Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to episode 16 of the Deficient Vegans podcast. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient Vegan. Do you wanna say hi? Hi. Hi. So the last few episodes we've been talking about nutrition, we're gonna shift focus a little bit here for the next few to talk about fitness.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:13

So less boring? Well, it

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:15

depends on what your interest is. Yes, definitely. For a lot of people, fitness is more interesting than nutrition. But you know, you need nutrition to do the fitness, so you gotta take both. But yes. So we're a little over halfway through the year now. A lot of people started off the new year with a lot of fitness goals, uh, you know, new Year's resolutions, uh, things like that. But sometimes around this time of year, some of those goals have fallen off. And now going, uh, out into summer, you're thinking about maybe re. Renewing some of those goals and starting over. Or maybe even just starting now. Maybe you didn't do it at New Years and you just wanna get started now. So we're gonna talk a little bit about things that you can just kind of get into, get moving, get active, very basics. Uh, if you're, you know, not doing much at all right now, how to just get started.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02

Before you go into the Thanksgiving, Christmas slump where you do nothing, which is what I do every November and December,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07

right? We, we, we call that I,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09

habit hibernate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11

Habit hibernate. I think we call that a dirty bulk in fitness so we can get away with it. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16

Super intentional when I do too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19

So across the next couple episodes, we're gonna talk about some fitness goals, tips, tricks, and getting into how to start maybe building your own exercise program, whether that be lifting weights or a couple other options. So you don't have to be perfect to reach your goals. You just have to start doing something now, and that will eventually snowball into where you want to be. So let's just talk about how to get started. And the most basic way to get started is just getting enough steps per day, which is literally just walking around an amount per day. That is a goal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:47

Can I tell you the coolest thing I've seen on TikTok lately?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:49

Tell me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:50

Okay. There's this thing, this girl started called Cozy Cardio. Okay. Because she didn't like doing cardio. So basically every morning she bought a walking pad, right? Yeah. So every morning she lights candles and has like low mood lighting and throws on like a cozy TV show or movie. And she just gets her cute little like coffee or whatever, and then she just like slow walks on this walking pad for. Like 30 minutes to an hour.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:17

That's pretty cool. Cozy

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:18

cardio in the morning. Doesn't that sound lovely?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:19

Yeah. And you know, if that's something that motivates you to do the thing, that is definitely a good thing to do. Sounds pretty cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:25

I know I'm thinking about maybe doing it around fall for like a Gilmore Girls rewatch. I think that sounds kind of nice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:31

Yeah, we got a couple of the little kind of semi portable walking, uh, treadmills. Yeah. So we could set 'em up in front of the tv.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:38

Cozy cardio.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:39

Yeah. Sounds pretty interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:40

It's worth trying if you don't like doing cardio

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:43

For sure. Cool. Yeah. Anything, anything. Whatever it takes, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:46

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:48

So, uh, when we talk about getting steps, cozy cardio, one way to do it, but let's talk a little bit about why we even care about that. Right. And, and this extends, uh, a lot towards exercise in general, but mostly, specifically for just getting up and getting some steps in throughout the day. Some of the benefits, so a big one is that it lowers your heart disease, risk your heart. It needs to be healthy in general. More activity helps with that, and even something as simple as just walking around that throughout the day will lower your risk of things like heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:17

What about standing? Just standing. Does that help?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:21

Standing is better than sitting. Yes. Yeah, but you're, you're still not very active while you're standing. Uh, but standing will help with some of the other issues we're gonna talk about as far as excessive sitting, causing its own specific issues. Also, walking helps to improve your cardio endurance. It doesn't help quite as much as dedicated cardio or running helps. But it does help more than just sitting around not being very active. And cardio endurance will help you, uh, well with general life having to, you know, carry in the groceries or deal with kids or pets or whatever it is you had to do, it'll also help with your exercise, your cardio endurance will help with, you know, any lifting or resistance training or any biking or whatever other kind of exercise you're doing. Uh, and then also it's just, you know, good, strong heart health in general for going into later life with a stronger heart. Yeah. Also specifically excessive sitting. So sitting for a long time, 8, 10, 12 hours a day if you're working at an office like a lot of us are.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:12

Or binging Netflix. Yeah, exactly. Which some of us might on the weekend.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:17

And that might be me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:18

Yeah. So that causes an increased risk of, uh, diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Speaking of binging Netflix. I think there was a study that showed a significantly higher risk of disease in men that watched 24 hours of television a week, versus the men who only watched about 11 hours of television a week. Mm. And that was independent of everything else that was happening in their life. It was specifically focused on how much TV do you watch every week? So that's just like more excessive sitting throughout the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:48

Oh well. Might be something we need to consider as we watch West Wing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:54

We're gonna have to watch all of our shows. Cozy Cardio style, I think.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:57

Yeah, I mean, that's not a bad idea.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:59

Also, consistent active movement in general helps with your bone health. We've talked a little bit about bone health, bone strength, and a couple of the previous episodes, but being active and moving around is one of the big things to help keep your bones strong over time, which again is something you want. To make sure your bones are as strong as possible as you age, because that's gonna be something that will get weaker when you get older and you start to have issues and you can't really avoid some of that. So this is just a general theme of do as much as you can now before you get to a point where you can't do the things anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:31

Yeah, I mean, the sitting thing's hard.'cause a lot of us have desk jobs now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:36

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:36

And they do make standing desks, but like. I don't know. I have a lot of trouble focusing when I'm standing up. Yeah, I mean, do you have that trouble?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:42

Um, it's hard to get used to. I feel like if, if I do it for a while, it's, it kind of becomes more natural. But there are some things, you know, I do programming a lot, so there's some things where I just, I had to sit down and think and I, maybe I would get used to it if I did it more. But yeah, it's, it, there's definitely a mental shift.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:00

I'm the same way. Like if I'm doing something that's a little bit like a. Um,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:04

mentally tedious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:05

Yeah, like mentally tedious stuff. I'm totally fine standing, but like once I'm doing something where like, I, I also do some programming kind of stuff, but like if I'm having to write out like logic and stuff, I can't. I can't stand and do that. Yeah. Like my brain can't process the standing and the mental load, so I just have to sit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:25

Yeah. It's tricky. And we'll talk about some ways to counteract that here in a little bit in the episode. There are some ways to, to break it up even if you are sitting for work for the entire time you're working.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:34

Yeah.'cause you should take breaks too,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:36

right? Yeah. So also excessive sitting can cause your leg muscles, along with the bones to weaken over a little bit over time. So if you're sitting around, your leg muscles aren't really being used at all, you're just sitting on your butt, right? So your leg muscles weaken a little bit over time, and that doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, but it can kind of compound, especially if you're not even doing any kind of strength training or any kind of intentional exercise. And that can cause issues with your balance, which can cause you to fall more often. Oh, and falling is a big risk for injury or, uh, again, something as you age falling is something you definitely want to try to avoid at all costs. So,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:12

yeah, I saw you fall a couple years ago and it was pretty terrifying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:16

Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty young, but I fell and managed to, you know, shatter my elbow. So, which perplexed all of the doctors and

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:25

the mean streets of Chicago are kind of bumpy sometimes. You really, really need to watch where you're walking. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:31

I don't think that was a, a balance issue. That was a rolled up carpet in the middle of the sidewalk issue. But, uh, probably set, set up for

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:38

failure. Probably

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:39

still could have been avoided.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:41

He wanted me to run red lights to get him to the hospital guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:45

Well, I just lightly suggested that maybe it would be appropriate to run the red light, which you didn't end up doing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:51

I did not break laws and I got you there. Yeah. And then we waited for eight hours anyway.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:55

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:55

Don't go to hospitals in Chicago.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:57

Yeah, they did a great job once they started though. So not, that's not really a slight against the staff. It was just a very long wait. There were

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:06

so many people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:07

Yeah, it was, oh my God,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:09

it was a

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:09

very busy hospital.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:10

It was a whole crazy situation.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:12

Yeah. We would've been better off driving out of town. Yeah. Although I don't know if the care would've been as good, so either way, my arm works now, so everything worked out pretty good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:20

And he didn't cry at all, which was like. Incredible actually.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:26

Yeah. Oh, you know,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:27

he stood up and I was like, Ooh, I don't think your arm used to look like that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:32

Yeah. It was like, I, it didn't used to feel like this. That's for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:36

Anyways, that's why we don't go to Pen Beach Taqueria anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:42

Oh man. We'll get delivery though. We just, we can't actually,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:50

bad memory, bad juju.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:53

So anyway. Yeah. Excessive sitting. We'll cause that. Oh man. Okay. So also just in general, a lower activity level from sitting around all day will burn less calories. Right. So we've talked a lot about calories and nutrition in the past episodes. So, you know, if you're trying to lose weight, it's important to try to burn as many calories as possible throughout the day. So, uh, sitting will pretty much tank the calorie burn full of the time that you're sitting. So even if you're doing exercise throughout the day, you still wanna try to get up and be active throughout the day. To to add a little more calorie burn to your day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:24

And even if you're not trying to lose weight, but if you're just trying to be a person that can eat more food,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:29

oh yeah. You know,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:31

that's a, that's a worthy goal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:32

Yeah. If you want to just maintain weight, but eat a ton of food, you gotta burn a ton of calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:36

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:36

Also, one last issue with excessive sitting specifically is that they did some studies and they saw that it can actually cause your leg muscles to not be able to absorb the amino acids from protein as well. Oh. So even if you are strength training, if you are sitting excessively, your leg muscles might not be repairing and building as much as they can because they can't really process the amino acids quite as well with excessive sitting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:00

That's interesting. Is there like a, a quantifiable percentage less good?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:05

There is in the study. I don't have the number handy. Okay. But the takeaway was it's another downside from sending too much, even if you're exercising

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:14

and it's significant enough to matter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:16

They did say it was significant.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:17

Oh, wow. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:18

Statistically significantly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:19

That's good to know.'cause like if I'm gonna do stupid squats and stuff, like I want those to count,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:23

right? Yeah, no, definitely. Anything you can do to avoid your hard earned work, going away is a good idea, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:30

Like that shit's hard. If I'm gonna do it, it better work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:33

Right? So maybe that alone's a reason to do this thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:35

Yes, I agree.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:38

So now that you know some of the benefits, how many steps do we want to try to get every day? Right. So 10,000 is a nice round number and it's been pushed for a long time as like the standard goal. What's interesting about that is for a long time there was not really any science behind the number. It was just like, this sounds like a nice number. Yeah. Five sells five digits, we can sell pedometers. Right, right. And it has turned out to be confirmed by studies that showed. In 70,000 participants over seven years, 9,000 to 10,000 steps a day resulted in a 39% less risk of dying. Wow. Just in general. So they showed, as long as you're in that nine to 10,000 range seemed to be the sweet spot. Over 10,000, there wasn't much additional risk reduction. Hmm. So it turns out that the 10,000 we've been focusing on, which is about an hour and a half of walking a day. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:28

Like roughly five miles.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:29

Right. Is really a good sweet spot. And they said that's just like a general baseline for movement, right? So if you were running 5,000 steps a day because of the increase in intensity, maybe that would be just as good. But just as a general overview of the study, walking nine to 10,000 steps a day was a big risk reduction in in death.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:52

Well, for me, I would do 15,000 steps of walking before I did 5,000 steps of running because. I can't find a sports bra that does a damn thing. If you have any recommendations, send them my way.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:03

Yeah, you even tried the, the fancy Taylor Swift one, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:06

I know, I know. But like fucking Mulan in that thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:09

Also, on top of the direct medical health benefit, 10,000 steps a day also tends to burn about 300 to 500 calories a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:17

That's two TVP muffins.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:19

That's true. Yeah. And I could eat two more of those every day. Yeah. So that's worth it alone. Right? So some of the ways that you can track. How many steps a day you get? I guess there's really only one way. It's a pedometer, I guess. Guess you

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:29

could count. You could

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:30

count.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:33

Carry on a little notepad. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:34

No, wouldn't recommend that. Um,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:38

no. I do that sometimes if I'm walking for some reason when I'm walking from my car to my office at work, I like. Count the steps in my brain. Yeah. Just because I'm bored.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:47

Do you do that? Is that a me thing? I don't know. I don't

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:49

do that. I did used to count like tiles though. Ceiling tiles and floor tiles. Yeah. Well, it's a good

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:54

time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:54

So anyway, I don't think that is in any way helpful, but usually you would use a pedometer to count your steps, which is literally just a step meter is basically what that means. Um, so. Also if you like know a five mile route around your area, you could probably just walk the route and know you got the 10,000 steps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:13

Or if you have like a high school track near your house, yeah, then you would know how long that is,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:18

right? Stuff like that. But in general, if you're just trying to track your going about your day kind of steps, a pedometer is a good choice. If you have a smartphone, most smartphones can kind of track your steps from your pocket. Just built in. Yeah. Native support. It's not super accurate, but if you don't wanna buy anything else and you want to just get a rough idea, your phone, you can probably, I, I know iPhone for a fact can do it. Androids, I'm sure they can do it. I have an iPhone. Yeah, I think there's

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:43

like Google fit on there. Yeah. The problem I've run into, 'cause I'm a girl and they don't give us pockets, is we don't have pockets in a lot of our like workout apparel. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:52

That's a really good point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:53

Yeah. Where would you put it?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:54

You girls really drew the short straw on the pants with pockets situation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:57

I know as a girl, I just want some pockets, like good pockets, not like chapstick sized pockets. I want deep pockets that I can shove like 20 cell phones in and a water bottle.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:09

Yeah. You gotta work on that. Yeah, we'll have to come out. We'll have to add that to our clothing shop on the website.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:16

These aren't pants, they're just pockets.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:19

Right. So the options that people typically end up using is some kind of pedometer on Amazon. You can find some clip on like not smart pedometers. They literally just a little LCD screen. No Bluetooth, nothing like that. Yeah, it just counts. They're not mega accurate, but you can clip 'em on anything. Clip 'em on, uh, to your shoe LA shirt. Whatever. And they're like 25 to 30 bucks on Amazon for the real, you probably

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:41

find it even cheaper. Right. They used to be like 15 bucks. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:43

Those are the cheapest ones I saw now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:45

Oh really?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:45

Yeah. They didn't used to be way cheaper.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:47

Inflation, man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:48

Even the old Fitbit zip, like a really nice clip on 'em only used to be like $20. Mm-hmm. But yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:54

That's said

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:54

there might be some more. If you go look on Team Who or Wish or something, there's probably a $5 pedometer, maybe

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:59

Walmart, who knows? Yeah, try 'em out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:01

The next step up from there is stuff around the a hundred dollars mark Bit has one called the Inspire three. It's a really simple pedometer. It goes around your wrist like a watch strap. It's $99. There's also one on Amazon called The Wise Band that's really similar to the Fitbit. That one's $89, and I'll put some links to that stuff in the show notes. Um, if you want something a little more stepped up that has some more features around tracking, you can use a smartwatch like the Apple Watch or the Google Watch or Samsung watch.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:29

Yeah. And Fitbit has some like higher tier options too, that are really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:33

Yeah. The smart watches will have step trackers typically, but also they have a whole bunch of other fitness related tracking. Like yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:40

like heart rate,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:40

heart rate, oxygen tracking, uh, sleep. Sleep. You can actually put in the workout you're doing, you track your workouts. Yeah. Whole bunch of stuff like that. I have an Apple watch and I use it to track all of my lifts, all my exercise, everything. So it does a lot. I

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:52

use an Ora ring.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:54

Yeah, Ora ring's another good option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:55

They're a little bit more expensive and you do have to have, I think it's like what, a $5 a month subscription or something? Yeah. But I like it 'cause it's not on my wrist. Because I paid a lot of money to get these really cool tattoos on my arm, so I'm not gonna cover them up with watches.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:09

Yeah. Well, plus you actually had an issue with the sensors mm-hmm. On one of our, our wrist devices not being able to read through your tattoos.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:15

That's true. So we had whoops for a while, which don't

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:18

do steps. They

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:18

don't do steps, but they do a lot of other stuff. But I was having this issue where. Um, my, where my tattoos are, they were right where the sensors were and they couldn't read my steps at all. Like all of my data was garbage. And I reached out and they're like, oh, that's a known issue with tattoos.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:34

So if you're ever having issues with sensors and you have tattoos, it could be. It could be that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:39

Yeah. So, or is a really good alternative option. Mm-hmm. Um, just

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:42

if you are working out or climbing a ladder or doing like anything where you would be concerned of the ring pulling off, do not wear that ring. You will deglove your finger.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:52

Yeah. And I wouldn't recommend looking up Degloving unless, unless. Unless you're not really sensitive to medical tragedies. Yeah. But, uh, it's basically something you really don't want to happen to your finger where it like pulls the skin off the bone or something crazy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:04

So, uh, yeah, it just pretty much pulls all the skin right off your finger. Yeah. So in general, don't wear rings while you're lifting weights, period.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:12

Yeah. So then the other option is a dedicated fitness tracker, which a smartwatch does have a lot of fitness features, but it's not necessarily a dedicated fitness tracker. So for a dedicated fitness tracker, that's gonna be some of the higher end Fitbit devices or like even the Garmins. Yeah. Garmin Re makes, uh, really popular highend fitness tracker specific devices that a lot of people prefer to a smartwatch 'cause they don't really want all the phone smart app features. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:37

And then the ring ones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:38

Yeah, there's a couple other ring ones. Like a ultra human super. Yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:41

ultra human aura.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:43

Aura. And there's even another one, I can't remember the name of it right now, that just came out. Mm. There's a couple other ones out there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:47

Yeah. I would really recommend Aura. I like it. It does sleep, it does steps. I don't know, I think it's great.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:55

I really like the Whoop, but again, it doesn't do step tracking, so

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:58

yeah. Also, if you're a girl using the Whoop, it gives you insights on how you can, uh, improve your overall readiness.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:06

Yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:06

and the only insights it gave me is I should be on my period more. Oh,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:10

yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:11

There's like this direct correlation with a lot of period data that I guess like it drops your heart rate so it thinks that you slept better. So it's like, yeah, definitely do that more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:21

Yeah, the Whoop did actually have some cool features like that. You could tell it kind of what you did for the day and then it'll over time trend like what things you did every day, made your scores better for recovery and stuff, and that was a pretty interesting result for yours.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:34

Yeah. I feel like they don't have the girl stuff figured out very well yet. Like the Whoop was designed for men, kind of. Yeah, and they don't have the, like the woman stuff. At least since I've used it, which was like a year and a half ago, but they didn't have the women stuff figured out. It was pretty wacky recommendation.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:48

Still a pretty cool device though. So yeah, that's kind of how you would track your steps. And then as far as some tips that, uh, are not actively like go out for a walk, how to just kind of get up and get more steps throughout your day. There's a couple tips we have for that. Get

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:01

a dog.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:02

Get a dog is actually a really good one. Probably get a kid too. It is probably in the same vein. Yeah. So you can chase around your, you know, small creature that you care for, whether that's a human or an animal, and that'll get you some extra steps throughout the day. Also, you can park further away whenever you go anywhere. Uh, try to just like park at the farthest spot I can see. One that keeps you away from the other car so your ears doesn't get dinged or hit or something. It's less likely to also, two, you just get some extra steps just from walking. Yeah. Sometimes the downside of it starts raining while you're inside the building.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:32

Oh my God. Don't even get me started on that. That happens to me all the time. Every time I'm leaving work, it's like now it's down pouring.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:39

Also, if you are in a circumstance that allows it. Uh, trying to commute to work on your bike or use your bike to get to food or whatever you do outside of your house as much as possible. Be careful

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:49

though, and wear a helmet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:51

Sure. Yeah. If you have a way to safely and actually even a way at all to ride your bike to a couple of things you do, that'll help a little bit. Yeah. Getting some movement in. Another one is take the stairs every chance you get taking the stairs is actually directly linked to a reduc reduction in stroke risk, uh, in general. So every time you go to get on an elevator, maybe just think like, oh, could I just take the stairs instead? And that's always a better option if you can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:15

Unless it's like five flights and you've gotta go talk to your boss and then you're gonna be outta breath and be like, then I think maybe,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:21

yeah, maybe

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:22

elevator. I don't know. That's just my opinion.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:24

That's fair. You gotta kind of play it by ear what the, what the situation is. If you're gonna be drenched in sweat and you're going up to a presentation, uh, maybe just take the elevator.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:31

Yeah. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:33

You can also get. An under desks treadmill or like an under desks pedal thing? Under desks, treadmill. If you haven't thought about that or had one. Might sound a little extreme, but they're actually pretty low key and they're not even very expensive. It's just like the bottom part of a treadmill and it's a very small like footprint compared to a full treadmill. Yeah. So you can just kind of roll it around under your desk and like slide it out so you can use it when you're in a meeting or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:57

And like, okay, this maybe is a little niche, but if you've ever heard of the band Rom Stein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:02

The one, the, the keyboard player.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:04

We've been to their concert.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:05

Yeah. He, well, I know you, I'm saying others, like maybe other people. Oh, I

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:09

just wanted to brag that we've been to their concert. Oh yeah, we

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:11

have, there's fire, lots of fire, but like the keyboard player, he's. Literally walking on a treadmill. The whole concert. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:20

That is really cool. Another good one is try to walk and talk whenever you're on the phone. In general, like anytime you're on the phone, but also if you're on meetings at work and it's not one where you're kind of tied to your computer. Mm-hmm. Or having to use, you know, zoom to present or whatever, just try to actually get up and move around while you're on that phone call. Another small things throughout the day to attach to, okay, I'm gonna do a little more activity while I do this thing I'd normally be sitting down for. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:43

Or like use the farthest away bathroom.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:46

Yeah, that's a good one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:47

Yeah, I used to do that, but now the tunnel that I would walk through, I'm not allowed walking through it anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:52

And if you have the walking treadmill or if you have the under desks treadmill, or you just have a normal treadmill at home for some reason, you can take that to the next level and take meetings or your phone calls, like on your actual tread. I've seen people, several people at work, and if you're, if you work in a corporate environment and you do video calls, you've probably seen at least a few people who. Take calls these days while they're walking on some kind of treadmill. It's actually fairly common in corporate America these days, so you won't look too weird doing it if you have to do it on video. Another thing you can do is set a timer to remind you to just stand up for a minute or two every hour throughout the workday. Um, the Apple Watch has a default feature for this. I haven't used a Samsung watch, but I have to imagine it probably has something like that too. Or you could just set a normal, even like an egg timer or something on your desk or set up some kind of recurring timer on your phone.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:35

Well, the finish trackers will like vibrate. Every hour if you haven't hit your steps and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:39

Yeah, so just any kind of way it can remind you, Hey, I've been sitting here for quite a while now. Lemme just stand up and kind of move around for a couple minutes. So those are the little tips you can do to be active when otherwise you would've taken a less active choice and just help throughout the day. And those little things really add up over time. If you're doing. Two or three of these different tips every day for a couple of months. I mean, you're way more active than you were before and you're probably burning a few hundred more calories a day. So it all just adds up to really positive outcomes just from doing these little bitty choices throughout the day. Another way you can tackle this, in addition to doing those things, is something called exercise snacks, which is kind of a newer. Idea that's been studied. Basically it's you get around one to two minutes of exercise anytime you have chance throughout the day with a, about an hour or so in between those. So it's literally like you do something like climbing stairs, jumping jacks, sprints, like, uh, just do squats in your chair, which is just where you stand up outta your chair and sit back down. Just do that over and over for one to two minutes, uh, that kind of thing for just literally one to two minutes, about once an hour. So you could just stand up and sit down over and over again in your chair for a minute. Be Be careful

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:48

is a wheelie chair though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:49

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Be safe about it. You don't have to do fast ones, you can do it slow. But um, yeah, so a study showed that the aerobic and leg strength gains were going up and down three flights of stairs quickly, three times a day for six weeks were really significant. So you actually got quite a bit stronger and had a lot of leg muscle gain just from doing that three times a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:12

Wow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:13

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:13

I may actually try doing that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:15

Yeah. They also showed over the, uh, six weeks that going and just pedaling hard for one minute, several times a day on an exercise bike was, uh, basically equivalent or very comparable to a single 10 minute session each day. Hmm. So not only is this kind of convenient, 'cause you can just. Get up once an hour, once every couple hours and just go do a thing really intensely or as intensely as is safe, right for you, uh, for about one to two minutes. And that can be just as good as getting in one longer session that day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:46

That's interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:47

Yeah. And if you do little one minute pedal sessions throughout the day and then you have a, a real workout later on, all these things really add up and you'll just be in a much better, you know, state overall going forward. So that's pretty cool. So that's pretty much all we had as far as these little tips for how to get started moving around and maybe how to replace some of the less active things in your day with more active things. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:06

try to hit 10,000 steps.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:08

Try to hit 10,000 steps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:09

Try not to sit so much at work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:11

Right. Try to find some way not to sit as much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:14

Yeah. Or when you're watching Netflix.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:15

Yeah. Um,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:17

and exercise snacks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:18

Yeah, exercise snacks are, I think, a really good one that a lot of people can do. Technically an exercise snack is kind of intense minute or two, but even if you just go take like a five minute walk every hour or something like that, I dunno, your work is really gonna vary on how, what you can get away with here. I, I recognize that. Yeah. But, uh, basically the theme is every chance you get. Be a little active.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:38

Just drink a lot of water. Have to go pee a lot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:41

Yeah, I've seen that tip.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:42

Yeah. Uh,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:42

drink a lot of water and you'll have to get up, uh, pretty frequently to use the restroom. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:45

Yeah. Or pretend to be a smoker. And then take breaks whenever you want.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:48

Yeah, I think everybody should really do that. Some, some stuff we saw in the news. Really just one big thing we saw this week, there was a vegan cyclist from the British Olympic team named Anna Henderson that won the silver medal in the Olympics this year. So another vegan with a medal in the Olympics. That's pretty cool. We love

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:02

that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:03

Always like to see it. Also, we tried a new vegan brand this week. It was my favorite indulgence. Granola.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:09

Yes. They're really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:11

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:11

It's like a small company and they have I think four or five flavors. They have a nut free, one chocolate mocha pumpkin spice, and then. I think a maple one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:21

But we got all four flavors and they were really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:23

The chocolate mocha was even good, and I don't think either one of us really normally likes a mocha flavor, but it was, yeah, it was really actually, I usually

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:29

hate anything mocha or coffee related, but it was really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:32

Oh, one of the cool recipes you made this week was some like Satan and tofu egg patties.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:37

Yeah. So we made like. Egg flavored Satan patties basically that you can use on like, uh, breakfast sandwiches.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:46

Yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:47

the macros are actually really good. It's like 20 something grams of protein for 150 calories. They're really fast to make, they take about what, maybe 10 minutes of actual labor.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:56

Yeah, it wasn't much at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:57

And then you cook, you steam 'em for like 20 minutes, they turn out great.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:00

Yeah. And since you put a little bit of tofu inside your, Satan takes care of the issue we were talking about last week where wheat's a little short on lysine for amino acids. Yeah. And makes it basically a complete protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:12

I'm a big fan of 'em.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:12

Yeah. They're really good. Tastes just like an egg. Yeah. Now you've made 'em before and you've been kind of iterating this recipe. I think you really got it in a great spot now where it's basically just an egg patty.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:21

It only took four times. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:23

But they were all pretty good. But this one's the best.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:25

Yeah. I might try to make another one with like mung beans.'cause there are people that can't eat soy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:30

So

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:31

mung beans, you don't see those much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:33

I know I bought some and I haven't used them yet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:37

I heard they smell, but I don't know. I haven't tried.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:39

Well, you know, looking forward to tasting it. We can just hold our nose.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:42

Yeah, I don't care.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:44

We're gonna also be experimenting with Satan in general a lot more going forward. You've been trying a lot of stuff recently, but I know you got a lot more ideas floating around in there, as always. Yep. Couple questions we came across. Uh, I think these are both where I Reddit that we thought were interesting and wanted to highlight. We've seen actually, uh, this one we've seen in a lot of different places lately, and we've even had some conversations about it, about people are asking, you know, what do I do if I'm trying to do this vegan high protein thing? Or even maybe this vegan thing and I can't eat soy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:11

Yeah. And this I think, has been a gap in a lot of our recipes 'cause they. Focus very heavily on soy. Yeah. So I'm going to try to a little, do a bit of a correction going forward where I try to do a little bit more things that are soy free or can be made soy free and are still high protein. There are a lot of things you can eat that aren't soy, that are high protein, such as like Satan like we were talking about. Yeah. Um, lentils are great. Red lentil pasta is good. They do make a fava bean tofu that I've heard. Oh yeah. Really good. And has amazing macros. Yeah. And for like TVP, they make textured pea protein. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:51

T-P-P-T-P-P.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:52

Yeah. So that's an option there. So I think there are like alternatives to soy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:57

Yeah. We've tended to focus so much on soy one because it's really high percentage of protein two, super versatile. Three, it's a comp. The O really the only reasonable complete protein for our use case. So we use it in a lot of our recipes. But there are some people in there who have an legitimate soy allergy so that uh, they can't have soy and they still wanna be vegan. Vegan. They still wanna do fitness, so we gotta cover them too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:19

Yep. So we are gonna be doing that. We'll make that promise. Yeah. We'll start having more soy free recipes and we'll start trying to put some information on how to make something soy free. There's some things you can't get around.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:30

Yep. And then another one. Um, so we've seen a lot of people struggling. This is a big one with new vegans, but even really with vegans that have been doing it a while, a lot of people are struggling with people asking, you know, how do you get your protein or just. Badgering you with other questions about, yeah, about your health and your health and aren't you gonna be deficient or die? Or they hear the vegan diet's really unhealthy, just

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:51

well, oh, you have to take a B12 supplement. Oh

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:54

my God. Yeah. A

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:55

lot of that kinda stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:57

Yeah. So what do you, what do you think you should do to deal with people asking questions like that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:01

So, over the years, I've tried many things. I've tried laughing it off and just, you know, uh, trying to cause the least amount of problems possible.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:10

Those people will always come back. Yeah. And they will always continue saying stuff and now they think that you're in on the joke. So I'm not doing that method anymore. Lately. If someone asks me about my protein, I just pull out my fitness pal. And I start showing them what I start rattling off how much protein all my food has, and I think it makes everyone kind of uncomfortable. So I haven't really been getting those questions lately.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:31

Yeah, shocker. Almo, all the people who ask you where you get protein, most of those people, I won't say all. Most of those people have no idea how protein they get in a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:40

They don't even know how much protein they get. They don't even know how much protein they're supposed to get.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:43

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:44

They probably eat less protein than we do because,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:47

oh, I would, I would damn near guarantee they eat less protein than we do.'cause we focus on it and we're not, you know, we're not hitting like a vegan protein goal. We're hitting a normal high protein goal for fitness people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:58

Right. So

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:59

I mean,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:59

yeah. Plus I think in general. Because there's this stigma around protein with vegans and vegetarians. I think most people that are taking on veganism or vegetarianism are already. Very aware of their protein and are probably tracking it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:16

A lot more than people that are omnivores.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:19

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:19

And so the question becomes very annoying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:21

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:22

Or they'll be like, oh, don't you just eat salads? Like, how are you getting protein? Just eating salads. Yeah. I don't know. The questions are old. They're boring. Yeah. Uh, my best advice is to just hit 'em head on. Like, if you. If you try to not have confrontation and you just try to laugh it off, they're definitely gonna bring it up again. Yeah. Like that's what I've found.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:41

Is like, I've tried. Yeah. All the ways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:44

No, I agree. And you do as obviously a vegan, you have to think about nutrients a little bit.'cause if you're not careful, there are some habits you could get into that would cause you to maybe miss out on some essential things. But in general, it's just not nearly as big of a deal as. The general public seems to think, you know, veganism has got a bad rap for a lot of issues, but this nutrient thing specifically is like outta line.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:06

Yeah. I mean, even most vegetables have a pretty decent amount of protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:09

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:10

And broccoli has 40% protein. Mushrooms have 40% protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:13

Yeah. We'll say if you're vegan and you're exclusively eating vegan junk food Oh yeah. You're, you're probably gonna be in pretty bad shape.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:21

Well, I don't know. Some of the vegan junk food does have pretty decent protein'cause they lean into that. Mm. I mean, I'm not saying it's like super nutritious, but like,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:28

yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:28

I don't know. I mean, I think actually having a protein deficiency as a vegan can be. I think that'd be pretty hard to do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:35

Unless you're just not eating enough or you're, you're literally just eating like bowls and bowls of lettuce. Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, it definitely is like, in my opinion. In my opinion, there are two things that are hard about being a vegan. The first one is like, you come home after a long day and you just wanna not cook. Yeah. And there are very limited options in the area that that one is killer unless you're like in the city.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:56

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:57

And that can be. Incredibly emotionally exhausting to just like always feel like you have to cook and there's not like a really good, simple option you can get delivered or buy. Um, the second one is just the constant badgering from people. And even if their intentions are good, it gets pretty overwhelming. Yeah. And it can get really frustrating. Yeah. And it can ruin relationships with people that like you had good relationships with and now they just keep bringing up the vegan thing over and over again.'cause it gets annoying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:24

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:24

So those are my, my only two things I run into with being a vegan that are f. Like actual issues for me personally. And those aren't even the ones that people talk about, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:33

Right. Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, I'm sure there are people that those, even those two issues would drive them away from being a vegan. I'm not, I'm not really concerned about it for me personally, but it is definitely annoying to have to deal with things like that. So if there are any things you're struggling with as far as becoming a vegan, just being a vegan, if you've been one for a long time, any things that you have an ongoing struggle with, you're not quite sure how to deal with? You know, not even necessarily fitness and nutrition related, just like I'm having trouble with this aspect of being a vegan related, you know, feel free to reach out to us. We've got a little bit of experience with that and we can, you know, talk through that and tell you kind of our strategies and what we've done to deal with those situations. So, yeah. You got a lot of ways to contact us. As you guys know, the website links and the notes, you can leave a comment now on Spotify directly. If you're listening there, you can send us an email, use the contact form on the websites, or even just reach right out to us on social media. We get a request through all those methods and we answer all those things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:28

So yeah, and if you have any ideas on things that you might want recipes for, let us know those too. Yeah, especially now that we're trying to do a little bit. Less soy focused stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:38

Yeah, definitely. And as you look through the recipes on the Protein Deficient Vegan website, there is a comment section at the bottom. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts or requests or ideas or anything like that. All right, well, I think that's all we've got for this week. Do you wanna say Bye Bye. Bye everybody.