Building muscles on a vegan diet
Many wonders how and if a vegan/vegetarian diet can be suitable to build up muscles and do sports. It has been show though, that not only this is very possible, but also that we are actually forced to eat too many proteins, by a kind of non-sustainable life style that has turned meat and animals into nothing more than products.
The RDA of protein according to U.S. government standards is 0.8 gram per kilogram of ideal body weight per day for adults. This translates to 63.6 grams of protein per day for a 80-kilograms man, and 48 grams of protein per day for a 60 kilograms woman. Which is easily achievable with a vegan diet.
Even for muscle growth, the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends between 1.0 and 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of ideal body weight per day, with the high end reserved for professional bodybuilders who spend hours in the gym each day.
Using this recommendation, the 80-kilograms man referenced above would increase his protein intake to 79.5 grams of protein per day, and the 60-kilograms woman would need 60 grams per day, if training to build muscle.
And if you Google and surf around the net you would discover some recipes that would make it very difficult to reach these values. For example the Vegetarian Resource Group has some sample daily menus on its website that illustrate this point. There are also many vegan protein supplements available, made from plant sources such as hemp, brown rice, soy, and peas.
Other useful links to discover some high in proteins recipes are the following:
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