add the classic, Brendan Brazier’s Thrive. The initial few chapters give you a great understanding of plant-based nutrition, with an emphasis on vegan athletes! It has recipes for homemade energy bars drinks and gels as well as everyday nutrition. Enjoy.
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And… Believe it or not, GCN has lost much of its original"edge", but they just issued this book:
What am I seeing here? A mainstream trend maybe?
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What am I seeing here? A mainstream trend maybe?
I HOPE SO!!!
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As a middle-aged athlete, my diet is 95% plant-based now. I’m not a purist so I eat a little salmon, an egg or other animal protein occasionally. It’s been better in every way both measurable (blood tests), weight control, and subjective in my recovery from tough rides, and how I feel overall.
One important finding true for me is, I have to make sure I get a regular dose of protein at each meal. That means a lot of beans, tofu, tempeh, nut butter, whole grains, nuts and seeds. I also do supplement daily with one scoop of vegan protein powder. I eat a lot of broccoli and kale which have a fair amount of protein as well.
Some coaches will say you can get enough protein on 100% plant-based diet without protein powder supplements. But my experience is I was getting really sore, tired and under-recovered from tough workouts until I started supplementing with vegan protein powder and also making sure I got regular hefty doses of whole food based protein at each meal. I’m probably still not getting 1.2 grams/Kg of protein by body weight even with the supplementation. But it seems to be enough that I’m recovering well now after hard workouts.
I want to watch The Game Changers too…it’s on my list! Let us know how the diet goes for you.
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@krimsly What vegan protein powder do you use? Most of them are not very tasty, don’t mix well, and have less than encouraging reviews. @Jackson I’d like your thoughts also.
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@chris.butler I would suggest first trying to see if you can get enough protein from whole foods as that’s always better than taking a supplement. The way I measure “enough protein” is mostly subjective – how do I feel during a hard training block? Am I muscles ridiculously sore, more than I estimate they should be given the work load? Am I so fatigued I can’t hit my watt targets the next workout? Am I irritable and constantly feeling tired? Do I not want to ride my bike?
If you find, as I did, that you are experiencing some of these symptoms after switching to a plant-based diet and you are doing everything else right like getting enough sleep, doing yoga, staying hydrated, eating whole foods with a lot of protein and lots of greens, then it may be time to try a protein powder supplement. I didn’t know for sure if the problem was not enough protein until I tested my hypothesis. Once I added protein powder in I felt better within 2-3 days and after that my recovery was actually better than being on an animal protein heavier diet. And it has stayed that way. Maybe not that scientific of a study, but it works for me.
Yeah, sorry to say none of them taste as good as whey protein and it’s individual which ones you might like. But here are my favorites that I alternate between:
- Orgain Organic Plant-Based Protein powder, best price I can find is at Costco.com but it’s also at Amazon. Vanilla is OK but the chocolate tastes better. Still not nearly as good as whey but not too bad and mixes up pretty well. The best tasting one I could find.
- NorCal Organic Pea Protein Isolate – only one ingredient, Organic Yellow Pea Protein Isolate. Tastes…bad but I like how simple the ingredient list is. And mixed into a shake I can’t taste it very much.
I will add them either to a plant-based shake or to my decaf coffee in the morning. In the shake I can’t taste the protein powder much at all and what I can taste is good. In coffee I mask the flavor by adding soy milk and either organic carob powder or organic cocoa powder. Perhaps other people have a favorite vegan protein powder they can share?
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@chris.butler I echo what @krimsly said. I rarely use protein powder and that’s mainly because it usually causes me stomach issues/I don’t digest it super well and I generally eat enough calories and protein from whole foods. That being said, during periods of heavy training I’ll throw some in a smoothie on occasion. I like the Vega brand, and also super excited for Complement Protein (https://lovecomplement.com/products/complement-protein?variant=15804589113393) which I think is now available. Really fantastic blend and amino acid profile. I also know the guys behind this company (I used to work there) and they’re fantastic humans. So I would check it out, but will guess it probably doesn’t taste great. Hope that helps!
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I’ve tried this product,it tastes great and is supposed to be superior to other powders due to nutrient value too.https://cleanmachineonline.com/pages/clean-green-protein
Also Forks Over Knives has a great app if you need more recipe ideas. I’ve been vegan 8 years now and have nothing but great blood work,quick recovery,stable lean weight and I eat so much variety than previous way of eating. It’s a win/win. 
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The Vega sport has a great post-workout ingredient list, but I’d not been aware of the complement protein blend. That’s super exciting, my wife and I have been doing the complement plus capsules subscription since they came out.
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i was just wanted to had the Game Changers on my list and was searching for a review and then stumbled on large number of “debunking” videos on that “Documentary”, i’m not against vegan in any way, just stating that the Documentary is really cherry picking facts and twisting it, so it is not a very good reference for going vegan…
just giving one example debunking it if you have the time…
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