Biggest Nutrition Challenge Yet: My Taste Of Vegetarian

Taylor Ryan

I've made myself the subject of an experiment. If you've been around the Art of Weight Lifting long enough then you probably have come to realize that I am not just about the facts that I read.

It is one thing for me to be able to tell my clients what I've read and studied over the years but that simply isn't enough. I try to do my best to put myself in situations so that I can gain a more personal understanding of things.

And that is what brings me to my current "test". I've read over and over all the different sides of vegetarianism. Some reports say it's silly and that we need animal protein others say it's the healthiest way to live. So I am finding out personally what each lifestyle feels like.

For the next month I have challenged myself to live a vegetarian lifestyle. All of my vegetarian friends and clients swear by it, and everyone else just rolls their eyes at me. But I say, it's just for a month... what do I have to lose? I will definitely gain a better understanding.

A few things I am making sure: I am not going to live on a pasta diet... in fact, I am going to try to not eat pasta at all. This isn't hard for me since I eat pasta maybe 6 times a year.

I have to make sure I get enough calories. I often use eggs, whey protein, yogurt, etc for my daily calories. Now that those are out it's harder to get sufficient calories when eating a vegetable/fruit/legume/nut based diet.

For example last night, my meal was very filling. It was a mix of grilled asparagus, mushrooms, and tofu... however when I added up the numbers this meal didn't even equal 200 calories. So I made sure to grab some of my chickpea salad I had made earlier in the day.

It's hard to eat enough when these high quality foods are low calorie.

Also, I have to make sure Dan doesn't suffer. It's not fair to Dan if I forced him to eat vegan... so I am precooking my meals. I already made 3 dishes, then I divided them into serving sizes and froze them. That way for my dinners I just have to thaw and microwave but I can still cook Dan's.

In the end I only have to cook 1 meal each night still.

So what are my vegan meals? So far I have been eating oatmeal based breakfasts. This morning was an oatmeal bake with pumpkin, spices, flaxmeal and coconut milk.... it was delish!

For lunch, it's been spinach salads with chickpeas, and tons of veggies.... or veggie burgers.

Dinners are the same as lunch for the most part.

What is it I want to gain from this? ? I really want to see how my body responds to the whole thing. I have had some people tell me that because I am an "O" blood type that I shouldn't eat vegan.

I want to see if my body composition changes, I want to find out how my energy levels are, etc. My biggest interest is to see if I can keep my muscle (or increase it) with less amount of protein in my diet... let's not forget just last week I was eating up to 120 grams of protein/day... now I am down to around 60 grams of plant based protein.

So far I feel great! My energy is up, my sleep is great, workouts are great and I can definitely tell a difference from all the fiber I am getting (if you know what I mean).

Tonight... it's black bean burgers on the menu! Something I never get to make because Dan doesn't like black beans! Now I have manipulated the system to make it happen.