Long story short, fuck yea. Excuse my French. As so many people have already said before me and as the message is getting louder and louder YOU DON’T NEED ANIMAL PROTEIN TO BUILD MUSCLE. Why? Simple. Animals get their protein from plants, we then eat the animal and get the protein through the animal. Which means the animal is the middle man. And of course you’ll need to eat more veggies in order to get to the same amount of protein as a piece meat, I mean only imagine how much soy and corn a cow has eaten before it ends up on your plate.. and trust me that cow wasn’t a healthy little happy bean, that cow has had an absolutely miserable life. So why not just skip the cow, let it live and go straight to the source of protein, plants! If you look at the facts 100 kcal of steak contains about 8gr of protein while 100kcal of broccoli contains 11.1 gr of protein, and yeaaa 100kcal of broccoli is a hella lot more on your plate then 100 kcal of steak but I mean that only means you get to eat more and isn’t that just a massive bonus? Ofcourse you won’t just eat broccoli and there are many nuances to what I write here but to make a long story short, as long as you eat a varied diet with lots of different veggies, legumes and grains you will be able to hit all 9 amino acids that our own body can’t make and needs to build and recover muscle. Watch your fat intake, have your carbs steady and load up on plant protein, you’ll be ready to build some lean muscle in no time. And the best thing is there are SO MANY alternatives these days, even for the people that love the taste of meat it’s not that hard to makes some changes. Even if you’d just have a couple of meat free days a week, I promise, you won’t loose any muscle. I’ve also struggled with the whole protein confusion, the dietary industry is good in spreading confusing messages so people don’t really know what’s healthy and what’s not. However if you’d ask any real nutritionist out there they’d most likely say that you should focus on whole food plant based, limit your meat intake and cut processed foods, this is universal. That’s why it’s hard to see that so many people are still following diet trends and commercials on tv that tell you that bacon and milk are healthy and you should eat as much chicken breast and lean meat as you can to gain muscle. Whilst these products contain protein they also contain a vast amount of other shit you really don’t want in your body, not to mention the difference between animal protein and plant protein. Check out some of the documentaries I’ve posted here (especially Gamechangers if you’re interested in vegan muscle gains!

Anyways I always wondered if there were any established vegan athletes or body builders out there and if it was harder to build muscle on a vegan diet. It ends up there are A LOT of vegan athletes and it doesn’t have to be any harder to build some plant fueled muscles. Obviously when you’re an athlete of any kind, wether it be cross fit, endurance sports or body building you’re always very conscious about what you eat and it takes a great deal of discipline to keep the growth going and enhance your physique through nutrition and training. But most vegan athletes actually state that their performance have improved on a plant based diet, not only that their physique has improved but that their mentality has also been lifted. They feel more clear, more motivated and they feel like their bodies recover faster. I’ve listed some vegan athletes for you to check out, there’s way more then I’ve listed here but these are the ones that have had an impact on my life! I also took the liberty to add some influential vegans to the list just to let you know the movement is big and growing by the day.