Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Deficient Vegans podcast. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient Vegan. Do you wanna say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi. This is episode 21. We are gonna be talking about tracking progress. We have some tools, apps, tips and tricks for tracking both fitness and nutrition goals and progress. We also have a myth of the week and we're gonna talk about a new YouTube video that you have.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:21

Woo hoo.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:22

So first, as far as tracking, let's just talk about why tracking in general is useful. So there's a common quote out there that I think applies here, and it's, you can't manage what you don't measure, which basically just means that if you're not keeping track of something in some way, you don't have a way to see if it's improving over time or if it's even aligning with the goals you set for yourself. Tracking also helps you with establishing and reinforcing good habits in general. Some apps have a streak system, so maybe you don't wanna break the streak. So it helps you keep up a good habit. Or you can go back and look at the week and say hey, I did a really good job that week. I wanna do a really good job again next week. It can help with some of those things. I had a very long 10,000 steps a day streak recently that got broken.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04

No.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05

It did break?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06

It did break.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07

I'm sorry. Dude. I broke mine on my Fitbit because if you don't sync it before the day's over, even at least this is what mine does, if I don't sync my watch thingy with my Fitbit app before the day's over, even if I went over 10,000, it'll like not count it and there's no way to fix it. And I broke like an 80 day streak or something because I didn't sync it. And then, um. And then I said, fuck the world.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31

That seems pretty unfair. I'm gonna have to write like a strongly worded letter to Fitbit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34

I know. Maybe get a petition.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:36

Yeah, they'll retroactively put your streak. Also tracking apps can help you just have a visual sign of progress. There's a lot of different ways to see progress and we'll talk about some of those here in a little bit. But the apps put it all in one place. You can go back and look at your historical data. A lot of them even do some kind of animated recap of your month or your year to make it a little more fun so you can just see, hey, I'm doing things that I'm interested in doing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:59

You can also do a journal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:01

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:01

I like journals. I like writing stuff with pretty pens. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:04

Yeah, definitely an option. You don't have to use an app, but, uh, just a little more convenient. But you have pen and paper. Definitely a way to do it the way people have been doing it for a long time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:12

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:12

Yeah. And then also with tracking, even if you're not really getting super detailed into it, you can at least use tracking to make sure you're hitting your minimum targets. If you have like a very specific, you know, I want to exercise three times a week. I want to get this much protein every day. You can at least just make sure you're hitting those specific targets at a really high level. Some things to keep in mind for tracking, um, over tracking. Like trying to track every little thing down to every little detail can definitely cause sort of a, a burnout and even some perfectionism that, uh, impacts you in a really negative way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:43

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:44

And then you might be tempted to say, okay, I don't want to track anything and as a matter of fact, I'm not even really interested in this fitness thing for a month. I'm just burnt out on thinking about any of this. So yeah, you gotta be careful with that. You'll wanna make sure you find a level of tracking that works for you. A lot of these things can get super detailed into some really nerd stats and some people do like to see that, and that's, that's maintainable and fine. Uh, other people that's way too much information and it just has things they don't even care about that don't impact their lives. So they just want the really high level points. Like, I did some kind of workout three days this week, or, that's all I really want to know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:16

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:16

So you just find whatever works for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:18

It seems like if you're a beginner, you should probably start. Small, definitely. So you don't get overwhelmed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:22

Yeah, I agree. As a general rule, like everything, you start, start small, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:26

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:26

So we will get right into it here for fitness tracking specifically. We'll talk about a couple of apps you can use. Again, like you were just saying though, you don't really have to use an app. A lot of people like to track their workouts on pen and paper. Perfectly fine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:38

Yeah. And it gives you a reason to buy glitter gel pens.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:41

That's true. I used to track mine in, uh, little notebooks. I still have around here somewhere. I didn't use glitter gel pens, but it was nice to just have it written down.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:48

Noob.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:49

Yeah. So a couple of the apps I really like for working out, for lifting specifically, I really like both Strong and Hevy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:56

I like strong.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:56

Yeah, they're really similar. A couple of minor differences. Hevy has a social element, like you can follow people if you're into that. I just turn that off. I don't really care about that. I just like how it shows like the muscle groups over time. That's not a big deal. Strong is great. It's basically just like a log journal for all your actual lifts, so it logs like actual reps sets.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:15

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:15

Your progress over time, your personal best, things like that. So it's like specifically for lifting workouts and the actual weight that was lifted.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:21

Yeah. And doesn't it give you the rest time?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:23

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:24

Counter too, the countdown thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:26

Yeah. It helps you while you're actually doing the workout. It'll do your rest timers. It'll even calculate like, which plates do you need to put on the bar to get this weight. So it's got a plate calculator built in. Both of them do. And uh, some other little helpful things like that. So it's like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:38

They'll do math for you?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:39

Yeah. Who doesn't like things that do math for you?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:41

Me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:44

Yeah. It'll track historical logs and also while you're doing your workout. And it'll even show you little animations or videos depending on the app of the actual exercise to make sure you're doing it the right way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:53

So for Strong and Hevy, they do have a couple of programs built in, but as far as deciding when to increase the weight or increase the reps or something on a lift, you have to do that on your own and maybe you can follow some program you found about how to do that progression, but you still have to enter it on your own. If you want something that will auto increment those or auto increase the weight that you're gonna be lifting. There's the one I really like is the RP hypertrophy app. I think there are a couple other ones out there that do a similar thing, but this one is really minimal and clean and you just put in your workout every week and then it'll tell you next time around, like, do this, many more reps, do this much more weight, whatever. And it basically is just coaching that progression for you automatically. You don't even have to think about it. So that's nice, but it's also quite a bit more expensive than something like Hevy or Strong. There are also apps for things that aren't lifting. Like, uh, Strava is one that's popular for cycling. Runkeeper is popular for running and I'm not a big runner, but I'm sure there are a lot of other run specific apps, but that's one really popular one that I know of.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:50

Wait, wait. Do they have the map thing where it maps out where you walked and stuff or where you biked?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:56

Yeah, both. Both of those do, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:57

I saw this guy once that he mapped out his bicycle ride, but he did it in the shape of a penis and I thought that was amazing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:04

That's a solid use of time right there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:06

I think so too. Free will for the win.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:07

Yeah. There are also the apps that are like native to the phone you're using, so you don't really have to download an app. Apple has Apple Fitness. Google has Google Fit. With Apple Fitness, you can track your workouts pretty easily. It won't get down to reps and sets and stuff like that, but it will track like I did a workout for this amount of time and show your heart rate and things like that. And then it also has a subscription service where you can kind of follow along with workouts. So you watch a video, do the workout alongside it that kind of thing. That's been around forever. And then to kind of transition into a way to use those native apps, we can talk a little bit about some of the smart watches or other wearable fitness devices.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:45

I have opinions on these.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:47

Oh, I know you do. So for Apple Fitness, the one that would go along with that is the Apple Watch. And then for Google Fit, it's probably something like the Galaxy Watch. I've only used the Apple Watch, but it's really good about tracking workouts and integrates really well with all the Apple Fitness stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:00

Apple Watches is the only one I don't have an opinion on because I'm an Android girl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:04

Yeah, so the watches are good. Um, but, again, pretty expensive. If you want something, uh, that's really just, just a dedicated fitness thing and quite a bit cheaper, you can look at something like a Fitbit. Fitbits have been around for a really long time. They started as mostly like step tracking, but now they track like exercises, heart rate, sleep, all that stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:24

Yeah. Fitbit was my go-to for like a decade, and then I had it connected to my text messaging and my mom texted me, your grandpa died. And I saw that on my Fitbit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:36

Oh my God.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:36

And I didn't wanna wear my Fitbit for a while. Um, so anyway, I don't have the texts anymore, but then I went to the whoop and I didn't like the whoop.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:46

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:46

Because it doesn't track steps.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:48

Yeah. The whoop, I think maybe they added that now. I don't know how accurate it is. Mm-hmm. But yeah, we, we used Whoop for a long time, didn't track steps. And also it's like 40 bucks a month.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:56

It's so expensive.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:57

Yeah. And uh, you know, I was wearing it at the same time as my Apple Watch and at, at a certain point I was like, the Apple Watch improved. And it's like, okay, I'm getting the same information now. That's not really necessary. And even the Fitbit really gives you pretty much the same information now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:09

So I didn't like the whoop and then I switched to the Oura ring, which I liked for a long time. But then I got really sick of having to take it off anytime I was like lifting weights or like cooking or anything.'cause it's, it's a ring. Yeah. On your finger. Yeah. And then also, and maybe this is TMI for guys listening, but the Oura ring offers like insights on like how you can improve your restfulness and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:30

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:31

And like anytime my period was happening, I obviously slept harder and for some reason, like my resting heart rate drops.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:39

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:39

During my period. And so it'd be like, do more of that. Like if you want better night's sleeps, you should be on your period more. Yeah. So it was like completely garbage data for females basically. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I went back to Fitbit and I really like it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:54

Yeah. Oh, which one were you having issues with reading through the tattoo? Oh, was that also whoop?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:58

That was whoop, yeah. Yeah. I have, um, like forearm tattoos and everywhere I would put my whoop, it wouldn't read my heart rate and like some other data off of it. Yeah. And then I messaged 'em and they were like, well, do you have tattoos? And I'm like. Yeah. Do, do you say anywhere you shouldn't wear this with, you have tattoos and they don't.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:17

Um, so yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:18

So yeah, definitely a lot of personal preference goes into these. I ended up, I just use my Apple Watch now just because I, it does on my phone stuff as well as the fitness stuff. Yeah. And it's easier. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:28

I think I'm gonna probably be Fitbit for a while. Yeah. Until something cooler comes out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:31

The Fitbits get better and better too. So I think that's a really good option now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:34

I'm a big fan other than the streak thing, which pisses me off, but.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:37

Yeah. Oh, the other ones don't even have streaks really, so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:40

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:40

Yeah. I did like the Oura ring a lot. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, the same thing, like with, you know, there's the, the degloving concern, you can't really mm-hmm. You're not really supposed to lift weights with a ring that's not maybe like a silicone ring. You can Right. But the Oura ring's like a, a composite material, so you don't wanna lift weights. Uh, it could get caught and like, pull skin off your finger.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:58

Pull finger off.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:59

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:59

Also, it doesn't show you the step count, so if you're not wearing another tracking accessory. Like you don't know what your steps are unless you pull the app open, which is pretty annoying. Yeah, and I kinda like Fitbit'cause it'll give you those like annoying like vibration things. Hey, you haven't stood up in like five hours. What are you doing? Right. Yeah. Which is kind of nice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:18

Yeah, so a lot of options for smart devices there way across the price spectrum. You can probably find something you like if you wanna wear anything like that at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:25

Yeah, I think that's the other good thing about Fitbit is you can get like a lot of different options across several price points, you know? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:31

I remember the very first time I got a Fitbit, it was like a little, it almost looked like an old Tamagotchi. Yeah. And you just like hooked it on your belt. That's what we used, um, at work when we first started, they had like a step challenge thing. Challenge thing, and they gave those out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:44

That's another option though, too. You could get one of those, like pedometers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:47

Yeah. Just a simple pedometer that's all you, the steps. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:50

It doesn't connect to anything, but you can go input it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:52

Yeah, for sure. A lot of options out there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:54

Mm-hmm. Cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:54

Some tips and tricks for some of this fitness tracking. If you're tracking lifting, make sure that your range of motion is the same every time you do the exercise. Because if you're doing a half rep one week and you do a full reps another week, you are using the same weight, you're actually challenging yourself differently. So if you go to try to add weight, you might not be able to do it anymore the way you thought you could because you weren't really doing the same thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:17

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:17

So there are a lot of references on your body. You can do like when you do curls, make sure the weight like touches your shoulder or something like that. It depends on the lift. They're very specific, but usually there's some kind of frame of reference you can do in how you do an exercise to say, okay, when I hit this point, that's like a full rep. And just make sure you do that every time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:35

Yeah. I think that applies to like tempo too. Yeah. You wanna make sure you're, you have the same tempo week to week. Because if you're doing it really fast, you can do a lot more reps if you do it really fast. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:44

Yeah. Doing big swinging cheat reps or something. Yeah. And then also, uh, the exercise order matters. This isn't something you'll really change week to week, but you should just know that if you were doing maybe squats first in your exercise for a whole, like six to 12 week block or something, and then the next time around you go and put squats at the end of your workout.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:03

Oh yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:03

You're not gonna be able to do the same weight, right. It won't be like hugely different, but I mean, you definitely won't be able to do the same weight and reps that you were doing at the beginning, at the end.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:12

Tangentially related. Um, in high school, I was on the softball team, and we always did conditioning, and so we would do like strength training first, and then at the end we'd run sprints. So we had done a shit ton of squats that day. Yeah. And leg exercises. And then we had to do a shit ton of sprints across the basketball court. And this one girl was going so hard, she was like, I'm gonna be the fastest, you know? But her legs gave out and she face-planted into the floor. Oh no. It was awful. And that's why I would recommend just running in general. Don't do it. You know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:46

Yeah. Definitely a cautionary tale.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:49

And she had a nice face, you know? You don't wanna bust a nice face. Yeah. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:54

Yeah, so I'd recommend like just try a few apps and devices, see what works best for you, see which one feels like the most intuitive to you. So even if something is like maybe in some ways a better app, if you go to use it and it like feels very confusing, it doesn't make sense for how your brain works. Yeah. It's not gonna be very helpful for you. So there are a lot of options and you'll find one probably that clicks with you a lot better than others. And then if you're tracking things consistently, I would try to do like a, maybe a monthly review and just make sure the activity you actually performed aligns with your goals. So just, you know, once a month, at the end of the month and some apps, like I said, will do this automatically, but just kinda look back and say, okay, well this was like the days I did the activity for the month, uh, or this was the activities I did inside the workouts and just say, okay, that's like pretty much what I aimed for. Or you could say like, oh, that I fell way short of what I was going for this month. I wanna try to focus on it a little more. So next we can move into nutrition tracking. The kinds of things you might want to track here are calories for a weight goal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:53

Calories are the most important thing if you're trying to manipulate your weight in some way. There's a ton of apps for calorie tracking specifically. You might also wanna track your macronutrients, which are fat, carbohydrates, protein for muscle goals. You wanna track your protein if you're trying to build, or, you know, maintain muscle mass. And then you might also wanna track your macros if you're trying to like intentionally do an unbalanced diet, like a keto diet, a low fat, low protein diet, like for a medical reason.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:20

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:20

Maybe something like that. Um, also useful to be able to track and then, you know, it's probably a good idea to track your fiber if you're concerned about that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:28

I think especially if you're prioritizing protein, sometimes you can neglect fiber.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:32

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:33

I mean, that usually doesn't happen on a vegan diet, but it could.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:36

Yeah. I've been seeing a lot of discussions online recently about like , why are you focused on protein, when you can focus on fiber? And my take is kind of like, why can't we do both? But.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:45

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:45

I mean, there are definitely, you know, choices to be made along the way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:48

Yeah, there's a lot of new studies coming out that say, you know, bad, bad stuff can happen if you're not eating your fiber.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:53

Yeah. And the more fiber you eat, the healthier you are and the longer you live over time. So yeah, good to at least make sure you're in a healthy range. Also for tracking, this is especially pertinent to vegans, uh, you can use some of these apps to track your micronutrients, which are basically vitamins and minerals. Some of the things, if you're not at least a little aware of on a vegan or vegetarian diet, you could be falling short on some vitamins, some minerals, over a long period of time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:16

Yeah. Like B12.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:17

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:17

B12 is a common one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:19

B12, definitely common if you're not taking a supplement and then, iron if you're not like intentionally seeking out high iron plants.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:25

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:25

Things like that, uh, you might fall behind, but you know, those are also issues that people who aren't vegan or vegetarian run into. Yeah. So it's good to track for everybody if you can. And if you've already been confirmed to have some kind of deficiency like in a blood test or something, I'd definitely recommend using some kind of app to track your micronutrient, at least the one you're interested in.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:40

Yeah, I had anemia for like. A long time. Yeah. So that's something I just keep track of.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:46

Yeah. I actually had a B12 deficiency in a blood test like 10 years ago, way before I was vegan. Yeah. So it's something I paid attention to and took a daily supplement for, for a long time now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:56

Yeah, I've had vitamin D deficiencies too. Especially 'cause like it's like kind of chilly and like you don't go outside that much in the winter. Yeah. So it's kind of easy to get one of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:04

Yeah. So just things to keep an eye on. Some of the apps you can actually use. The one if you are interested in tracking micronutrients from a vegan perspective is Cronometer. That one's definitely the best for like the micronutrient database. If you wanna see all the different vitamins and minerals you get.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:19

Cronometer stresses me out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:21

A couple times I've tried tracking it. I just feel so overwhelmed. I don't. I'm a simple woman.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:25

It, it does have a lot of information and I definitely wouldn't recommend like trying to make sure you're a like a hundred percenting every micronutrient or anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:34

It's a little overwhelming.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:35

But if you have a couple you're concerned about it. It just is the best one to break those down for me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:39

Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, and I've found inconsistencies and like the micros in MyFitnessPal, so that makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:44

Yeah but MyFitnessPal is the other app and the one we actually tend to use the most.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:49

I make him use it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:50

Yeah. And I'll, I'll explain why in a second, but it does have a free option. You have to look at ads, which is fine. Some of the advanced features for like setting custom goals from micro macronutrients do require you to, to buy the paid version. Um, but you know, if you're just wanting to use it to track calories and stuff, you definitely don't need the paid version right off the bat. Yeah. So it also lets you share your food diary or food journal with other people. Yeah. If your friends with your friends, or if you have like a personal trainer or something mm-hmm. And they want to see it, that's a really common one to use for that. It's also the one that happens to integrate the best into other apps like you or your personal trainer might be using to track your nutrition along the way. It's really solid. One of the best things about it is that you can put in your own recipes, but not only can you add your recipes for yourself, you can also add like recipes as food to the public database.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:38

Right. Yeah. So I went through and added every recipe on the site as like a global food, and I put in, I, so basically you have to create the recipe. Under your own recipes, and then it gives you all the information on like calories and all the macros and all the micros. Then you have to go and add it in as a food, and then it shows up as your food. And then I added in all like the calories, all the macros, micros, whatever. And then it says like, share with others. And so then when you click that, then it's on the global database and then anyone can add it to their journal, which is kind of nice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:10

Yeah. So the end result of that is if somebody goes to make your like, you know, chocolate chip TVP muffins or something, they just go to their MyFitnessPal. Yeah. And they type in, you know, PDV chocolate chip TVP muffins and they can just put in one serving right there. And they don't have to add anything if they're using your recipes, because that stuff's already in the global MyFitnessPal database.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:28

Yeah. And it labeled all of them as like PDV, whatever. Yeah. So they're easier to find when you're searching.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:33

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:33

But I don't know, it took me like many, many, many, many hours, but I think it's pretty cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:38

Yeah, it's really cool. I haven't actually seen anybody else do that really.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:40

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:40

There's another one called Macro Factor. Right off the bat, no free option. It's a subscription. Yeah. But the advantage of macro factor is that it will calculate your actual calorie expenditure over time based on the weight entries that you put in. When you get on a scale and put in your weight, you put that in the macro factor, and then you put in all the food you ate every day, just like any other food tracking app, and it'll automatically accurately calculate how many calories you actually burn every day and how many calories you specifically need to eat every day to hit like a goal. So you put in like, I want to lose, you know, two pounds a week or whatever into macro factor. And then you weigh in on the scale every day and you tell it your weight and you tell it what you ate every day. And then it'll say over time, it'll do a weekly check-in once a week. Over time it'll say, okay, based on what you ate and based on how your weight is moving. You need to adjust your calorie goal every day by this amount. So it does all that for you automatically. And it's really good because a lot of people will use the total daily energy expenditure calculators online.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:40

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:40

And they're great and they give you a good starting estimate, but they're not like obviously gonna be the right number for everybody. Right. And people don't go back and like adjust it. So it causes people to think they're in a deficit because they're using the number that the calculator gave, gave them. Yeah. But it's not really a deficit for them. So using an app like Macro Factor could just like eliminate that guesswork.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:59

Right? I mean, there's all kinds of factors where you would think that number would be right, but like you're either over or under it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:05

Right. For sure. Yeah. But it's also a, it's a lot of data that gets presented to you too. So it can be a little, it could be overwhelming. Overwhelming.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:12

It kind of accounts for like exercise too. You don't really have to worry about like how much exercise you do and how many calories that would be.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:18

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:19

And adjust it yourself.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:20

Yeah. You don't enter in your exercise, but it just knows like. Right. How much you're losing, how much weight you're losing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:25

Which makes sense, 'cause like a lot of those TDEE calculators are like. Are you sedentary? Yeah. Are you moderately? Whatever. Are you like a super athlete?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:34

Right. Yeah. So I, I like it a lot, but the shortcoming there is with us using all of your recipes really. Yeah. And like even when you make something, you're like, Hey, I put it in MyFitnessPal, you can copy it outta my journal. Like we can't really do any of that with Macro factor. Yeah. So it just makes sense for us to use MyFitnessPal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:49

I've looked at both of the other apps and there's really no way to add it to a global food database, especially with Cronometer, because I think. I think Cronometer enters all their stuff themselves.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:58

Yeah. It's like verified on their end.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:59

Yeah. There isn't like user entered data. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:02

Yeah. So anyway, there are definitely some options out there and there are others. I think Lose It is another popular one. Yeah, I tried it very briefly once upon a time, but like the, the three I mentioned here, really just MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor are the ones I've, I've stuck to the most over the years. I used Cronometer for a couple months when I first went vegan just to make sure I was on the, in the right general, you know, vicinity of good nutrition. But, uh, I didn't really need to use it after that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:24

Oh, I think the Lose It one is kind of cool. Isn't that the one that's like, you lost the weight of a cantaloupe?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:28

Yeah, I think so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:29

I like that. That's fun.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:30

Yeah, I know a lot of people like that one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:31

You lost a guitar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:33

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:35

Just like random inanimate objects that you know weigh the same amount as you lost. It's fun.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:40

Some tips and tricks for tracking nutrition things. When you are tracking your calories, specifically, don't forget to track like drinks that have calories as well as like sauces and condiments. A lot of people forget that stuff, but if you're gonna be tracking calories, you should be tracking everything you put in your mouth that contains calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:56

Mayo will bite you in the ass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:58

Mayo. Things like peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter, oil oil's a huge one. Oil's bad. Yeah. Like, you can't just go squirt oil on it and you have to actually know how much oil you use. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:06

That's why I use those little spray if I'm gonna use any oil.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:09

Because it says zero calories on the can so you can actually

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:10

Yeah, exactly. You can do a hundred sprays.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:12

Yeah. You spray the whole can in there. Zero calories. That's not true, by the way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:15

No, no. I do like two or three sprays. I don't even think it's like, not even probably a teaspoon.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:19

Yeah. Also for recipes that you make often. All the apps I mentioned do let you just add your own custom recipe. Yeah. It's kinda like we mentioned there. You'll basically just go put in each ingredient and then you'll save it as a recipe. So, I make a protein oatmeal a lot of mornings and I make it the same way every time. So I just have a custom.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:34

There's a reason that's not on our site.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:37

I like it anyway. I've got a custom recipe in there so I can just say like, okay, when I'm, when I ate this morning, I ate my proats, is what it's in there is. So it makes it a lot easier. And the more consistent, like the things you eat are like if you eat the same thing for breakfast every morning. Yeah. Like it makes the tracking way faster.'cause it's gonna be. In like your recent entries. Mm-hmm. So it's usually just like one or two taps and you'll know it's like the same thing every time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:01

And sometimes I like making like a big batch of tofu scramble. Yeah. I weigh the final product and then like I will enter it in as like how many grams or whatever it is. Yeah. And then I just weigh out what a serving size is. And that's kind of nice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:16

Yeah, that's nice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:17

And it gets like an exact amount.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:19

Also, another tip actually. If you're gonna be the only person eating this thing you made, you can just like decide it's gonna be six servings. Right? Right. And then you can just, um, eat it all. Right. Like say you, you have six servings of this recipe. You're the only one eating it. So it doesn't really matter if you ate like one serving or it was like one and a half servings, or maybe it was like two and a half servings. As long as for the week you represented that you ate all six servings. That's true. It doesn't really matter how much you ate every time, 'cause like day to day is not really important. It's just the overtime, the calories measure you're out. So a lot of people will get really hung up and like. Well, I don't know how to make a serving size of this recipe I had, but if you're the only one that's gonna be eating it, you're gonna eat the entire thing anyway. Right. So yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:01

It's harder when you're sharing food with someone else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:03

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:04

Or cooking for your family or something though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:06

Yeah. And tracking can be kind of a pain at first. If nothing's gonna be in your recent entries, you're gonna have to like manually search for everything. You might even find some foods that aren't in the database yet. Mm-hmm. But after like a week or two, you get used to it and you start having things that are like repeat entries and it gets super fast. Right, like so like with a lot of meals, now when I go to track something that's not like a brand new thing, but when I go to track most things, it's like five or six seconds and I've got my whole meal in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:31

Another good point though is if you are going through the effort of tracking, you should probably be weighing,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:35

Yeah, I, I agree.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:37

It's probably like the best tool you can get for the kitchen really. Yeah. Is a scale.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:40

I agree. You get a kitchen scale. You can put everything on there, right? Like put it in a bowl, dump it in, whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:45

But like peanut butter specifically? Yeah. Like it says two tablespoons, but I don't know about that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:48

Yeah. Anything that's like tablespoons or cups I don't trust really. Yeah. So it's just way easier to weigh those things out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:54

I agree. Oh my God. Vital wheat gluten, it'll say like a quarter of a cup weighs this much. No, it doesn't.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:01

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:01

No it doesn't. When you weigh it, it's like 30% more than you think it is. So I think it is pretty important to weigh a lot of things.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:08

Protein powder's real bad about that too. I actually had like a short video, I don't know, a year or two ago where it was like the scoops weren't even close. It was like you were getting double the amount in the scoop that the labels said the scoop should have.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:19

Right. Because there it's such a dense powder. Yeah. And it like compresses over time and gets even more dense. Yeah. And settles. So, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:27

So now I just throw my shaker cup on the scale and like dump it until it's the right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:30

It's just better. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:31

Definitely a good tip. And even if you don't plan on tracking all of your food forever , I would just recommend doing it for like a week or two when you first start, so you understand in general what you're eating, right? Because it's really hard to make those connections while you're eating the food if you're not tracking it, you're like, oh, I probably didn't have this much or that much. Yeah. But like the first time I tracked food was just insanely eye-opening, right? It is like, oh, I'm eating for a family of four. I don't, I don't understand how food works. I, I know nothing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:01

You know what the sad is? Vegan shredded cheese.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:04

Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:04

Like when you see like what a serving size is, it'll. It'll gut you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:08

There. There are a lot of things. Peanut butter's kinda like that too. Oh yeah. It's like, wow, who thought this was a.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Who's the, who's the serving side for ants? Like, it's just not, it doesn't seem like much, I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:17

Yeah. So it can be really eye opening to just track the first time. And then also the last thing for tracking food, like your macros are mostly personal preference. If you're interested in muscle growth. You'll probably have a protein goal. But even that is like a pretty big range typically. So it can be a lot of preference in there. But then between fats and carbs, that's really a personal preference thing. Yeah, you can be much higher fat, much higher carb, carbs will tend to keep you a little more energized long term. So I try to like, I basically have like a top limit of fat. I, I try to get like 60 grams of fat a day, and then my protein, I'm at like 190 a day and then whatever I have left for my calorie target, I just fill it up with carbs. Yeah. But there are a lot of ways to do that. So, um, it's, there's a lot of personal preference in there. Don't feel like, you know, if you're like 10 grams off one way or the other, you're doing something wrong.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:02

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:03

All right, so that's all for food and nutrition. Next, we wanted to talk about tracking, like body composition and weight. Uh, I don't wanna start with the scale. We'll talk about the scale, but first, let's talk about some things that aren't weighing yourself on a scale. So, one that's, actually pretty good, but also the one people like to do the least, I think especially if they're doing like a weight loss journey, is progress pictures. Um, I think it's good to take progress pictures, you know, keep 'em just for yourself to look at over time. Because I feel like once you get down to your goal, you're gonna want the pictures of where you started. Maybe.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:35

Maybe, I don't know. It depends if you're a picture person. Some people just hate taking pictures.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:40

That's true. Yeah. But yeah, I like to be able to see like where I started.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:45

Yeah, that's fair.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:46

But.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:46

Not for everyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:47

Right. And you don't even have to do 'em on a regular basis. Maybe just like once monthly or something. Once every month. Once every six months, something like that. You know, just so you have some idea, you can look back and be like, wow, I made a lot of progress. Something else, another really good one, I think even better than the scale a lot of the time is the measuring tape. So you can take basically body measurements of like your biceps, abdomen, thighs, legs, things like that. You can do that every week is usually like the the.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:13

Chest is so weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:15

For a girl?. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:16

Yeah. I never know where, where do you want me to measure?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:19

Yeah. It's, it's the, the nipple line.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:21

Okay. With or without a bra. I mean, like, these things vary vastly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:26

Sorry. Continue.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:30

No, yeah. Well, the, that brings up an important point though. Just make sure you measure the same spot every time. That's the most important thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:36

You should get a tattoo where you're gonna measure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:38

Yeah. That's not a terrible idea. A very small one. Yeah. Yeah. A five dollar tattoo.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:44

There's no such thing as a five tattoo. I gotta get him inked up. He doesn't know how much tattoos cost.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:52

So if you're using a measuring tape over time, you can just like write this down on pencil and paper, like we were talking about. Uh, some of the fitness tracking apps, like Strong or Hevy, actually both let you put in body measurements or you could do something where you get a digital measuring tape. They're like.$10. And then the app has like all the body measures, so it'll track it over time too and chart it out and stuff for you. So that's pretty good. But yeah, I mean, like that will help you see progress even if the scale weight isn't changing. Like there can definitely be scenarios where maybe like your calories you're eating keep you at about the same body weight, but you're gaining a little bit of muscle, you're losing a little bit of fat, and your body composition is actually changing quite a bit. And the only way you're really gonna be able to tell that is maybe with progress pictures, but most likely with the the measuring tape because your measurements will still come down if you're losing fat and gaining a little bit of muscle at the same body weight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:39

Don't they have this like suit thing that measures everything?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:42

Yeah. The, the, uh, zoot suit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:44

I don't know that, or I don't remember what it's called.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:46

Something like that. Yeah. You, you put on this big suit. It looks like a motion capture thing from a movie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:50

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:51

And uh, yeah, you just like stand in front of your phone camera and it takes a bunch of measurements from the picture and then you just put that on once a week I guess.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:58

It's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:59

It really cool. I've heard, I've heard it's pretty good. I've never used it. Yeah. But I don't know how exactly how.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:03

We should get it and we should report back.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:04

A lot of these things, even if it's not like super accurate. It's probably still gonna show you over time some differences.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:09

Yeah. Trend. Which would be good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:10

Yeah. So yeah, check that out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:11

Or just buy pants and a bunch of different sizes and see which one you end up in that week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:15

There you go. Yeah. Oh, actually, that brings up when I first started losing weight a long time ago, you know, I got to a point where I had to start putting new holes in my belt.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:23

Yeah, that's a good track.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:24

So I use that as a tracker, like, and even if you're not putting new holes in, you can say like, oh, I'm in this hole, and then I'm in that hole. So you can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:31

That's what he said.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:33

So yeah, you can use little things like that that aren't a scale to track progress. Another one is your actual performance progress in whatever exercise or sport or whatever it is that you take part in. The really obvious one is if you're doing lifting and you're getting stronger mm-hmm. Even if your body weight isn't necessarily changing, you're almost definitely putting on additional muscle mass. I mean, there's definitely the ways to get stronger without putting on a lot of additional muscle mass, but it's gonna be growing a little bit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:57

Or like if you're running further.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:59

Yeah, faster.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:59

Or biking further.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:01

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:02

I dunno how they track those things. I'm sure, yeah. They have ways. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:06

But yeah, if you're, I mean, your performance is improving over time. Yeah. Your body composition is almost definitely changing for the better, at least to a, a small degree.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:14

Or even if that's not something you're worried about and you just wanna be like more physically healthy and fit, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:19

Sure. If the important thing to you is just I ride my bike longer no matter what. Yeah. My body looks like that's a perfectly reasonable goal too. Yeah. So by the way, to track it. The other one that you'll see a lot about, but it's actually super hard to measure, is like body fat percentage. There are a couple different ways to do it. There's like the body fat calipers, there's like an InBody scanner, which is kinda like a really fancy scale you might see some doctor's offices or like spas or something. And then there's a DEXA scan, which is actually pretty accurate for most people, but it's a whole medical thing and it's kind of expensive and kind of hard to find. So body fat percentage in general, really hard to measure for most people. The calipers are like not accurate at all for the most part. Yeah. But it's another one where like if you did it six months apart and you saw a pretty big difference in the numbers, your body composition's probably changing. It's like enough that you can see it's less, but. You know, there are a lot of people where it's like they, they come online, they're like, look, I'm 4% body fat. And it's like, no, you're not. I'm sorry. Like you, you look fine, you look great, but you're not 4%. Like the number's not right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:18

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:19

But you'll be able to see over time, like your body fat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:21

But you are 70% water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:23

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:24

I just think that's a fun fact. I dunno.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:25

It is a fun fact.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:26

Just like the earth.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:27

So now. To talk about scales. A lot of people have a special relationship with a scale for whatever reason. A lot of people don't like weighing themselves.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:35

It can be triggering for a lot of us women that grew up in the early two thousands with, uh.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:39

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:40

Eating disorders and whatnot, you know? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:42

So, yeah, there are a couple ways you can approach it. I try to weigh in every day and I just look at my averages over time. But I'm aware that there are daily fluctuations and for me it can fluctuate four to five pounds on a given day depending on what I ate and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:56

If you get to the point where you're like, I need to poop twice and pee three times before I can drink water so that I can weigh myself. You might have gone too far.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:05

Yeah, I might just like ignore the, ignore the scale for a little while if you're in that situation. But no matter how you choose to do, I would definitely like almost completely ignore day-to-day fluctuations. And you can either, like at the end of the week, you can add up the seven days, divide by seven to get like an average for the week and just look at that once a week. Or you can use an app that'll automatically do that for you. As far as like a smart scale goes, in most cases, I probably wouldn't spend the extra money on a lot of smart features on a scale ' cause they're not super accurate. It can be nice to have it automatically synced to your phone in case you just, you know, forget to put in your weight for the day. But it does a lot of stuff. It's like your bone mass percentage, your body fat percentage, your heart rate, your water percentage, like, uh, the scale you're standing on at home is not really able to measure a lot of that stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:51

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:51

Accurately. But again, it can be another thing where if you like look at the numbers over six months, you might see some trends that are interesting. So, but as far as like seeking out those features for accurate numbers, I just wouldn't do it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:01

Save your money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:02

Yeah. And then with any tracking that you're doing, uh, I would like, try not to get too obsessive about it. You know, we're using this as motivation and not punishment. So we don't wanna be in a situation where we look at what we were tracking and we like, feel really bad about mm-hmm. You know, what we, what we did or didn't do, uh, or like. Just feel bad about how we handle things. That's not really what it's for. You want to be able to just look back and say like, oh, okay, I maybe need to adjust this, but, you know, don't beat yourself up about it. And if you're in a position where tracking is causing you to have like really negative thoughts or feelings, I just maybe wouldn't track that thing for a while.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:37

Another app not directly related to fitness or tracking or whatever. That is still helpful for a fitness journey is Happy cow. Yeah, because if you're gonna be traveling and you don't have access to your own kitchen and you're gonna know you're gonna be eating out, Happy Cow's a good app to go figure out where your vegan options are, and then be able to look at menus and stuff beforehand.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:54

What, what does Happy cow do?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:55

Oh, Happy Cow is like the Googling of vegan food restaurants.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:01

Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:02

And everyone has their reviews on there and you know, pictures of the food. Oh, you can, and it's so much better than just typing in vegan options in whatever city you're in.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:12

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:12

Because like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:13

They got ratings and like they have ratings, comments from actual vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:15

Things like that. Right. Actual vegans are inputting vegans or I think vegetarians too. Yeah. Yeah. Are inputting the restaurants into the app. Yeah. And then leaving ratings and pictures of food, uploading menus.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:26

It's a great app. It's my favorite app. Of all time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:28

And it's not just all vegan places. Like it'll even show you places around you that have a couple vegan things on the menu that other people around you have tried before. Yeah. Or vegetarian.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:36

And honestly, stop uploading stupid shit to Happy Cow. I'm so serious. If you're one of these people that's uploading to Happy Cow because they have pop or something. Yeah. Fuck you. Yeah. I get all excited. I'll see this restaurant and then I'll go look at their menu and I'm like, they have bread.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:53

Yeah. Bread's vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:54

I'm not gonna go there for their bread.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:56

Yeah. So to kind of, uh, wrap up the tracking section, just start simple. I would just try to track maybe one thing at a time at the beginning and maybe even for a little while. Just the thing that's most important to you that you're most focused on, so you don't get overwhelmed and then, you know, if you're feeling really comfortable with it, after a certain point, you just add more things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:11

Yeah. Until you have a 60 row Excel spreadsheet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:14

So yeah, and if the, if the method you're using like a 60 row Excel spreadsheet feels overly complicated or takes up a lot of time, there are probably some better options that'll fit your needs. So I think everybody that's listening should maybe pick one new tool or app this week, unless you're already totally overwhelmed with your tracking situation and see how it changes your consistency for, you know, whatever your goal is would be it. I want to work out more. I want to, you know, manage my calories a little better, so try that out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:38

Or I wanna try new vegan restaurants daily.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:41

Yeah, that too. And then.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:42

Something for everyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:43

All right, so next we have our myth of the week. The myth this week is vegan protein comes with too many calories or too much volume.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:51

Oh my God.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:52

This one gets talked about a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:53

People keep saying that peanut butter is protein. That's the problem. Yeah. Is that when people are like, what's the best vegan protein source? The first thing outta people's mouth is peanut butter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:03

Yeah, peanut butter. The one you hear like the carb heavy things like lentils, quinoa, beans, or the fat heavy things like peanut butter. Nuts, nuts, seeds. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:12

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:12

So yeah, I mean, those definitely have more calories because they're not even protein dominant.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:18

Yeah. I think if it's a protein source, it should be protein forward. Like I don't call anything like protein unless it, I think. I dunno, in my brain it's like 25% on a calorie basis. Yeah. Is when I start saying things are like protein focused.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:31

Right? Yeah. So like, uh, if you're talking about vegan protein, you should be thinking more in terms of like tofu, tempeh and seitan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:39

TVP.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:40

TVP, right? A lot of forms of soy. Yeah. Those are soy, way higher protein per calorie. And they're, you know, better than or equal to a lot of the non vegan protein sources. Like, I mean, tofu specifically, and a lot of the forms we eat it in is like 65% protein, so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:56

Right. And edamame puffs are crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:58

Yeah. Edamame and the concentrated TVPs, like Say Grace has.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:02

Oh my God, it's like 90. I think it's like 90% protein. Right. It's like the seitan of soy. Yeah. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:07

I love beans, right? Yeah. Like, I will eat beans outta a bowl.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:11

He'll literally eat beans out of a bowl. This is just true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:14

Just, you know, as a whole meal, a couple times a day probably. Yeah. But it's not, he would a, a primary protein source.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:21

He doesn't even season them. He just dumps them into the bowl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:25

They're seasoned out of the can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:26

No, they're not.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:27

Yeah, they're like beans. They're all seasoned, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:30

Oh my god.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:31

Anyway, I don't know why you'd ever need to season beans, they're perfect as they are. Anyway, point being, that's, that's not really what you should be comparing to, like the, the major non-vegan proteins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:41

Yeah. It's just not a fair comparison.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:42

And they do have protein, like it's great for protein, it's just not a comparison.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:47

Yeah. I mean, if it's peanut butter's 180 calories and you get what, like seven or eight grams of protein out of it. Yeah, that's Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:54

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:54

Not great.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:56

Yeah. Especially if you have a high protein goal, like I'm trying to get a 190 Yeah. Grams of protein a day these days. And like, I, there's no way I'm gonna do that with peanut butter and beans. Right. Being like my main sources of pro. It's just not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:09

Yeah, I just see a lot of really disingenuous video takes on like Instagram and TikTok, where you have this carnivore dude that's like, here are three plates and these are, you know, omnivore proteins. Yeah. And these are vegan proteins and they, they have the same amount of protein between them, but this one is only 500 calories and this vegan one is 2,500 calories. Yeah. You used rice.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:35

You made a plate of rice one of the three objects.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:39

Well, also, not only the protein per calorie, but there's like the volume comparisons. Because something like broccoli is actually pretty high protein per calorie. Yeah, but they're like, you have to eat a wheelbarrow of broccoli to give your protein for the day. It's like, yeah, you would, and nobody's doing that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:53

It's like, I wasn't suggesting that you do that. Yeah. Oh my God. I got ripped a new one when I said spinach was high protein on a calorie basis. This guy was like, yeah, I'm gonna eat 15 pounds of spinach. It's like, yeah, that's what I was saying. Dumb ass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:07

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:08

That's what I was saying. You should go do that. Like I'm just saying, if you have to choose between vegetables, spinach and broccoli are like higher protein than potatoes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:18

Yeah. I think part of what contributes to this is there's this fascination with using protein per 100 grams out there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:24

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:26

And they're using it for things that aren't dry products. So you're saying this only has 10 grams of protein per 100 grams, which like maybe sounds like it should be like 10% protein, but if the thing you're talking about is 50% water of that 100 grams, then it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:44

Yeah. The per hundred grams, it's not a great thing to compare foods of, like what they actually bring to the table. Right. When if they're not dry, like you said, right. If you're talking about like TVP or vital wheat gluten, like, okay, these are completely bone dry products. Like we can compare apples to apples. Yeah. But like when you're talking about silken tofu versus TVP.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:06

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:06

Like, yeah. Well obviously.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:09

Right. And it's, you know, the thing that is going to limit you from eating more food for most people who are tracking are the calories. Like that's the, the thing that says, okay, I need to get my protein in this many calories because that is what limits how much food I'm eating for the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:25

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:25

It's not like I can only eat 1500 grams of food today. I don't think anybody thinks about it that way, so I'm not sure it really matters how many grams of protein are in a hundred grams of the food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:38

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:38

Unless you're just like running into a situation where you're having like a volume eating problem. Yeah. And you're like, I, I can't fit any more food in my stomach. In which case you're probably having a lot of water heavy foods.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:48

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:48

Anyway, I would recommend thinking about protein as like a protein per calorie thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:54

Yeah. Percentage.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:54

And not a protein per 100 gram thing for almost all tracking.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:58

I agree. Yeah. And if you're using something like MyFitnessPal, that's what you're picking. Yeah. Your macro goals based on is like percentage of my overall calories. Yeah. Like it's like I want 25% of my overall calories to come from protein, so then why wouldn't I look at food on a percentage per calorie basis?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:14

Yeah. The weight is for like measuring out servings. The weight is not for deciding how high protein it is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:21

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:21

We've had a lot of discussions about that, so I feel a lot of feelings about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:26

I get yelled at a lot about this and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it because I'm right. Okay. You can cut that out if you want, but I am.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:36

All right. And the last thing we had to talk about is you published on the Protein Deficient Vegan YouTube channel. Your first long form YouTube video.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:43

Yes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:43

So where you actually go through the whole recipe and talk about what you're doing and the ingredients and like show. I think the most useful thing when I watch a video like that, especially yours, is to see oh, when I do the dough this way, or whatever thing I'm working on, this is how this should look at this point. Right? Because like. I haven't done a lot of baking recipes specifically, but, um, a lot of other recipes too. But like I'll get to a point where I'm like, oh, is this like the right squishyness? Is it like too wet? I don't, yeah. I have no idea what this is supposed to be. So like having a video like that to go through and look at really helps a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:17

Yeah. And I've been trying to like, talk through ingredients too, because I use, I use ingredients for weird stuff. I, I like TVP in baking.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:25

Yeah. We have a couple ingredients now that we've ordered. It comes with a little scientist on the packet, like doing some kind of experiment now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what's happening anymore, but it all tastes great.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:34

Yeah. I am a chemical engineer, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:37

Oh, that's fair. Yeah. That's, that's, that's true. That's a good point. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:41

Yeah. But I was getting some requests to do long form content and I've been putting it off for like. Well, honestly, like a year because Oh, oh my God, I have incredible stage fright. And so honestly, like the long form content, like I can't do on camera. Okay. Like I have actual panic attacks, like even trying to talk on camera, even thinking about talking on camera. I legitimately have panic attacks. Um, so we're doing hands in pans. Yeah. That's my thing. I'm doing long form content voicing over the process, but like. That's the only way I can do it and keep my mental health. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:17

I think that's what people are there for anyway. They want to see the food and hear the, uh, funny overture. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:22

Yeah. So if you're like really sad that my face isn't there, I'm, I'm sorry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:27

Probably never gonna be.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:28

I'm glad. My face will be there and I'll be sobbing. So I don't think, I don't think anyone wants that. It'll make us all really uncomfortable. So I'm a hands in pans girl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:38

Not a great way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:38

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:40

Alright, well I think that's all we had to talk about this week, and we will be back next Monday morning as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:45

If you have any comments or recipe requests or topic requests.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:49

Yep. If you have anything, there's the link in the show notes that says, send us a text. You can send it there. You can find us on social media. Also links in the show notes. Go there. Also have a link to your new long form YouTube video.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:00

Please watch it. It only has 30 views.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:03

It just came out, so, so people can go and see that. So lots of ways to reach out to us. Please let us know if you have any thoughts or questions or you want to hear about anything specific on the podcast. You wanna say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:15

Bye.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:15

Bye everybody.