Train Hard & Eat your Veggies.
Fact - Athletes train hard and need lots of protein.
Myth - Vegetarians lack protein and energy.
I am a man who loves a good football training session and love to go in the gym for a good weight lifting set. I love the feeling of putting my headphones on and getting into a beast mode in the gym; even if I am not lifting beast amounts of weights. I also love the feeling of sore muscles the 2nd day after a good lifting. Its a feeling of accomplishment and advancement.
I am also someone who loves good food. In my travels I acquired tastes for all types of ethnic foods and i sometimes feel I have a real addiction to food. Its something that probably started when I was a kid and got even worse when I married my wife.
I remember dinner parties at my house. My mom could cook any food type and knew how to season her food to please even the greatest of culinary connoisseurs. Her meals would be 5-6 courses with each one as delicate as the other. Lasagne, ornate salads, enchiladas, indian veg and curries, cakes and sweets, fried; cooked ; marinated; everything you could imagine.
The best part of all of it was It was all 100% vegetarian. It was also blessed food offered to God called Prasadam in my religion. This was very important to my family was to make sure things we enjoyed as a family was first given as an offering to God ( Krishna ) firstly before we could enjoy it. This was sometimes extremely hard if there was a pie or cake sitting on the counter waiting to cool down. I occasionally had to sneak a taste with my finger and quickly hide the evidence.
One of the most common questions I am asked is, “Where do you get your protein?”. My first response is usually, “Look at me, Im 6’3, 195 lbs and I eat whatever I want.” Im also asked if I need supplements and vitamins to sustain. Ive never needed either and only take protein powder when I have a day with extra weights or endurance.
Over the last 5 years or so my wife has also taught me a lot about diet and she's helped me greatly to perfect my diet. A very rice and beans and vegetables based diet that allows me to get all the nutrients and proteins from my meals so I don't ever have to have protein powders or anything else. I also cut back on sugars, glutens and dairy’s, things that I think most vegetarians and myself would over consume.
My diet was not always easy to maintain while living in countries like Thailand. There they have 2 types of vegetarians. One eats ONLY vegetables which is not nearly enough to fill my stomach and offer me variety. The other doesn't eat meat but will eat fish and eggs, both of which I also do not eat. So you can imagine my frustration. I would have to order in Thai with fine detail of what I could eat and what I could not. More times than not they would botch the order; either due to my poor language or because they thought my diet was weird. Once while my wife ordered a fried rice without egg; the most common thing they would add, he server told her, “No no no, it wont be good without egg”, and refused to take her order.
I never try to convert people to be vegetarian because everyone grows up and develops tastes for foods their families prepare. However I try to inform people who eat meat of the advantages of being a veggie just in case they are interested in trying it or even cutting back on meat slightly. Flexitarians its called when you eat veggie on weekends or occasionally.
When you research eating a plant based diet its amazing to see an astounding amount of athletes who follow, especially long distance runners and boxers. I sometimes think even If i was born in a family that ate meat and I did also, I would probably try to pursue a veggie diet strictly for health and medical reasons.
Heres a list of common meals I eat to give you an example of my ability to eat anything.
If your interested in recipes or meal plans please ask, my wife would gladly send all.
- Ricotta & pinto bean Enchiladas
- Gluten-free Pesto pasta with tofu and mushrooms
- Kale salad w/ walnuts strawberries
- Rice noodle soup with tofu, lettuce, tomatoes.
- Avocado pesto mozzarella sandwich.
- Stir fry vegetables with brown rice.
- From scratch Pizza w/ olives, mushrooms, goat cheese, mozzarella.
