Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 24. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you wanna say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:07

Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:08

Hi everybody. We hope you had a great Halloween.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:11

We only had a mildly good Halloween because we only got like 20 trick or treaters.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:15

Yeah. All right, so this week our topic is, does meal and protein timing really matter? So as we go through this, we're gonna talk about meal timing in general. Uh, most commonly controlled by something called intermittent fasting, and whether or not that's maybe worth it or not. We'll also talk about protein timing and what makes a difference there. Then we're gonna touch on a couple of other macro and supplement timing specifics. Just a few that we wanna highlight there. And then we have our myth of the week. So let's dive right into some information about meal timing. So meal timing basically just means, how many times a day do you eat? How long do you take between meals? Some people take the opportunity to try to structure that and schedule it out a little bit to maybe get some more optimal results or just make it work with their schedule. Maybe you have a really tight schedule and you have to schedule in your meals. So, intermittent fasting is the main one we're gonna talk about here because it's kind of the most common. What intermittent fasting means is basically you take a big chunk of the day and you don't eat. So most people fast, uh, the obvious time is when they sleep right? You're obviously not eating while you're asleep, so that can be kind of a natural fast. Hopefully you're getting about eight hours a day of a fast there. So that would be considered an intermittent fast.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24

Some people do eat in their sleep.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26

Do they? How do you pull that off?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28

I've seen this. I've seen people sleepwalk to the fridge and they eat. This is a thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32

Oh, I guess, yeah, man, that'd be really hard to account for. If you were trying to keep track of it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:36

You'd be so screwed. So I guess if you're just gaining weight and you can't explain it, and food's missing in your fridge, maybe that's how you figure it out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:42

Yeah, and I guess if you know you have that problem, you put up a camera by the refrigerator at night and then you can just kind of watch what you eat and put it into your MyFitnessPal or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:51

Yeah. Or like lock the fridge with a padlock. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:54

Very normal way to deal with that issue, I'm sure. Right. So normally you would fast, quote unquote, while you're asleep, you wouldn't be eating. So if you slept for eight hours and then you ate freely the time you're awake, which is pretty normal, that's what most people do. That would maybe be considered like an 8:16 protocol for intermittent fasting, you're fasting for eight hours, you're eating in the 16 hour window. And so that's not really to the point where you're considering it like a restricted feeding window because you're just doing the natural thing. But some people take it a step further and they'll flip that

around and do a 16: 2:25

8 eating window. So you are fasting for 16 hours and then you're only eating for eight hours of the day. Now what that ends up looking like in reality is basically you just skip breakfast, which a lot of people probably do anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:39

Or dinner.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:40

So if you don't eat until noon every day, then

you have a window from noon to 8: 2:42

00 PM where you can eat whatever you want. And then you had a 16 hour fast each day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:49

Yeah, some people do.

Uh, 12: 2:50

12. I've seen two.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:53

Yeah, some people do. One.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Or 20: 2:54

4.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:55

Yeah.

20: 2:55

4. Some people do one meal a day.

Yeah, so it's like 23: 2:58

1 kind of. So there's a lot of different ways you can do it. So maybe you're wondering like, why would I do that? Is it actually worth doing that? And really the main and possibly only benefit to an intermittent fasting setup is that it can make it just easier to control your calories. You have less time in the day where you are allowing yourself, I guess, to eat food so you might not snack as much for the extra hours, things like that. So there are some benefits in general for health, for calorie restriction, um, especially if you're trying to lose weight. Obviously it's necessary to lose weight, but intermittent fasting is just a way that you might be able to mentally make it a little easier to do the calorie restriction. If you're able to restrict your calories to whatever your goal is without doing intermittent fasting, you probably don't need to mess with it at all. Uh, there aren't any real special benefits to, to eating that way. What I've done in the past a couple times is like and again, not recommending this and I don't think there's anything special to it, but it just kinda helps to control calories is we've done like a 24 hour fast once a week, so we just don't eat for a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:00

Those are rough days.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:01

They are rough days. I feel like it was a little easier to control calories on the weekly average. Plus you get to eat a little more on the days you do eat, so you know you can kind of play with this and see what works for you or don't do fasting at all if it doesn't make sense and you're able to control your calories, just fine. That's no problem either. So that's meal timing. Next I wanna talk about protein timing. So there are probably a lot of things you've heard from kind of bro science and just general gym culture around protein timing. Some of the common ones are like you have to take in protein as soon as you finish your workout. You have to only eat 20 grams of protein in a meal, some things like that. So we're gonna cover a couple of those and try to give a little more information about what's real and what's maybe not. So first of all, for the amount of protein, which is basically how much protein you would eat in a single meal, um, you may have heard something like your body can't absorb more than like 20 to 30 grams in a meal. Um, that's not true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:54

Yeah, I've definitely heard that before.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:55

Yeah. So basically you're as far as just absorbing it, your body will eventually use, you know, whatever you take in, in some kind of way. And then as far as using the protein for muscle building or preventing muscle loss, which is what, you know, I really care about personally. And I think a lot of people who are working out in the gym really care about using the protein for, there was actually a study in 2023 that showed there really isn't an upper limit for the amount of protein you can use in a single meal for the muscle building. So the reason for that is basically just the more protein you eat in a meal, the longer it hangs out in your bloodstream, to be available for those muscle growth phases. So that's not really something you need to worry about. It's gonna come into play definitely for logistical purposes, because if you're trying to eat all of your protein in one meal, for some reason, if you're trying to eat 100 grams, 150 grams in one sitting, uh, that could be pretty difficult.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:46

I think I can eat 100 grams in one sitting with those rice crispy treats made out of edamame puffs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:50

That's true. That's a really good point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:52

I do it easily too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:53

Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about this, um, using a lot of your protein desserts, I don't think this would be much of a problem.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:59

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:00

Yeah. And then next is like the number of times you eat protein every day. So the number of meals you use to hit your daily protein target. You've probably heard a lot of things about this. It was a big thing in bodybuilding culture for a long time that you need to eat like six times a day religiously to really make sure your muscles are growing all day long. There was a study back in 2020 that compared eating your protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:23

Ah,, 2020, what a good year.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:26

Eating your total protein target across three meals, versus eating it across six meals. Same total protein target for the day, but doing it in three meals versus six meals, they showed there was virtually no difference in any body composition metric that they were able to see. So, you definitely don't need to stick to like strictly eating six meals a day to really optimize your muscle growth. Ideally it's probably somewhere around three to four, but that's mostly for logistical reasons. You can really do whatever works for you. If you can do it in two meals, that's probably a little better than doing it in one meal. If you can do it in three, that's probably a little better than doing it in two. Beyond three is not really anything meaningful as far as benefit, but again, if you have a high protein target, like I try to get about 190 grams a day, so for me, it's easier if I can split that up into four meals of like just roughly 50 grams of protein in each meal. But if I was trying to do it in two, I'd have to get like a hundred grams of protein in two different meals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:20

What do you qualify as a meal?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:23

Yeah. So for the purposes of protein timing, a meal is when did I ingest some protein?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:27

So not The Hobbit definition of a meal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:30

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:30

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:32

Elevensies and second breakfast.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:34

Yeah. And if you do it the Hobbit way, that's fine. And you'll probably only have to eat 15 to 20 grams of protein every meal to get it all in through your 11 meals of the day. Uh, but you know, some people just don't wanna do that. The overarching conclusion here is basically, it doesn't really matter how many meals you do it in, just do whatever works for you. And the most important thing is to make sure you're hitting your total protein intake goal for the day. So again, if you wanted to do it all in one meal, that would probably work well, it'd probably work a little better for the actual muscle growth if you could do it in two to three meals. But beyond three meals, there's not much additional benefit there. So do whatever works for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:10

Okay. So when you say three meals, is there like a requirement in spacing those where you're saying that's optimal?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:15

Yeah, so that's another thing that gets discussed a lot is basically the meal timing. And that's kind of where the initial idea of six meals a day came in because people wanted to make sure they were getting basically a meal in every four hours, no more than four hours.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:29

Wow. So they were eating all day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:31

Yeah, literally. I mean like, and really strict bodybuilders, and a lot of 'em still do that. They'll like set a midnight alarm or something to get up and have some protein and go back to sleep.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:40

So they're like Guinea pigs, like you know how Guinea pigs just like eat constantly?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:44

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:45

Okay. Interesting. I was unaware of this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:47

No, that's definitely a thing, and a lot of people do that. And if that somehow works for your schedule, uh, that's great. And a reason they do that is because they, you know, historically have had really high protein targets. Like there were some body builder guys eating 300 grams, 400 grams of protein a day. So the only way that's even feasible is to eat like six meals a day. But those limits are much higher than most people need, especially if you're not on steroids or something. Like that's a whole different ball game really. But in general, the time between your meals is not super important for the actual optimization of muscle growth. So that same, um, 2023 study that showed there wasn't an upper limit in a single meal is kind of the basis for this too, because again, if you decide that you want to spread your meals out a little more and you're still hitting the same total daily protein, then you're gonna be having more protein per meal. And then as far as like protein timing around your workout specifically, a lot of people think that you need to take protein like immediately, directly after your workout to make sure that the muscle growth that you're triggering from your workout is able to use the protein. And there's some truth to that, it just doesn't need to be immediately after. You just wanna make sure you get some protein in within a couple of hours of your workout. Just maybe within two hours of your workout is fine. This is especially true if you are working out fasted, because basically there aren't any amino acids above your normal baseline available for your muscle growth there. So if you're working out fasted, you might want to consider either a bigger protein dose or a little sooner after your workout, but in general, you don't have to worry about it too much. So that's the information for protein. I wanna talk a little bit more now about some macro and supplement timing for a couple of little nuances. So one is carbohydrate timing around your workouts. So you take carbohydrates and your muscles use those for muscle glycogen and depletes those as you do your workout.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:31

Us lay people just call it carbs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:33

Carbs. Sugar. Yeah, fancy sugar. Um, so you want to try to have some carbs before a workout, even if it's just like a small snack, like an apple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, even maybe like a sports drink with some sugar in it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:49

What about a bag of Skittles?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:50

A bag of Skittles would work. Sure. Fast digesting carbohydrate. And that's just to make sure your glycogen stores in your muscle aren't fully depleted before you go to do your workout. Now, there are a lot of people who prefer to just work out fasted. That's fine. Just know that you might not be able to go quite as hard or have quite as long of a workout as you would if you had some carbs beforehand.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:11

That's what she said.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:13

That is what she said. Also fat timing, since we're talking about macros, we might as well mention fat. There isn't really a fat timing per se, but a lot of vitamins are fat soluble. So if you have a time of day where maybe you're taking some multivitamins or some supplements or something like that, or even just a big meal, you wanna try to make sure you have some fat with most meals. Just because some of those vitamins do need fat to process.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:37

Which vitamins?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:38

It's vitamin A, D, E, and K.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:41

Okay. What about iron?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:43

Iron, I know absorbs better with vitamin C.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:46

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:47

Next up for supplements is creatine. So creatine is included in a lot of pre-workouts, and some people seem to think that you have to take creatine right before a workout, but creatine doesn't have any short term effects. It's not like a stimulant or something when you take creatine, it doesn't do anything immediately after you took the creatine. It's more of a, we take creatine daily to keep refilling the creatine stores and the muscles. And it doesn't really matter when you take it, so I take mine pretty much whenever I remember throughout the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:17

What does Creatine do again?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:18

So creatine will give extra energy to your cells that you use during a workout. So if you take creatine regularly, you'll be able to get one or two extra reps when you do your workout. And over time that'll build more muscle because you did a little more volume. This can be especially useful for vegans and for women, because your body naturally makes a couple of grams of creatine a day, but you get the rest of it from food. Vegans don't get a lot from food because it does mostly come from meat. So, creatine supplementation for us can be a little more helpful. And then women have been shown to store less creatine in their body in general than men. So kind of for the same reason, extra supplementation can be helpful there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:54

I don't know if this is true, but I saw a TikTok video the other day, which, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but they were saying that creatine's actually good for brain health.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:02

And can, uh, reduce your chances of Alzheimer's disease or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:06

Yeah, I've seen that. And you know, for a long time, five grams a day has been kind of the standard for creatine and now it sounds like, they're maybe leaning towards a higher dose for the brain benefits.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:17

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:17

So some people are trying 10 grams a day. I've seen some people doing up to 20 grams a day. I don't think there's been enough studies on it to really know how much more if you need to take more to help in general. But the links to brain health are pretty strong so far. Also, essential amino acids, those can come in a supplement. I would just treat this like a small dose of protein because that's effectively what it is. It's the amino acids that come in protein, but just broken down into a really simple form. And.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:40

It can be good for like, rounding out your amino acid profile, though, like if you're eating a lot of seitan or something, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:46

Yeah. If you're eating seitan, you know, if it's low on lysine, you take an essential amino acid supplement, and it'll have extra lysine in there, so it'll basically make your meal a more of a complete protein. So you can use it for that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:57

I can't find a single one I like. They're always like too sour and uh, it just ruins my whole day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:04

Yeah, they do have a lot of crazy flavors for those for some reason it's always like some kind of sour berry or lemonade or rainbow sour candy or.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:11

Yeah, I'm like. Are the amino acids like naturally sour?'cause it seems like they really lean into the sour flavors and I just can't do it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:18

Yeah, I think I've had one unflavored one, but sometimes when those things say unflavored, it's not true. They're very flavored, not additionally flavored, but they taste like shit. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:27

That's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:29

The flavor is shit, but they can't write that on the can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:32

So if you know of a really good flavored one that's not like overly acidic, let me know. Yeah.'cause I haven't found one I liked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:38

This is another one not at all important for timing for a workout really. I like to drink mine during my workout just because I like to have a drink anyway, and it has flavor, which I like. On some of 'em. I found a couple that I like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:49

He likes really sour stuff, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:50

Yeah, so I do tend to drink that during my workout, 'cause I want to try to drink it during the day sometime anyway. But, it's not really important when you take that, or even if you take that in a lot of cases, but they can be helpful. And then the last one is pre-workouts. So there are a lot of packaged pre-workouts. Most people that go to the gym have probably tried some kind of pre-workout at some time or another. A lot of 'em have a lot of really crazy ingredients in there. And I think it's pretty common that you take the pre-workout before you do your workout. Right? So talking about timing with this seems a little silly, but a couple of things to note are caffeine is really the main ingredient in a pre-workout that does anything that's actually evidence-based.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:24

Some of those, those doses are crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:26

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Some of 'em are dangerous. Some of them have actually been banned and taken off the shelves in the past.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:30

300 milligrams. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:33

Yeah. Uh, I wouldn't go with that. Once you realize that caffeine is the important ingredient, you can save a lot of money by just switching to a cup of black coffee before your workout, you know?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:41

Or a V8 energy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:42

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:43

I don't like coffee. It stains your teeth.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:44

Yeah. V8 energy. Good. That's good too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:47

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:47

Anything with caffeine, just take it maybe 20 minutes before the workout and you'll get 90% of the benefits, at least from a typical pre-workout supplement. There is another ingredient in a lot of pre-workouts that you might recognize just from the way it makes you feel, and that's beta-alanine and that gives you that kind of tingly itchy sensation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:04

Oh, I hate that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:04

Yeah. So a lot of 'em have that, and it makes you feel like your pre-workout is like really doing a lot for you, for your workout. But you know, surprisingly that's not necessarily something that you need to take right before your workout either. First of all, a lot of people probably don't need to take beta alanine at all. It's more of a supplement for endurance athletes. So if you're doing like long distance running or biking or something like that, or maybe if your workout is really intense and goes on for more than like an hour and a half or something, maybe some kind of athlete that those would be kind of use cases where you'd want beta alanine. And it's just something that will basically make you fatigue a little bit slower. It's not a really pronounced effect, but it will maybe give you a little bit extra endurance in a situation like that. But if you do want to use it, it's actually like creatine where the studies all indicate that you actually should take it a little bit every day and it doesn't really matter what time you take it. So, uh, I wouldn't recommend taking it right before you go to bed. That can make you feel pretty weird. And you can also split up the doses to be like smaller doses throughout the day. To get rid of that tingly feelings called paresthesia. So you, if you take smaller doses, you might not get that at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:08

So do they sell beta alanine outside of a pre-workout then?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:11

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:11

That you can just put in your water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:12

You can buy it on its own.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:13

Okay. Yeah, I'm thinking like not everyone works out every day. So if you're saying you have to dose it every day to see the benefits. You probably need it separate from a pre-workout.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:22

Yeah. And so in summary there, while there might be some things you can do to kind of optimize timing for your meals or your protein or some of your supplements, for the most part I wouldn't worry about really focusing on getting the timing exactly right. I would focus on getting the overall intake totals right, and making sure like you're taking your creatine every day and things like that. But as far as like when to take it, it doesn't matter a whole lot for most of these things, so I wouldn't stress about it. And we bring this up because, if you go and look wherever you get fitness advice from, there will be really dogmatic opinions about very strict timings for a lot of these things, and I just wanna let you know that most of that is, is not really necessary.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:02

Yeah. I have seen a lot of questions around timing of when to take supplements and when to eat and when to work out on like different subreddits. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:11

So do whatever works for you essentially.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:13

That's right. Next up we have our myth of the week. So this week is a fun one that if you're a vegan, you have definitely come across, uh, especially if you've talked about protein. And it's the myth that soy causes like high estrogen levels and quote unquote man boobs. Right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:28

Yeah. I think, um, if this were true, we wouldn't really need plastic surgeons now, would we?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:33

Yeah, right. First of all, soy has a much weaker form of estrogen in it that plants have called phytoestrogens and phytoestrogens effect on, like human estrogen levels are extremely low.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:45

Oh my God, I hear it all the time. And like the whole soy boy thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:50

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:50

I mean, it's just stupid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:51

But there, there's never actually been a case of medically problematic estrogen levels or man boobs, which is officially called like Gynecomastia from soy intake. There's some theoretical possibilities if you eat an extreme amount of soy every day, but those are beyond like what a person could really even reasonably eat. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:12

I mean, I just think if there was any truth to this. A lot more girls would be eating soy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:17

Let's be honest.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:17

So, yeah. Feel free to be a soy boy and not worry about this. Not to mention, even if it did raise your estrogen levels, estrogen is actually heart protective, so that wouldn't even necessarily be a downside because it's not gonna raise it to a range that's like medically problematic, even if it raised it a little bit. So this is like a, a completely bullshit philosophy on a couple of levels.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:43

Yeah. And I mean, it sucks that they're always coming after soy, since I would say soy is probably one of the best protein sources for plant-based and vegan people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:51

Yeah. And for non-vegan people. So soy is a complete protein, first of all, like all the other non-vegan protein sources. So one of the things that's annoyed me the most since I've gone vegan is that soy hasn't been an option on menus right next to all the other protein options. Yeah. For my entire life. I don't understand why soy is like a second class citizen. You should see anytime you're on a, a menu and you see your protein options that you can put on top of your salad or in your sandwich or whatever it tofu should be one of the options. Or TVP.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:20

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:20

Or something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:21

Yeah. And honestly, okay. Conspiracy theory time, but I blame the big meat and dairy corporations for putting this negative thing on soy, because soy is also super fucking cheap. Like TVP is cheap, like tofu is cheap. A lot of your soy based protein sources are super cheap.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:41

So like, who doesn't want us to eat this?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:43

Yeah. Yeah. And the farmers also grow the soy, so I don't feel like it's hurting farmers or anything, if you want to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:50

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:50

Switch some of your proteins to soy proteins. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:53

I just, I just don't understand really, now that I've used tofu when I, I hadn't really used tofu at all before I went vegan, and I didn't, it was like, it was just a black spot in my brain. I heard the word tofu. I had no idea what the fuck it even was. And then I never tried it. And then now that I've tried it a lot, I just don't understand why it hasn't always been one of the primary protein choices.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:12

I know. And I think if more menus served it well, then you'd have more people that would just incorporate it into their diet naturally.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:20

It's like right now it's, from what I can tell, like we've been to a lot of restaurants and the only restaurants that really serve soy based products are Asian restaurants. Yeah. And they do a great job, but it's like most other restaurants, it's not even an option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:34

And so then most people are scared to even touch it because they don't know what to do with it. But you're missing out on an amazing protein source if you can eat soy. If you're not soy intolerant and you're trying to hit your protein goal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:46

No, I agree a hundred percent. And you know, edamame is good. I think people probably eat edamame a little more commonly'cause it's like almost thought of as a green bean type of thing. And that's soy, but that's soy. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:56

Or like, TVP is also soy based, so are edamame puffs, like, and those are super cheap.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:02

You can get like a huge dog food sized bag of TVP. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:06

25 pounds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:08

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:08

Like a little over a hundred bucks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:09

Yeah. Shelf stable.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:10

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:11

Oh man, I don't know. Soy based protein is definitely the best kept secret of vegans and vegetarians for some reason, but I just feel really strongly that it should just be a primary source of protein as an option for everybody, like all the other ones.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:24

Yeah, and it's really frustrating. I feel like the message is very hard to get out to the rest of the population, like. I'll put out videos on like, Hey, look at this cheap protein source. And I don't catch any non-vegan. Really, yeah. Except for some trolls.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:37

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:37

And I'm like, how do I get people to know about this?'cause it's a really cheap option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:41

Yeah. The soy stigma is real. Yeah. It shouldn't be.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:46

It's soy sad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:49

It is soy sad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:51

And I, I was impacted by the soy stigma. Yeah, but most, mostly I was impacted by thinking that tofu was gross.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:59

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:59

Because I hadn't really tried it. I went vegetarian at 12 and my main protein source ended up being like veggie chicken nuggets. But I remember one night we bought a block of tofu and we were gonna make it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:12

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:13

And we had no idea what we were doing. There weren't like food blogs back then online that you could really search when I was 12. Like we had dial up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:20

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:20

So, and, and my parents kept dial up for a long time, so I'm not ancient. And this is just the times of dial up. So anyways, we didn't know what we were doing and we just cut it into blocks and we didn't even press it. And we just cut it into blocks and we rolled it around in breadcrumbs and threw it in the oven and it came out as like soggy little blobs of hot. Liquidy goo. It was fucking disgusting. And then I didn't touch it again until I moved outta the house and like tried to make it on my own as an adult.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:51

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:52

Like it ruined it for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:54

Yeah. I won't lie. I mean, the first couple times I tried it, it was definitely like some kind of sad unflavored cube situation and I was a little on the fence. Uh, but you know, turns out any food can be like that if you don't know how to prepare it, so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:06

Oh yeah. Yes. Food's only as good as the skill level.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:11

Yeah. So anyway, I would like to put that to bed that, everybody should be a soy boy or.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:16

Yes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:16

A soy girl.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:17

Soy boys and soy girls unite.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:20

Also, uh, you just had a video come out in the last couple days. It was your high protein pumpkin spice rice crispy treats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:27

Yeah, so those use edamame puffs, which is funny 'cause we were just kind of talking about that. Yeah. But you can get a huge bag of edamame puffs for around 20, 30 bucks. Um, I like to use them in rice crispy treats and also protein bars. Yeah, like a really easy way to get protein in your diet and way cheaper than a protein bar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:46

Yeah. Yeah. The normal, high protein rice crispy treats are one of my favorite things that you make for sure. And then, you know, this is just a little pumpkin spice fall fun version.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:53

I know you're not as big of a pumpkin spice fan as I am, but these are my favorite thing ever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:58

Yeah, they're really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:59

But you know, you can also make it with like peanut butter or just plain, or you can add cocoa powder, you know? Yeah. A lot of options, a lot of different flavors you can make.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:08

You also have the version with like the chocolate on top, was that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:10

Yeah, we made a mint chocolate version.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:11

Yeah. So very versatile. So I think our next episode is gonna be talking about some budget, vegan protein options and how to prepare meals and things like that on a budget.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:23

Yeah. Since like we're US based and the US is currently a big dumpster fire, we thought we would focus on some budget options for how to get your protein. I'm also gonna be trying to focus more on my Instagram and other social medias on how to get your protein on a budget.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:38

Cool. Sounds good. So if you have any specific questions you wanna touch on or recipe ideas or anything like that, let us know. You can send a text message to the link in the show notes or also in the show notes is all of our social media and website information. You can reach out on any of those platforms and we'd be happy to get back to you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:54

Yeah. Or if you have anything that you want us to cover in the next episode around like specific questions on how to get your protein for cheap or like recommendations you'd like to hear about, let us know. We're probably just gonna come up with some random shit, unless you guys ask.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:09

Yeah. Cool. All right, well I think that's it for this week. Do you wanna say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Bye.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:14

Bye everybody.