Tri Training on a Vegetarian Diet.

shebop

I'm wondering if there are any other vegetarian athletes here who can share some advice on nutrition when training?

I've never formerly kept a diet log, however, am absolutely willing to do this. One of the main reasons I was lazy about this was that any templates I saw, all included meat/fish in them. It wasn't a case of not substituting the meats with tofu or greens, rather a basic nutritional awareness that has put me off ...

I don't eat meat/fish but do eat eggs and some dairy.

Would really love to have some advice here, or even share ideas about creating a diet plan.

Thanks.

scottreynolds

Not exactly tri related but Scott Jurek is a famous vegan ultra runner -- Here's a link I found interviewing him about diet etc --

http://soulveggie.blogs.com/my_weblog/2008/09/the-ultra-vegan.html

Is should be easy enough form what I've read as its all about the balance of carbs, fat, and protein you just need to know the best, and varied, sources of each in your diet.

shebop

Thanks so much for this Scott! It's exactly the kind of stuff I"m looking for.

And yeah, it's really hard to calculate the nutritional value of say nuts and weigh up protein AND calories! :S

scottreynolds

shebop wrote: »

Thanks so much for this Scott! It's exactly the kind of stuff I"m looking for.

And yeah, it's really hard to calculate the nutritional value of say nuts and weigh up protein AND calories! :S

trust me weighing up a takeaway (healthy) meal isn't easy either. I haven't got around to keeping a diary of food yet as I'm still losing weight and not to concerned at the moment about it. As my weight loss slows and my goal weight nears I'll be counting everything (well thats the plan)....

Mick Rice

I'm not a triathlete but have trained for ultras for the last 16 months as a vegetarian. I had reservations at first about how my decision to stop eating meat would affect me as I was doing reasonably high milage at the time (100 miles a week and a little more sometimes). As it worked out I had no real problems. I went from being a 'normal' meat eater to full 'veggie' overnight I noticed a few obvious changes. I lost a fair bit of muscle bulk straight away and dropped about a half stone in a couple of weeks. Some of this was fat but I'd guess a lot was muscle wastage. My wife tells me my ar$e dissapeared :-) When I got the hang of eating enough protien from vegie sources, (beans, lentils, nuts, cheese, eggs and meat-replacements like korn etc etc), I made some of this back but not all. I'm still a bit leaner than I used to be. At the time I was worried that it would affect race performances, but at the age of 43 I've set pb's at 5km, 10km, half-marathon and 100 miles this year so I'm happy enough. In heavy training periods I supplement to whey protien and I think that's a great help. I'd be more than happy to chat more in this thread or over PM's if you'd like as it's an issue close to my heart.

Good luck with the training.

asimonov

I recommend having a look at the Thrive Diet book written by a tri-athlete. Its main focus is vegan and a raw food diet but there is still lots of good information and recipes both from a sports nutrition and day-to-day living point of view.

Our house is not total vegetarian (we eat meat twice a week), but we've been able to use the book to make sure we are consistently eating meals that are of high nutritional value without needing to use meat replacement ingredients. Who would have know hemp has so many other uses in the kitchen?

Have a google around for the no-meat athlete blog as well, there is usually some interesting content on that.

Blueskye

I've eaten a vegan diet for just over a year now and am training for my first marathon. I find my diet is infinitely better than when I ate meat and dairy products because I have to put a bit more thought into my meals and can't just make a quick cheese sandwich for example. I eat way more veggies and fruit than previously and find it easy enough to get plenty of protein through tofu, beans and legumes and nuts/seeds/flaxseed oil for healthy fat. Although I do still have a sweet tooth! Thankfully there are vegan sweets/chocolate out there!! I lost a little weight when I changed my diet initially and have noticed improvements in my energy levels but I haven't noticed any negative changes as I think my diet is fairly well balanced. It seems to work for me.

When considering vegetarianism (although I went straight into veganism) I found this book absolutely brilliant for no-nonsense information about nutrition and easy recipes
The New Becoming Vegetarian: The Essential Guide to a Healthy Vegetarian Diet by Vesanto Melina http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570671443/ref=ox_ya_oh_product and I also have the vegan one which I think is fantastic for dipping in and out of.

A cool website I often dip into is http://veganfitness.net which has plenty of athletes from a wide range of sports who eat vegetarian and vegan diets. Plenty of recipes on there too.

I've made a couple of the Thrive diet's recipes also which are interesting but I find the ingredients are not always things I have in my cupboard.

--amadeus--

I run marathons rather than Tri's but I'm also a veggie. I will hold my hand up that my diet is pretty woeful at times but as long as you follow good nutritional practice there is no reason why it should have any impact on your training. Your main limiter is protein and swapping in bags of redskin peanuts as a nightime snack or adding lentils or chick peas to pretty much every meal and you'll be grand. Like Mick I also went through a whey protein phase but I generally don't even bother with that now.

Avg mileage would be 40 - 50 per week, with the majority at 7 - 8 min mile pace so you could figure that at 5 - 6 hours training per week.

Blueskye

A website I use often has just put up a really great page on vegan athletes of all types and info on them which may be of interest. You might like to have a look http://http://www.veganfitness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=723&start=0