10 Steps To Mastering A Plant Based Diet
It’s a common question. Can we get by eating plants as a
sole source of fuel?
As we swim and thrash through ocean chop, hammer bike cranks
for hours on end, repeatedly pound on pavement, and hoist weights at the gym,
do we actually need the animal-based foods to maintain and restore our precious
nutrients – or can we get all our performance and recovery needs from plants
alone?
But the purpose of this article is not to argue for or
against a plant-based diet, but to instead to give you 10 ways to master a plant-based diet in a way that ensures
you ensure that you avoid body and brain damage, especially if you want to
combine a plant-based diet with high amounts of physical activity.
After all – it can be incredibly simple to eat a plant-based
diet in a manner that leaves gaping nutritional holes, such as not eating a
wide variety of colors in whole plant food, not eating enough calories, and not
supplementing with vitamins, fatty acids, amino acids, minerals or
micronutrients that are notoriously missing from a plant-based diet.
Technically, on a plant-based diet, you can also gorge on soy
ice cream, licorice, Twinkies, Taco Bell salads, and Domino’s Pizza all day
long and call yourself a vegetarian. You can stuff your face with
chemical-laden, processed meals like fast food french fries, potato chips, and
“fake meat” products like veggie sausages, bacon & burgers all day long,
and still technically call
yourself a vegan.
So here are my top 10 strategies you need to include if you
decide to go plant-based:
- Eat
real food. Avoid plant-based Frankenfoods such as fake meats,
textured vegetable proteins and processed soy products. Soy is a biggie. Soy
contains digestive irritants and digestive enzyme inhibitors such as
lectins, phytates and protease inhibitors. Granted, most of these
compounds can be rendered relatively harmless through fermenting soy and
consuming it in forms such as miso, natto and tempeh – but you should
avoid popular unfermented, processed foods such as soy milk and tofu. Soy
also contains high levels of goitrogens, which are compounds that inhibit
the thyroid’s ability to utilize iodine correctly. This
could lead to hypothyroid problems if you have a high soy consumption.
Finally, soy contains plant estrogens in the form of isoflavones which can
raise your estrogen levels and lower your testosterone levels. So women
with estrogen dominance or men and women with testosterone deficiencies
shouldn’t be including soy in their diet.
- Avoid
high intake of inflammatory omega-6 vegetable oils such as soybean oil,
corn oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, or margarine. Instead,
use coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil or macadamia nut oil. At the
same time, increase omega-3 fatty acid intake from readily absorbable algae-based
DHA supplements such as spirulina and chlorella and get some
omega-3 based ALA from things like ground chia seeds, hemp seeds, or
flax seeds.
- Supplement
with vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is critical for a healthy heart and
skeletal system and is notoriously deficient in a plant-based diet. I
highly recommend a vitamin K2 supplement, consumed at about 100mcg per
day, along with generous amounts of natto (which incidentally goes well
with avocado, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil for a nice breakfast).
Natto is very easy to make once you get a starter batch from your local
Asian grocery store.
- Supplement
with Vitamin D3. If you want to keep your bones and teeth strong, and
give yourself adequate hormone and steroid precursors, I recommend about 35IU
of Vitamin D3 per pound of body weight. This could be tough if you’re a
strict vegan, because most supplemental vitamin D3 is derived from wool,
and most vegan versions contain vitamin D2, which is a
far less potent form. Garden of Life Vitamin D3 is one of the few vegan
D3 brands out there. If you’re eating this much Vitamin D3 you must avoid
toxicity by ensuring you balance the Vitamin D with intake of both Vitamin
K and Vitamin A. Otherwise, it can do more damage than good.
- Get
Vitamin A. Vitamin A is crucial for healthy bone tissue, vision
and hormones, but plants only contain beta-carotene, which your body converts
into vitamin A, but at a very inefficient rate. You need to focus on
enhancing this absorption as much as possible by eating beta-carotene rich
foods with fatty meals (i.e. have your beta-carotene rich foods with olive
oil or avocado), and getting adequate iron and zinc, which help you
convert beta-carotene into Vitamin A. Cooking beta-carotene rich foods
also helps to increase absorption. Beta-carotene can be found in
concentrated amounts in a variety of foods including sweet potatoes,
carrots, kale, spinach, turnip greens, winter squash, collard greens,
cilantro, fresh thyme, cantaloupe, romaine lettuce and broccoli.
- Properly
prepare grains, legumes, or nuts. As you learned in point #1,
fermentation can render soy more digestible. Similarly, you can neutralize
many of the anti-nutrients and mineral binding compounds in grains,
legumes and nuts by learning how to properly soak and (if desired) sprout
and ferment them. Here is a useful soak time chart for most grains, legumes
and nuts. The bigger the legume, nut or grain, the longer soak time it
typically needs.
- Maximize
iron absorption. Non-heme iron is the form found in plant foods,
and it’s less bioavailable than the heme iron in meat. But you can
increase iron absorption from plant-based foods when you consume them in
the presence of Vitamin C (similar to consuming beta-carotene rich foods
with oily foods). Combining foods such as swiss chard, spinach, beet
greens, lentils, beans, and quinoa with foods high in Vitamin C like
tomatoes, bell peppers, lemon juice, strawberries, oranges, papaya, kiwis,
pineapple, or grapefruit. You should also moderate tea or coffee
consumption, since these both reduce iron absorption.
- Use
iodine. Plant-based diets are notoriously iodine deficient. Sea
vegetables such as nori, kelp and dulse are the best natural, plant-based
sources of iodine. At the website Main Coast Sea Vegetables, you can find many iodine
sources that you can easily read about or order. Also consider taking
supplemental iodine in a form that is readily used by your thyroid, such
as a daily dose of liquid
nascent iodine, at about 6mg per day.
- Take
vitamin B12. Nearly every study conducted on vegans show much higher rates of
B12 deficiency than omnivores, with elevated homocysteine as a
result (homocysteine increases blood clotting and raises your risk of
heart disease). So I recommend that if you’re eating a plant-based diet,
you consume a highly absorbable liposomal Vitamin B12, at about 10mcg per day.
- Supplement
with taurine. Taurine is an amino acid found only in animal
foods, and it is crucial for brain development, healthy blood pressure,
blood glucose stability, fighting free radicals and protecting your vision.
Your body can make it’s own taurine from a combination of other amino
acids, but as you
can read in this study, this can be very hard for vegan athletes
to pull off in adequate volume. There are vegan taurine sources out
there such as NOW Foods Vegan Taurine Powder (a much healthier
alternative to Red Bull), and I recommend using 1 gram per day.
My personal diet
includes many, many plants – topped with a high amount of natural fats such as
avocadoes, olives, olive oil, nuts and seeds. While I also eat animal-based
foods, I would instantly implement every step above were I to ever switch to a
plant-based diet and want to ensure my body recovered as quickly as possible
and was ideally optimized for workout. If you have questions, comments or
feedback, I’ll be happy to reply!
Author Ben
Greenfield is currently writing a book about how to be healthy on the outside
and healthy on the inside. You can learn more at BeyondTrainingBook.com.
Who is Ben Greenfield?
Ben
Greenfield is a coach, author, speaker, ex-bodybuilder and Ironman triathlete.
His science-based approach to discovering a potent balance between health and
performance has revolutionized the way thousands of athletes and exercise
enthusiasts around the world live, train and eat. Ben now works with athletes,
CEO’s and soccer moms from around the world to achieve amazing feats of physical
endurance without destroying their body in the process.
In
2008, Ben was voted by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as
the America’s top personal trainer. He holds a Master’s degree in exercise
physiology and biomechanics from University of Idaho, and is also a certified
sports nutritionist (C-ISSN) and strength and conditioning coach (CSCS). He has
over a decade of experience training professional, collegiate and recreational
athletes from all sports how to be healthy on the inside and healthy on the
outside – and also coaches people of all ages and from all backgrounds for
performance, fat loss, nutrition, lifestyle management and wellness.
In
addition to being the head coach and nutritionist for Pacific Elite Fitness and
the Rock Star Triathlete Academy, Ben is a consultant for WellnessFX, host of
the Get-Fit Guy and BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcasts on iTunes, author of over
a dozen programs and books for optimizing health and performance, and owner of
EndurancePlanet.com, the world’s top endurance sports entertainment website.
Ben also trains and mentors physicians, personal trainers and physical
therapists from around the globe via his mastermind Superhuman Coach Network at
SuperhumanCoach.com.
If
you’d like to learn more about Ben visit this page. He consults virtually
and in-person with people from all over the world via
his office in Spokane, Washington, where he lives with his wife and twin boys,
and now travels around the world competing in triathlons and teaching advanced
human performance and nutrition concepts.
Read more: http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/start-here/#ixzz2nf284B6m
