Are you vegan and want to gain muscle mass? It is possible with these tips

We always associate the vegan diet with a light diet, ideal for losing weight. And for that, we can believe that being vegan and gaining muscle mass are not compatible, however, if this is possible and for that, we leave you some advice.

If you are vegan and you want to gain muscle mass you should know that this process will not be easy task, although it is not impossible to achieve, so here are some tips that can help you hypertrophy taking only a diet of vegetable origin.

Vegetable Proteins

The proteins are essential for our muscles to repair and grow nutrient, although not the only, must be present and their quality should be adequate.

Since foods of animal origin always have good quality or complete proteins in which there are no essential amino acids, it is always advised to consume whey protein or eggs, foods that have no place in a vegan diet.

However, the alternative is to use vegetable proteins of different types and combine them together to achieve a complete protein, in which there is no shortage of amino acids that our body can not produce and need to create new muscle fibers.

Thus, we must know that foods of plant origin can have high levels of some essential amino acids and low levels of others, for example, cereals have low levels of lysine and isoleucine, two amino acids that are present in legumes , therefore, combining These two ingredients can complement proteins to achieve a higher quality protein.

On the other hand, nuts and seeds can also offer vegetable proteins, but they all have low levels of amino acids that are also lacking in legumes or cereals, so even combining them with cereals or legumes does not achieve a quality protein and then, Legumes and cereals are always needed in the same meal if we are looking for complete proteins.

However, all foods of plant origin serve to add proteins and achieve an adequate supply of this nutrient, whose share to hypertrophy is between 1.3 and 1.8 grams per kilo of weight per day. ** In fact, there are many foods of vegetable origin with high proportion of proteins, such as ** soy flour , peanut , dried spirulina, tempeh, among others.

Critical nutrients

In addition to proteins, muscles need other nutrients such as hydrates, quality fats and vitamins and minerals that although we think are not lacking in a vegan diet, some of them are at risk of deficits if we do not know where to find them.

For example, calcium and vitamin D are important for muscle contraction and to prevent weakness, cramps and fatigue, as we told you earlier, but both are more present in foods of animal origin.

Therefore, we must take care of their presence in the vegan diet and know that in order to not lack vitamin D it is enough to expose us to the sun for about 15 minutes each day, while to guarantee the intake of calcium we can go to dried apricots, grapes, fruits Dried, poppy seeds and some legumes that are also source of this mineral.

On the other hand, iron is a mineral that should not be lacking in our body if we want to have energy and perform at the maximum in each training to hypertrophy, and this, we can obtain in meat to a great extent, but also, in foods of origin Vegetables such as peach apricots, quinoa, soybean meal or lentils , and we can favor their use in the body by accompanying their intake with an orange juice or citrus rich in vitamin C.

Supplements for vegans

Among the supplements most commonly used to hypertrophy are casein and whey protein, the latter has been shown to have positive effects in several studies, but is of animal origin, therefore , for vegans it is not an alternative.

Instead, we can use plant protein isolates such as soy, which has proven to be just as beneficial at the point of gaining muscle mass as whey protein.

We can also use supplements a little less frequent but also of vegetable origin, based on rice, quinoa, peas or others.

We must not forget that gaining muscle mass is not an easy task even for omnivores. Therefore, with a vegan diet, we must be especially patient and careful in choosing the ingredients so that there is no lack of quality protein, no excess or lack of calories, and They find in deficit vitamins and minerals that help to gain muscle and to take care of the health.