muscle maintanence for vegetarians and endurance people

[CCS]

I'd let you coach me. I've stopped eating meat, as I'm trying to go vegetarian, and I can already feel the muscles going away. I still run 90-120 minutes a day, along with pushups, situps, crunches, and other ab exercises, but my diet is really impacting my strength-training.

Diet:
*Most plant foods have very little protein. Beans are 22% protein, but only 9% usable protein because they lack so much methionine. Rice barely compensates for beens, as it is still low in methionine, as all plants are. Oats have the best plant protein you can get. Eat lots of oats, and you will get the protein you need. Soy is also very poor quality protein.
*Eat protein sources 5+x per day or more. And eat 5+ smaller meals per day instead of 3 big ones.
*No plant/yeast source has vitamin B12. You need to buy b12 pills. Yeast has every B vitamin except B12.
*Except for fruits, most plant foods are not easy to digest. If you could eat whey protein from milk, that would help a lot.
*Plants are also low in carnitine, which helps transport fat to the muscle to be burned, which could cause less lean mass to get burned. It is very cheap and synthetic and can be bought at http://www.beyondacenturyonline.com. Dairy products are a good source of carnitine.


Excercise:
*Increasing your run time more than 10% per week causes your slow twitch fibers to over train a bit. Less testosterone is produced when you over train, so more muscle is burned when the cortisol comes 'round. Endurance exercise does stimulate testosterone production, but only when it is done in the workout zone the muscle are ready for, not when they are overtrained. The same goes for strength lifting: too much will make testosterone levels drop. You know your testosterone is high when you feel high on life.
*Heavy low rep movements stimulate your fast twitch muscles, which can get big. High rep stuff does not stimulate them, so they attrophy. You need to lift heavy at least 1x per week to maintain those big muscle fibers for the long run.
*50% of your muscle fibers are intermediate fibers. Cardio and endurance stuff trains them to become more like slow twitch fibers, though push ups keep them in the middle. The more they become like slow twitch fibers, the higher the speeds you can maintain for miles at a time.
*For distance runners, fast twitch muscle is dead weight most of the time, and intermediate twitch muscle are best turned into slow twitch. Slow twitch fibers are the smallest and don't grow much. That is the trade off you make.

 

[Aplunk1]

Excellent!

I just looked at my Oatmeal, which I have every other day, and it has 5g/protein per 1/2 cup, and I always eat 1 cup... So that's an automatic 10g, but that's still just a small dent in the total protein intake. I also go through a jar of peanut butter every few days, which gives me lots of energy and some protein. I'm still very new to the vegetarian diet, so I'm going to load up on mixed nuts and whatnot over the next few days until I get some good recipes down.

I'm not crazy about taking vitamins, but maybe I'll order some B-12 from that website you gave me (and L-carnitine, or just carnitine?). I am not a Vegan, so I drink milk and will have eggs. I think there might be some B-12 in there.

So CCS, I can already feel myself getting smaller. Do you think that 1x per week at the gym is enough to maintain my muscles without getting smaller? Also, do you think I should cut down to 1hr/day for running? I thought that running that much lowered testosterone. So I take it that I need a small amount of fast-twitch muscles and a greater amount of slow-twitch muscles to maintain (or maybe put on a few lbs)?

 

[CCS]

Drink milk after your workouts. That solves the L-carnitine and B12 a bit, though supplimenting still is good.

Read the ingredients to your peanut butter. If you see the word hydrogenated, then it is very unhealthy. I think only the organic peanut butters are actually made with oil, and not partially hydrogenated oil (transfat). Also, peanuts calories come 10% from protein, but they are very deficient in methionine.

yes, 1 cup, which is 300 calories, has 10 grams of protein, which is 40 calories. That is 13% protein. That is the best you can do as a vegetarian. Beans and yeast are very low in methionine. Outs have 80% as much methionine as is idea for that amount of protein, compared to most other vegetarian things that are about 30-40% the methionine proportion needed. I think rice is about 85%, but it is only 3% total protein.

If you've been steadily building up to 2 hours, you should be fine. Cut back only if you it is wearing you out, or you just jumped up to it. To get bigger though, you have to do some heavy lifts. Getting bigger will hurt your distance speed, however. It is a trade off. And making your legs bigger will drastically hurt your distance speeds because you might turn some slow intermediate twitch fibers into faster ones that can't help with endurance.

Once a week is good for maintainance. But if you want to get bigger, probably 2x per week is needed.

 

[Aplunk1]

Cool! Thanks man.

f***!! I just read on the back of my peanut butter that it's got FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPSEED, COTTONSEED AND SOYBEAN) ... Now I'm feeling guilty because I'd like to avoid transfats more than ANYTHING in my diet, including meat.

 

[CCS]

Margerine is another big source of transfat. Labels may legally lie that they have zero grams of transfat as long as they make the serving size small enough that it has less than 1/2 gram of transfat in it. Every bag of chips has it in there, except maybe some organic brands. A few flavors of sun chips don't have any, but I don't trust that since all their other flavors do. I just prefer to eat whole foods rather than trust an ingredients label. I'm sure fresh pizza at a pizza parlor has none in it. It is just the frozen stuff that has it, usually.

 

[CCS]

I don't think you need more than 100grams of protein per day. I think 75-100 is ideal. You need more right after a workout when your muscles are growing, and need BCAA's before the workout. But after that, the important thing is just to get a little every 3 hours. I also think oats every 3 hours can cause gas. I'll start eating them every 5 or 6 hours instead, and have a whey/orange juice/yogart drink at the 3 hour mark so I don't mix digested food with undigested food in my stomach.

 

[Aplunk1]

They definitely cause gas, even more so when you add flax seed, wheat germ, wheat bran, and raisins. :blush:

 

[Aplunk1]

Just bought some Vitamin B-12, which gives about 16,000 DV %. Also bought some MSM and Glucosamine, for my joints, which hurt pretty bad because of all that cardio.

 

[notself]

CCS:
Can you substitute soy milk for dairy milk instead?

Also how about a fist full of mixed nuts before a workout/run?

 

[Guest]

What about tofu? I am not real vegetarian but I prefer vegetarian food over meat. tofu has a lot of protein.

 

[CCS]

CCS:
Can you substitute soy milk for dairy milk instead?

Also how about a fist full of mixed nuts before a workout/run?

soy milk and tofu are both made from soy beens, which are very low in methionine. I would not consider them a good protein source. They also lack carnitine and a few other good nutrients in milk. Even the carb/protein ratio is not ideal as is milk. Soy also has phytoestrogens that probably will not help you build muscle. There was a study where they had one group drink soy after a workout, another group drink equal calories gatorade, and another group equal calories of milk. After a month they measured muscle gain and fat loss. The milk group was a lot better than the soy group, with the gatorade group in between.

If you love your soy, take it several hours after your workout, after your body has done most of it's muscle building.

 

[easynow]

have a look on the uk http://www.menshealth.co.uk forum, there's a guy called Squelchy who is vegetarian, went from being skinny to quite stacked over 18 months. there's a thread called " I lift therefore I am " anyway he'll know his stuff about lifting and being veggie.

 

[seekinghair]

I don't think you need more than 100grams of protein per day. I think 75-100 is ideal. You need more right after a workout when your muscles are growing, and need BCAA's before the workout. But after that, the important thing is just to get a little every 3 hours. I also think oats every 3 hours can cause gas. I'll start eating them every 5 or 6 hours instead, and have a whey/orange juice/yogart drink at the 3 hour mark so I don't mix digested food with undigested food in my stomach.

So,you disagree with the commonly accepted "1gr per bodyweight pound" rule or are you talking about a non-bodybuilder diet?

 

[CCS]

Let's put it this way: my father eats 1/3 that much protein and he is building muscle. He can see it in the mirror, and he is getting stronger. No creatine or other BS supplements. I think that proves he has positive nitrogen balance. Hairy says 5 pounds per week on the bench press is fast. My father's bench strength goes up 2.5 pounds every 6 days. He is 5'10", 60 years old, about 160 pounds, and eats about 1900 calories per day.

And the muscle he is building is lean muscle. He's losing fat gradually, so no need to cut later.

 

[seekinghair]

Mmm. I see your point but I think it's doubtful. I don't think your dad carries on that much muscle (just guessing of course). So he doesn't need a high amount of protein to preserve his actual bulk of muscle. Therefore he can use most of his amino intake for cell building purposes (new cells I mean). As you increase your muscle frame so do your protein needs just for the sake of manteining your gains. Once you are at that stage if you want to continue to see some gains you probably need to increase your protein intake. Just my two cents but my intutition tells me nobody gets huge with 80-90 grams of protein per day.

 

[Harie]

For a vegetarian to get an adequate protein intake, one must drink a hell of a lot of milk and eat a hell of a lot of peanut butter & yogurt etc. Even then, you'll need to supplement with vegetarian protein powder too. Depending on your take on eggs (some vegetarians are cool with eating eggs and some are not), they're another great source of protein.

IMO men should not consume much soy protein at all since it upsets our hormone balance.

And despite what CCS says, 0.8g/lb protein is minimum if muscle building is the ultimate goal. Sure, you can build muscle with less, but your gains won't be as great, and eventually, your gains will stop because of lack of protein.

The bigger you are, the more protein you need.

 

[easynow]

:agree: Most veggie people who have gained muscle supplement it with some sort of protein powder, and the rest usually comes from stuff like oats, beans etc.

Here's that guy I was talking about as an example (he does eat dairy stuff though

http://wwwneilmctcom.blogspot.com/2007_ ... 7940164930

 

[Maxpwr]

A typical vegetarian does not eat meat products, which are only the actualy products from an animal carcass. Being just vegetarian should still leave you with options such as eggs & albumen protein supplements, dairy products & whey protein supplements, soy protein and legumes.

If you are a vegan, however, it can be almost impossible to get enough protein to aid in the increase of lean muscle mass. A vegan is often fanatical about food and the sources, so certain supplements and meal replacements are no good either, as they may be taken from animal sources.

Some vegetarians just don't like eggs because of the way they are mass produced and the cruel manner in which the birds are treated. I don't agree with it myself, so I will only buy certified free range eggs from a reliable source. I believe eggs are too valuable as a food to cut out altogether.

It depends on how fanatical you want to get over vegetarianism. I was raised in a household which was vegetarian to a point, except we still ate fish and very occasionally had chicken (so I suppose that's not veggie at all really). I love meat, but don't know how to prepare it, so I eat fish and eggs and dairy products every day to get my protein. I also have a fetish for soy dogs (vegetarian hot dogs made from soy protein) and soy mince (textured vegetable protein) and can devour them by the packet. Delicious!