No vegans on this forum?

[VictorN]

Susan, your story sounds convincing. You probably did all you could; too bad it didn't work out for you.

Guys, I agree there are more than one road to health. I would put it this way - some people can get away with eating animal products and drinking oils . Good example is my mom; she's 88, not taking any medications (despite a long history of high blood pressure!), walks outside every day, read a lot and uses a computer (to email me). She never exercised (except some breathing exercises), she's still overweight and she still eats crappy kind of meat (for example, conventionally raised chicken legs). I wouldn't even believe it if somebody told me such a story. I once tried to convince her to give up meat but she wouldn't listen. And why should she? After all, it's she who's healthy 88, not me .

Viktor

[circular]

Some here will know that I get significant jollies out if paradox. While you and maybe some others feel that some 'get away with meat and fats', some others would say you may 'get away with legumes and grains. The problem I see with a false divide like that is that it's not strongly centered in the notion of personalized medicine in complexly different and changing environments, something I still see as the medicine of the future that we're only beginning to look into from its cusp. My vegan story is along the lines of Susan's.

[Tincup]

Some here will know that I get significant jollies out if paradox. While you and maybe some others feel that some 'get away with meat and fats', some others would say you may 'get away with legumes and grains. The problem I see with a false divide like that is that it's not strongly centered in the notion of personalized medicine in complexly different and changing environments, something I still see as the medicine of the future that we're only beginning to look into from its cusp. My vegan story is along the lines of Susan's.

I concur that personalized medicine is very important. My doctor friends tell tell me the reason to dissect cadavers is to learn that every person doesn't have a textbook body.

For me decades of being a vegan brought me IR, even though I was very fit. Under Gundry's guidance, my inflammatory metrics are now wonderful. As TheresaB (my wife) mentioned, our diet is near vegan, but not quite.

For the other side of the story - watch this n=1 story, an interview of a fellow with a very active form of brain cancer, who put himself into remission with a no plant keto diet. http://www.thefatemperor.com/blog/2015/ ... rough-lchf Its not how he started, but his migraines gave him instant feedback as to what was working for him. He now eats the whole animal.

[apod]

I hadn't seen the G-BOMBS acronym before -- I like that. I think those foods form a solid foundation.

My current diet is near vegan. I've considered taking it all the way there, but it would be for ethical rather than health reasons. Lately, just a fraction of my meals include meat, and just a fraction of my day includes meals. This seems to be a nice compromise that maximizes energy and focus for me, while working within a certain anti-aging style framework. Although, there's a struggle here between optimizing for body composition + strength + growth + performance + diverse satisfying foods, and optimizing for longevity + autophagy with theoretical epigenetic + cardiovascular + cognitive benefits. I'm still playing with different whole foods-based fuel mixes and seeing how they feel and look under the microscope. Depending on new blood labs, I might go further in this LCHF direction, or back off a bit and include more legume + pulses toward a more "vegan-ish" moderately low-carb approach.

I've been thinking about doing a uBiome gut panel, although this seems fairly useless, expensive data at this point.

What's in your vegan supplement regimen?

[James]

There is one member here I can think of who is vegan. His user name is James and he's a 4/4. Here is a thread he posted a while back on his lipid profile:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=538

There's also a crossthread you might find interesting at longecity that James started:

http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/58 ... poprofile/

I'm glad you're here and doing well!

I'm actually still around! I don't do much posting online in general anymore, but I often read through the interesting threads here and a few other places, and drop a quick reply from time to time.

I am still following my vegan diet, almost exactly four years now, and doing very well.

[VictorN]

What's in your vegan supplement regimen?

I keep it to bare minimum: 900mg of Omega 3 every other day, Vitamin D (1000UI) every other day, B12 (250mcg) three times a week, Zink once a week.

[VictorN]

There is one member here I can think of who is vegan. His user name is James and he's a 4/4. Here is a thread he posted a while back on his lipid profile:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=538

There's also a crossthread you might find interesting at longecity that James started:

http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/58 ... poprofile/

I'm glad you're here and doing well!

I'm actually still around! I don't do much posting online in general anymore, but I often read through the interesting threads here and a few other places, and drop a quick reply from time to time.

I am still following my vegan diet, almost exactly four years now, and doing very well.

Hey James, nice to meet you!

What is your experience with maintaining strength and muscle on low calorie, no protein powder vegan diet? Mine is sober and humbling - but I'm still trying. I'm interested in all gory details.

Viktor, 3/4

[VictorN]

Before the diet:

before.jpg

After six months into the diet (now I'm 10-12 pounds lighter yet)

[James]

Hey James, nice to meet you!

What is your experience with maintaining strength and muscle on low calorie, no protein powder vegan diet? Mine is sober and humbling - but I'm still trying. I'm interested in all gory details.

Viktor, 3/4

There are so many things that go into maintaining strength and muscle mass, as I'm sure you know. I've had no problems maintaining a high food quality, adequate calories, adequate protein, and my workout intensity and volume to maintain my muscle mass or leanness.

You bring up two points. 1) low calorie, and 2) no protein powder.

1) Low calories, enough that you are in negative energy balance, will result in weight loss and probably reduced exercise capacity. I'd imagine that if food quality and protein are adequate, and that you're still strength training, that you'd lose more fat than muscle, and maybe you have (it's hard to tell from your pictures, and without objective assessment).

2) I do often consume pea protein powder, mainly because I eat a lot of fruit. When I don't eat fruit (or the accompanying protein powder) I tend to eat more starches and I usually consume more overall protein this way. Either way I end up around 13% protein (around 100 g for 3000 cal), and I'm 6'3" 180 lb ~7-8% body fat. This comes from a lot of veggies, the higher protein choices being brussels sprouts and broccoli which I cook from frozen, and from beans, tempeh, nuts and seeds, and mostly intact starches (grains and potatoes), with the occasional soy milk or tofu.

[VictorN]

There are so many things that go into maintaining strength and muscle mass, as I'm sure you know. I've had no problems maintaining a high food quality, adequate calories, adequate protein, and my workout intensity and volume to maintain my muscle mass or leanness.

You bring up two points. 1) low calorie, and 2) no protein powder.

1) Low calories, enough that you are in negative energy balance, will result in weight loss and probably reduced exercise capacity. I'd imagine that if food quality and protein are adequate, and that you're still strength training, that you'd lose more fat than muscle, and maybe you have (it's hard to tell from your pictures, and without objective assessment).

2) I do often consume pea protein powder, mainly because I eat a lot of fruit. When I don't eat fruit (or the accompanying protein powder) I tend to eat more starches and I usually consume more overall protein this way. Either way I end up around 13% protein (around 100 g for 3000 cal), and I'm 6'3" 180 lb ~7-8% body fat. This comes from a lot of veggies, the higher protein choices being brussels sprouts and broccoli which I cook from frozen, and from beans, tempeh, nuts and seeds, and mostly intact starches (grains and potatoes), with the occasional soy milk or tofu.

For the first year or so, I was losing fat faster than muscles, but for the last two years it was mostly muscle loss, since all available fat is already gone.

I don't consume protein powder because it might raise IGF-1 (even plant varieties). I also do much more cardio than before - this, too, stays in the way of gaining muscle. And yes, my calorie intake is probably in negative energy balance most of the time. It's hard to be otherwise, since I have to stuff myself silly three times a day just to maintain my body weight. It's probably great for longevity but I need to stop kidding myself - I'm never going to be big and strong again.