All my (vegan) fitness advice - Part 2: Diet, supplements, and optimization
Creatine!
Summary
Get enough sleep and eat healthy.
Make sure you don’t have any vitamin deficiencies. Maybe take a blood test.
There are only four real gym supplements: caffeine, protein powder, creatine, and beta alanine.
If you’re okay with a little bloating and no other downsides, you really should take creatine.
Make sure to take a B12 and Omega-3 supplement. Too many vegans ignore Omega-3s specifically.
Getting enough protein is important and is slightly harder on a vegan diet. It’s difficult in general and takes planning. Aim for 0.8-1.1 g of protein per pound of body weight every day (or 0.9-1.3 g per pound per day if you’re eating at a calorie deficit to lose weight). Make sure you get at least one scoop of vegan protein powder every day to get all necessary amino acids. In general, add about ~5% to any protein recommendations you read for omnivores, because plant protein is slightly less bioavailable.
Eating for the gym can often feel like a chore.
The only two things that seem to work for losing weight are CICO (calories in, calories out) and semaglutides.
Don’t risk developing an eating disorder. Be kind to yourself and if you think you’re risking disordered eating, stop what you’re doing and make a plan to avoid it. It’s never worth it.
Processed food is fine.
Don’t do steroids.
Soy doesn’t raise your estrogen levels.
Optimizing your supplement and gym routine can save full days of your life in the time you get back.
Contents
Diet and supplements
A note on protein recommendations
Many sources of vegan protein are unfortunately slightly less bioavailable than animal protein. This means that vegans need to eat a little more protein every day to hit their goals. All protein ranges I give as recommendations are specifically for vegans. I say this below too, but vegans need to make sure to get plenty of the amino acid leucine which is often low in their diets and essential for building muscle. You can get this by having a scoop of vegan protein powder every day day.
Lingo
Maintenance calories: The amount of calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight, without gaining or losing weight.
Bulking: When you eat 10–20% above your maintenance calories for a few months. Bulking causes your body gain muscle as fast as it physically can. You end up gaining a little fat as well, which you aim to lose during a cutting period. During a bulk, make sure to eat 0.8–1.1 g of protein per pound of body mass.
Cutting: Eating 10–15% below your maintenance calories for a few months. New lifters can expect to still get stronger during a cut. More advanced lifters will often stall their muscle progress but maintain their muscles during a cut as they lose fat. It’s very important to get much more protein during a cut to maintain muscle, aim for 0.9–1.3 grams per pound of body weight.
Body recomposition: Eating at your maintenance calories but at high protein while you’re doing a weight routine to slowly change the composition of your body to decrease the percentage of fat and increase the percentage of muscle. This works best for new lifters. You don’t gain muscle as fast as a bulk but it can be a nice way of getting more trim while still making some muscle progress. Recomposition gets harder for more advanced lifters who mostly have to just stick to cycles of bulking and cutting. Here’s a good explainer of body recomposition. Aim for 0.9-1.3 g of protein per pound of body weight during recomp.
CICO: “Calories in, calories out.” A weight loss approach where you try to burn more calories each day than you consume.
Macros: Short for macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Hitting your macros means first locking in your daily protein target, then splitting the remaining calories between carbs (primary training fuel) and fats (hormone support, joint health). A typical lifter macro split looks something like:
Bulk: 30% protein / 50% carbs / 20% fat
Cut: 35–40% protein / 40–45% carbs / 20–25% fat
Pre-workout: A blend mixed with water taken 20–40 min before training to boost focus, energy, and power. I think it’s mostly not useful if you’re getting other supplements (explained below).
Gear or juice: Steroids (don’t do them!)
Natural/natty: A lifter who doesn’t use steroids. #StayNatty
Food
Macros, bulking, cutting, recomp, and protein
How do I determine my maintenance calories?
This is hard and imprecise. Here’s one way you can do it:
Track how many calories you eat for 1 week. Compare your weight before and after. You have to eat about 3500 calories to gain one pound, so multiply the weight you gained or lost in pounds by 3500. That tells you how far you are from your maintenance calories. Compare how many calories you ate that week to how far you are from your maintenance calories.
Example: I eat 15750 calories in a week. At the end, I find I’ve lost half a pound. This means that I ate ~0.5 lbs*3500 cal/lb = 1750 calories under my maintanence calories, so my maintanence calories are probably 15750 + 1750 = 17500 calories per week, or 2500 calories per day.
When should I bulk? When should I cut?
You can buy a smart scale for $20 on Amazon that sends tiny electrical signals through your body to give you a rough guess of your body fat percentage. Bulk as long as your body fat percentage is below 18% if you’re a man or 28% if you’re a woman. Cut otherwise. Also cut if you expect to want to show off your muscles in a few months.
Remember, during a bulk make sure to eat 0.8–1.1 g of protein per pound of body mass. During a cut, make sure to eat 0.9-1.3 g of protein per pound of body mass.
When should I do body recomposition?
It’s relatively easy to see results from body recomposition in the first 6 months or so of lifting, so that’s the best time to try. Bulking and cutting are probably optimal for muscle growth, but body recomposition is easier, and you’re in the easiest time to try it, so if it’s more fun and motivating, feel free to just do a recomp! Remember that during a recomp you should eat 0.9-1.3 g of protein per pound of body mass.
Do I have to calorie count everything and use kitchen scales to measure everything I eat? That sounds exhausting
No. I think that for a lot of people it makes more sense to just find groups of foods that have roughly the macros you’re looking for, a high protein per calorie ratio, and just eat until you’re a little more full than usual during a bulk, or a little less full than usual during a cut. Track your weight for a week and see if you’re making the progress that you want, and if not, adjust, and maybe measure things more then. I’ve had a lot of success with bulking and cutting without actually adding up all the specific meals I eat.
Of course, we live in the future now. You can just log everything you eat using chatbots and they can give you estimates of all your macros for the day.
For weight loss, CICO (or semaglutides) is the only way
CICO (calories in, calories out) means just watching your net calorie intake. The only thing that has ever worked for me with weight loss is consuming fewer calories than I burn. I have to basically get used to being just a little (not too!) hungry throughout the day.
Cardio health is really really really important, but cardio isn’t useful for weight loss. It doesn’t actually use up calories and if you’re not watching your diet you’ll be tempted to just eat the calories you burned and balance out your effort.
Of course, we now have semaglutides (Ozempic and other products). These cost a lot, but so does the stress of dieting. If you want to lose a significant amount of weight and think semaglutides would help you, they seem worth experimenting with. You should put a dollar value on the stress and discomfort dieting causes you. If you’d pay to remove that stress and still get the benefits of dieting, compare what you’d pay to the cost of semaglutides. It might or might not turn out to be worth it.
Some people suggest that building muscle is also a good weight loss strategy because muscle burns more calories than fat. Once you gain a lot of muscle, it uses more calories to maintain, so you can eat more without gaining weight. This might be a good way of staying trim, but it takes a very long time to gain that amount of muscle. For shorter term weight loss, CICO is the only way.
Avoid disordered eating at all costs
I’m very lucky with my mental health in general and have never experienced an eating disorder. If you start tracking your calories and macros and mention that to friends, you learn just how many people have struggled with disordered eating. They’ll express understandable concern.
Fitness is above all about being healthy. Eating disorders are not healthy. If you think you’re at risk of developing an eating disorder, drop anything that might be causing that. It’s very easy to make gym progress even if you’re not perfectly optimizing your calories or whatever. While I think optimization is important, this rule only works if optimizing your food and exercise isn’t causing you any distress or health problems. If it is, drop it. Making 5% less progress each week is easily preferable to feeling bad all the time. This should all feel fun and interesting. If it doesn’t, go easy on yourself.
Getting enough protein is hard and really really important
It is easy to underestimate just how much protein you need to make the most progress in the gym. If you’re not eating enough protein, you’re wasting a lot of time in the gym because your body isn’t building muscle nearly as fast as it could, or at all. Muscle growth that could take you just one month could take two or three or four or not happen. Every week that you don’t hit some new threshold you could have hit with more protein intake is basically wasted time.
Vegans often say it’s “easy” to get enough protein on a vegan diet. That’s only really true in the sense that it’s hard to develop a protein deficiency, where your health is seriously impacted by how little protein you eat. That’s true, but not relevant at all for lifters. There’s a huge gulf between how much protein you need to avoid a deficiency (0.35 g per pound of body weight) and how much you need to build significant muscle (0.8-1.1 g per pound of body weight bulking, 0.9-1.3 cutting). It is in fact somewhat harder to get this amount on a vegan diet. You need to be more intentional with your eating and be willing to eat more boring or optimized meals.
Healthy fats and carbs are also really important
Make sure to get plenty of good fats and fiber. Good digestion helps with your protein intake and is good for lots of other health effects. Don’t just max out on protein.
An easy hack to get a ton of fiber is to put Lao Gan Ma chili crisp on steamed broccoli. It makes it taste so visceral and good. A perfect simple meal. You should aim to eat a lot of green vegetables and fruit in general.
In finding what to eat, protein per calorie is usually more useful than just total protein
You have a limited number of calories you can eat in a day to hit your bulking or cutting goals. Foods annoyingly never directly report their protein per calorie ratios, but this ratio is usually really useful in determining what to eat. Speaking of…
High protein foods I eat
I’ve sorted these by protein per calorie, is more useful for understanding where this food fits your goals than just total protein per serving.
Protein powder
g protein/calorie: 0.20 (varies)
Favorite brand: Sunwarrior
Eat at least one scoop a day. Vegan diets are often low in some essential amino acids for building muscle, especially leucine. There’s plenty of these in vegan protein powders, so getting a scoop protein powder each day is essential for vegan muscle building.
TVP chunks
g protein/calorie: 0.14
Favorite brand: Bob’s Red Mill
Texture like ground beef and can be mixed into a lot of different foods, soups, etc.
Edamame & Mung Bean Fettuccine
g protein/calorie: 0.13
Favorite brand: Explore Cuisine (only one that makes it)
Amazing texture and decent taste. Protein content is crazy high. Very versatile and can mix into most meals.
Pre-packaged protein shakes
g protein/calorie: 0.12
Favorite brand: Owyn
Good to mindlessly consume between meals.
Impossible Lite Ground Beef
g protein/calorie: 0.12
This is so tasty and versatile for how much protein per calorie it has.
Flavored Dry Roasted Edamame
g protein/calorie: 0.11
Favorite brand: Seaport Farms
Get the wasabi flavor (hat tip to James).
High protein/extra firm tofu
g protein/calorie: 0.11
Favorite brand: Wildwood
Has the texture of mozzarella cheese and basically zero flavor. You need to get creative with it.
Andy’s Ultimate Protein Soy Slop
g protein/calorie: ~0.11
This is my most recent go-to “I need a lot of protein, fast” meal. It’s a protein shake with a block of extra firm tofu mixed in.
Ingredients
A block of extra firm tofu block, pressed
Zero sugar soy milk
Cacao powder
A few scoops of flavored vegan protein powder
My favorite is Sun Warrior chocolate, mocha, and maple french toast
Bananas
Frozen spinach (its flavor is masked by all the other stuff)
Powdered peanut butter
Flaxseed meal
Hemp hearts
All thrown into a powerful blender (I use a Vitamix). You can play with the ingredients until you find proportions that work for you. My guess is that this has roughly 1200 calories, 130g of protein, 80g carbs, 20g fiber, and 50g of fat. To be clear, it’s not ideal to consume this much protein in one meal, since there’s a limit to how much protein your body can
Soy curls
g protein/calorie: 0.09
Favorite brand: Butler Foods
Texture of chicken and absorbs any flavor you cook them in. Very high fiber too.
Protein chips
g protein/calorie: 0.08
Favorite brand: Pure Protein Popped Crisps
Soy milk
g protein/calorie: 0.07
Favorite brand: Silk
It seems like soy milk was eclipsed by other milk replacements, which is a shame because in my opinion it tastes better, has a better consistency, and has more protein than most other milk alternatives.
Steel cut oatmeal
g protein/calorie: 0.03
Favorite brand: McCann’s
Higher protein/general nutrition than other oatmeal, good on its own and in smoothies.
Isn’t globalization magic?
There was a time not too long ago where you couldn’t just hop online and order the absolute highest protein vegan snacks from all around the world, or ask o3 to make you lists of new high protein vegan snacks to try. You need to mutter “I’m living in utopia” at least once a day to stay alert to how many crazy opportunities you have all the time to make your life better.
Making your own protein shakes is a game changer
If you drop money on a good blender and take some time to get a sense for the ingredients you like, having one homemade protein shake each day can be a huge game changer for your protein intake. The smoothie I make is just the protein slop without the extra block of tofu:
Zero sugar soy milk
Cacao powder
A few scoops of flavored vegan protein powder
My favorite is Sun Warrior chocolate, mocha, and maple french toast
Bananas
Frozen spinach (its flavor is masked by all the other stuff)
Powdered peanut butter
Flaxseed meal
Hemp hearts
Consider also Holden Karnofsky’s power smoothie (replace the animal products though).
Be careful with your gut biome and avoid consuming too much artificial sweetener
A lot of stuff you might consume for the gym has artificial sweeteners. These are okay, but too much can really mess up your gut biome. Developing IBS can be severely impairing and unpleasant, to the point that you might not want to work out at all. Excessive artificial sweeteners are therefore another risk to your gains.
Processed food is your friend
The health harms of processed food are often way overstated. Read this book. You should pay attention to the overall nutrients and macros of the food you’re eating, not whether it’s processed or not. The risks of processed food (like high sodium) are usually just bad nutrients and macros that you can just read on the side of whatever you’re consuming. If it doesn’t have stuff that’s bad for you, go ahead and eat it.
Eating for the gym can often feel like a chore
During a bulking phase when you eat at a calorie surplus, it’s very easy to get sick of food. You have to consume a lot every day and if you’re relying on the same protein powder and other protein powders, it can get very monotonous. Be prepared for this monotony. Break it up if you’d like by getting creative with your macros.
Will too much soy raise my estrogen as a male?
Soy contains phytoestrogens (estrogen-like compounds found in plants) and many people worry that this means eating too much soy will increase your estrogen levels. I basically can’t find any convincing evidence that this is true, and a lot of compelling evidence that it’s false. This meta survey finds no relationship between soy intake and increased estrogen. In many cases, phytoestrogens can actually block stronger natural estrogens from binding, so they sometimes act as weak anti-estrogens rather than boosting estrogen levels.
If you don’t believe me and would like to eat high protein vegan foods with zero soy, there are still plenty of vegan protein options to choose from. Admittedly avoiding soy as a vegan is another dietary challenge that restricts your choices and makes things a little harder.
High estrogen can be extremely bad for people who identify as male. If you’re male, it’s a completely valid concern to want to keep your estrogen levels low. Vegan advocates should be very careful not to dismiss this concern. It’s not sexist or problematic to want to avoid higher estrogen levels, and if you imply otherwise you’re doing harm to both the image of veganism and people’s everyday understanding of health.
Supplements
There are only four real gym supplements. Basically all other gym supplements are fake.
Caffeine
For energy. Drink coffee or an energy drink before you go to the gym if you’re going in the morning.
High quality sleep is really important for building muscle. Don’t overdo it with caffeine.
Protein powder
For protein. If you’re vegan protein powder is especially important because it helps you get large amounts of amino acids it might be hard to get enough of elsewhere in your diet.
My favorite vegan protein powder is Sun Warrior1. There is no vegan protein powder that tastes as good as whey. They used to make a vegan real whey protein powder made using bacteria instead of cows. It was so tasty. I could mix it in soy milk and actively want to keep drinking it. They cancelled it because the market for that was basically just me.
Creatine
Causes you to muscle faster given consistent workouts and adequate protein intake.
Creatine is one of the most studied supplements. It’s completely safe and the worst side effect is it can make you feel bloated if you take too much. It’s flavorless and can be mixed into a glass of water. There’s a rumor that creatine causes balding, but from what I can tell that’s from a single study in 2009 with eight football players that hasn’t replicated. There’s another rumor that creatine boosts people’s mental abilities a bit, but from what I can tell this is mostly fake news and doesn’t replicate.
If you’re vegan and not supplementing creatine, you’re at a big disadvantage to omnivores. They get creatine in their diets from animal products, but it doesn’t really show up in plant-based foods, so supplementing is the only way to get those benefits.
Don’t buy fancy creatine that advertises itself as having special extra benefits. You just need cheap creatine monohydrate. If you want to splurge on it you can buy flavored creatine that tastes good when mixed with water (I use this one).
Beta alanine
Reduces muscle soreness during workouts and recovery.
What about pre-workout?
“Pre-workout” is just a mix of caffeine, creatine, beta alanine, and a bunch of fake supplements like branch chain amino acids (there’s not enough of these in the powder to actually make a difference). Pre-workout can be a convenient way of getting the few good supplements, and energy right before the gym. Just be aware that you’re paying a premium for having them in a single flavored powder with a bunch of fake add-ons. I prefer to take the supplements separately instead.
General dietary supplements
B12: The one supplement vegans definitely 100% need to take. You can get it from other stuff (like energy drinks) but I think it’s just so important to be 100% sure I’m getting enough that I take a separate pill. Here are the ways a B12 deficiency makes your life suck, let this be an encouragement to take your pill: Feeling very tired or weak. Experiencing nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Having a sore mouth or tongue. Having yellowish skin. Numbness or tingling in your hands and feet. Vision problems. Having a hard time remembering things or getting confused easily. Having a difficult time walking or speaking like you usually do. Feeling depressed. Feeling irritable.
Omega-3: Probably the most important supplement that many vegans neglect. It’s pretty hard to get enough omega-3s on a vegan diet, and they’re really important. This is the main dietary deficiency I worry might be harming a lot of vegans.
Everything else will kind of depend on deficiencies in your diet in other places. I have a pretty balanced diet and I’m getting good amounts of stuff like zinc and magnesium and iron.
Consider a blood test
Many health insurers cover yearly blood tests, you might end up paying $10-40. You can get a great idea of any vitamin deficiencies and hormone levels. This can be a good way of catching deficiencies instead of just waiting for the bad effects to pop up.
Don’t do steroids
I think a lot of people underestimate how many people are doing steroids. A botec suggests that 1 in every 12 guys you see in the gym are currently taking steroids.
The problem with steroids is only that they’re bad for your health, it’s not that they’re “cheating.” I support any and all healthy body modifications you want to do. Ozempic is a clear example of something that many people consider “cheating” that I think is 100% fine and should be normalized. The goal of exercise is to get to your preferred level of fitness and body size and shape as fast as possible, no matter what that is. This gives you maximum freedom. It’s not about demonstrating that you’re owed some level of fitness by working hard. The world is just atoms and void, there are no fundamental units of deservingness. I look forward to future tech that will allow us to get everything we want out of the gym faster and better with no downsides. If they invented a pill that let you get all the benefits of the gym without going, I’d throw out this whole guide and replace it with “just take the pill bro.” Steroids aren’t that. They have downsides, in my opinion too many to justify.
Here’s a list of symptoms of the side effects of steroids: High blood pressure, blood clots, heart issues, including heart attack, stroke, liver damage, severe acne and cysts, male-pattern baldness, aggression, mania, delusions, major depressive disorder, decreased sperm production, enlarged breasts (in males), decrease in testicle size, increased risk of testicular cancer. They also probably permanently reduce your intelligence. They seem to make your theory of mind worse too, but maybe that’s just testosterone in general.
Jeff Nippard has a good video overview of the steroid epidemic.
The reason steroids are popular is that they do really work for building muscle. A famous 1996 study showed that people who took steroids without going to the gym actually grew more muscle than people who went to the gym without taking steroids. It produced this famous graph, which I’ve annotated on the right to make what’s happening clear.
The steroid epidemic isn’t being helped by a lot male actors taking them for more roles. You can browse /r/NattyOrNot to see people identifying lifters, actors, and other famous people who are on steroids based on some common telltale signs.
Optimizing is important
You’re going to the gym for the end result, not the experience of being in the gym itself. If you can get to the end result faster using reasonable simple changes, failing to make those changes means you’re effectively wasting time in the gym. If you could have achieved a goal months faster and didn’t, all that extra time you spend getting to it is basically wasted.
Optimizing your routine, even with what seem like relatively small changes, can have crazy compounding effects.
For example, the supplement creatine seems to boost gym performance and muscle gain by about 5-10%. It takes a few seconds a day to consume (you can take it as a pill or just with water) and it has no adverse effects, besides a little bloating. A lot of people get bored or lazy and don’t take it or don’t stay consistent, so they don’t get the full optimized effects.
Let’s say you’re doing to the gym 6 days per week for 45 minutes each session. You do this for 1 year. That’s 234 hours in the gym in one year, or almost 10 full days of your life.
This means that with creatine’s 10% boost, after a year of going to the gym where you spent a cumulative 10 full days of your life lifting weights, you would make as much progress as you would lifting for 11 full days without creatine. Creatine saved you a full day of your life (or a full month and a half of going to the gym consistently almost every day).
By trading a few moments each day to take a pill or tasteless powder, you receive an entire extra 24 hour day of your life each year.
The other big ways you can optimize your gym routine are:
Use perfect form.
Get enough protein. It’s hard to overstate how important this is for progress, and how difficult it can sometimes be. You need to aim for 0.8-1.1 g protein while bulking, and 0.9-1.3 g while cutting. If you fail to get this, you’ll make significantly less gym progress that will compound over time.
Do a good routine designed by someone who’s thought about this a lot. Don’t just do random lifts that feel good.
Get plenty of good sleep.
Push yourself close to your limit for each set without sacrificing form.
I long for a single vegan fitness supplement company that’s vocally proud to use GMOs. Until then this is what we got.
“They used to make a vegan real whey protein powder made from bacteria instead of cows. It was so tasty. . . . They cancelled it because the market for that was basically just me.”
This is a huge issue with animal product substitutes that I’ve noticed since becoming (sort of) vegan. There was a product called “Bored Cow” that was basically synthetic cow’s milk. It didn’t taste as good as real cow’s milk, but was indistinguishable when used as an ingredient in other things (coffee, smoothies, baking, etc.). I loved it. Pretty sure it’s off the market now because I guess I was the only one.
It’s really dispiriting. Synthetic animal products have long been my hold-out hope for veganism actually making some real growth. But it seems like I better hope that demand for the best synthetics will be astronomically higher than it is for these pretty good synthetics - or I’ll need to rethink my theory of change.
Nice touch putting the links at the top. Classy