Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

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: 0:05

Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:05

Hi everybody. This is episode 32, and this week we're gonna talk about choosing a type of exercise between cardio and lifting weights. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:14

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:15

So the first piece of news here, we don't have much information about it yet, but Chomp Chocolate who used to be a vegan chocolate brand, uh, and then kind of had a side quest into on.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:24

Chunk choc, chunk chocolate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:26

Something like that. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:27

Where like a make your own, uh, chocolate bar situation.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:31

Right. So they posted, I think it was this morning on Instagram. Um, basically they're having some kind of chomp 2.0 or 3.0 relaunch on January 9th, and they had to tag, you know, hashtag vegan, hashtag plant-based. So I think maybe they're going back to fully vegan chocolate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:47

Yeah, I don't know. This has been quite the journey. Yeah, because we used to buy chomp chocolate all the time. It's like it was a fully vegan chocolate company and they had the nut pucks. Mm-hmm. Which were kind of like a Reese's Cup and a couple other really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:59

Like the, the crispy chocolate bar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01

Yeah. And like, I think chocolate covered marshmallows, all kinds of shit really.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05

Yeah. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06

And they were all really, really good. And then I guess, um, I think it was more mostly around like the price of cocoa that's ethically sourced as well as like just the manufacturing time and efforts. Like they couldn't get it to a cost point that was like to cost effective. Yeah. And would sell and was fair price. So, um, it sounded like a couple months ago they went to ch Chonk chocolate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31

Mm-hmm.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32

In which they were just gonna make the bars, but they weren't gonna be using their own chocolate anymore. They were gonna be using source chocolate from other companies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38

Yeah. They were losing some control of the manufacturing there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:41

Right. Which is why they had to offer dairy options. But there's like basically a make your own bar with mix-ins, and I think that's been up for a couple of months now. And I know the actual owner of Chomp Chocolate is a vegan, so he had a lot of moral and ethical struggles on this one to like even add in a dairy option. So sounds like he's been playing around in the kitchen and has come up with potentially chomp 2.0 or 3.0.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:03

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:03

So exciting to see what it's gonna be.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:05

Yeah. Hopefully they go back to all vegan chocolate. That'd be pretty cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:08

Yeah. He seems like a, a good dude that wants to do like the right thing by vegans. I hope he can make it work.'cause they, he makes great food, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:15

Yeah. Well, we'll keep an eye on that and, uh, we'll keep you guys updated if you're into chocolate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:19

Which, why wouldn't you be, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:21

Yeah. Uh, next Ikea the, you know, big furniture company with the famously detailed instructions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:29

Dude, that store is crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:31

Oh, it is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:33

I could get lost in that store. Literally.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:35

I think that's the goal actually. They want you to get lost in that store. There's like side doors where you can take shortcuts through sections and you just get totally turned around.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:42

It's in intense. It's so intense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:43

You also have to go through the entire store to get to the checkout.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:46

They also have an online store, so you can just do that option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:49

But a lot of things they won't deliver online, so you still have to go to the store's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:52

Yeah, I know you've picked up a couple bookshelves for our massive book collection.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:56

Uh, but yeah, IKEA became the majority owner of a Swedish brand called The Green Dairy. That brand is a plant-based food brand, but they also do something called oat pulp upcycling, which is when they make like their oat milks, they take the pulp from the OAT where they processed it, and they sell that as oat protein to other companies to make food products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:17

That's interesting. We, I mean protein, huh? Like, I wonder what percentage of protein that actually is, because it still probably has all the carbs and the fat, you know? Yeah. It's just the pulp of it. Yeah. I think oats are like only around 10 or 12% protein or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:30

Yeah, something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:31

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:32

Yeah, I think they're putting it in, like the other companies use it in protein bars and like meat replacements. The oat pulp thing they have is called ReOat. So they had an example. They had like a ReOat burger patty basically to kind of showcase what you could do with the product.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:46

That's interesting. I'd be really interested to see the macro profile on it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:50

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:50

I wonder if one day they'll make like textured oat protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:54

Yeah, that'd be pretty cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:55

I'd use the shit out of that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:57

Let's turn everything into protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:59

Yeah. I want, I want textured anything protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:01

Yeah. And then last up, there's a company called YeastUP in Switzerland, uh, that opened a facility to turn beer brewing waste yeast into protein. This is mainly marketed as an egg replacer.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:14

Yeah, this is really interesting to me 'cause I worked in an ethanol plant for like seven years as a process engineer. So I went down a big ass rabbit hole today looking at, 'cause like the differences between beer making and, uh, you know, ethanol that you would use in your car. There's like some slight differences of when they pull out the solids and stuff and the fermentation process. So, I don't know, this is kind of interesting. There's also like a byproduct called distillers grain or brewer spent grain. Yeah. Which is also like 25 to 30% protein. So I'd be interested if they ever turned that into like a human product because, um, that's right now along with the spent yeast, it's used for animal feed. It's also rich in fiber, so that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Uh, I don't know. You know, it's always something you wonder, especially if the world ever really went vegan, like where would the byproduct for beer and ethanol production go? Because right now it's going to animal feed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:08

Yeah. We just turn it all into protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:10

Mm-hmm. Cool. Yeast textured protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:15

Yeah, so that's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:15

Corn textured protein. I. You call me up guys. I'm here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:20

You got a lot of ideas.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:21

I've got a lot of ethanol based experience and ideas of how to turn things into cookies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:27

It's all led to this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:31

My whole life. I've been preparing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:33

It worked out. They're great cookies. All right. That's the news. Let's get into our main topic here. Cardio versus lifting weights. It's not really a versus we're just gonna talk about kind of both of them. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:43

Like the differences?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:44

Yeah, the differences.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:45

Um, I think I can simplify this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:47

Oh, let's do it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:47

Okay. So cardio is like moving, right? Yeah. And then lifting weights is like lifting weights.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:54

No, you, you nailed it. I think we can wrap it up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:56

I think we can too. Well, it's good talking to you guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:59

All right. So when it comes to exercise, people have different personal goals and varying levels of time available to fit in workouts to kind of get towards those goals, right? So because of this, people often ask if they should focus on cardio or if they should focus on some kind of resistance training, like lifting weights. And I'm using lifting weights here. But really there are a lot of different kinds of resistance training. It could be calisthenics, it could be like Olympic weight lifting, power lifting, anything like that, but just some kind of resistance training.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:25

Yeah. It could even be like resistance bands if you don't have actual weights, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:29

Sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:30

Or body weight exercises.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:32

Yeah, definitely. So to help understand how we might choose which one to do with our limited time. Let's just briefly first cover the benefits of each. So first up, for cardio, some of the benefits are that it improves heart and lung health function and efficiency. Mm-hmm. Which is kind of the main benefit of cardio. It also makes daily activity feel easier, so like going up and down stairs, taking a long walk from a far parking spot, something like that. If you're doing cardio regularly, those things aren't gonna feel like anything basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:58

Well, it depends on what floor you're going to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:00

Well, sure, sure. We're climbing up, uh, Sears Tower. We, we might not be able to do enough cardio to overcome that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:05

No. I have a friend that lives pretty high up in an apartment building in Chicago, and I think she said one time the elevator broke and that was a lot. It was many, many floors.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:13

Well, cardio will prepare you for something like that. At least it will help.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:17

What will prepare me mentally though?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:18

Oh, nothing. It also improves work capacity. And work capacity is just a fancy word for like how much you can do in a lifting session or with some kind of sport or exercise. So you'll just be able to maybe do a couple more reps, a couple more sets if we're talking about lifting. Also improves your recovery ability. So maybe an example of this is between sets in a workout, your heart rate will come down faster. You'll feel more recovered faster, so you won't need maybe five or six minutes between sets of squats. You'll just need a minute or two. Also cardio helps create a calorie deficit. It does burn some calories, not as much as people think most of the time, but if you're trying to get in a calorie deficit to lose some weight, cardio can definitely help with that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:57

You mean the numbers the treadmill tells me aren't true?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:00

No, they're never true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:01

That's so sad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:03

No, the numbers on the treadmill aren't true. The numbers on your fitness tracker aren't true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:07

How can we get them to make those true?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:09

Yeah, I think you'd have to, you'd have to give it your height and weight. Um, then you'd have to hook an oxygen mask up to you that's hooked up to a computer with a scientist standing next to you. It's pretty tricky. They're like rough estimations, but not very helpful. Um, and then also it can lower your resting heart rate and your blood pressure over time. And those are both positive health outcomes for long-term health. So now with lifting. The major benefit of lifting is that it builds and maintains muscle mass, right? That's what most people are in the gym lifting for, is to grow muscle. It will also improve your strength and power. So if you're in a sport, it's really helpful for that. Or if you just wanna be able to, you know, pick things up around the house better, it helps with that as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:48

Like if you have kids or whatever, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:49

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:50

Or water bottles.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:52

Ooh, the water bottles at work, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:53

The water bottles at work. It's come in clutch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:55

Yeah. It also helps improve your bone density, which is a good way to stay healthy. You'll lose a little bit of bone density as you get older, so it's good to build that up before you get older.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:03

Especially for women. Like women have more issues with bone density in general? Uh, mostly during menopause, I think.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:09

Yeah. It improves your body composition, improved body composition would be more muscle less fat, right? So at the same body weight you would look more muscular. And then it also reduces injury risk via improved joint and tendon resilience.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:23

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:23

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:24

Tell me more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:25

So as you work out it's not just your muscles that are getting worked, it's your joints and your tendons. They're adapting over time as well. Usually not as fast as muscle, but then when you do something like maybe roll your ankle a little bit, that's a little stronger if you've been, lifting, doing things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:39

Now is there anything you can do to combine cardio and lifting so you don't have to choose?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:43

You can kind of, I don't know if I would, but if you're lifting, you can do shorter rest periods. You can do, um, more reps during a set. Things like that are gonna lean more towards cardio but they're not gonna be optimal for some of the benefits you're looking for with lifting weight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:58

What about like HIIT or CrossFit? Do those do both?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:01

They do both, but it's still more cardio focused and it's not super optimal for trying to build muscle, although, I mean, it is good, mainly because they do high volume anyway. So if you do CrossFit, you're probably gonna end up pretty muscular and have pretty good cardio. But you'd probably have better results if you just did dedicated lifting sessions and then dedicated cardio sessions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:22

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:23

But if CrossFit is more fun to you, then you can combine them that way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:29

Yeah. What about climbing mountains?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:32

That will definitely do both, for sure. Lifting also has some of the benefits of cardio to a lesser degree because your heart rate will get up. But if you use a fitness tracker during your workouts, it won't take you long to see that your average heart rate for a lifting session is quite a bit lower than your average heart rate for a cardio session.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:48

That's assuming you're doing like high weights, lower reps, right? Like if you were just like doing like hundreds of very low weight reps, that could be cardio, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:59

I think that would almost be exclusively cardio.'cause you wouldn't be doing much for your muscle.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:03

Yeah. I just wanna like clarify this here because like a lot of, uh, I don't think this is as bad as it used to be, but like a lot of what they tell women to do is like super high reps, very low weight. Yeah. Which doesn't really give you resistance training so much as it gives you cardio. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:16

Yeah, that makes sense. When I say resistance training, I'm thinking 30 reps max. Anything above that is, is not really, uh, muscle building for the most part. I mean, a little bit, but not really great.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:27

Okay. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:27

And sometimes your heart rate will peak if you have a really heavy lift, like if you're doing squats or deadlifts. A good example, you might see your heart rate get up extremely high, very close to your max. But it's just gonna be for a few seconds, and then it's gonna come back down in between your sets. Whereas if you're doing cardio, you can kind of sustain, you know, whatever heart rate you want effectively based on the effort for a much longer time, which is where you get all the benefits to your cardiovascular system. So there are a few different goals somebody could have with exercise in general. A few of these not an exhaustive list are you wanna build muscle, you wanna lose body weight, you wanna just improve your general fitness, you want to improve your body composition at a similar weight as you are now. Just kind of keep the same weight, improve your body composition.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:07

Yeah. Have you ever seen those side by side pictures of like, women at like various weights, but like different um, like muscle percentages?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:16

I've seen it for men. I don't know that I've seen it specifically for women.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:18

Oh, that's really crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:19

Yeah. Yeah, it's a very drastic difference.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:22

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:22

Based on your body composition. Also you might want to just maintain your current fitness level, so you're not necessarily worried about your weight, you just want to improve your overall fitness. You might be trying to do a sports specific improvement. So those are the types of things that might be your goal for doing exercise in general. The most common one is probably losing weight, or more specifically losing body fat. So we can dive into that one a little bit. So if you're trying to lose weight, you might think that focusing on cardio is the right idea just because it burns more calories. This is really common advice you hear out there. Like if you're trying to lose weight, get on the StairMaster, go on the elliptical, uh, whatever kind of cardio you might wanna do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:00

Do two hours on the treadmill. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:02

Right. And while it does burn more calories than lifting, the calorie deficit that you need to lose weight is mostly gonna be controlled by your food intake. Now if you go do two hours on the treadmill, that will be a pretty significant calorie burn, but at the same time, that's probably gonna make you pretty significantly hungry.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:18

Oh, it'll make you really hungry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:20

So, even if you knew how many calories you were burning on the treadmill, if you're just going and eating more after it than you would've otherwise, you're not really in a deficit, possibly. So. If your food intake is already kind of lower than you're comfortable with and you still aren't able to lose weight, you might consider adding more activity. And the most efficient way to do that for calories specifically is to add cardio because it's gonna burn the most calories. And that way you don't have to reduce your food intake anymore. And that will help create a bigger deficit. Um, and even if weight loss is your goal, you might still wanna focus on lifting so that your body composition is more favorable when you get to your goal weight. It's pretty common for people to lose weight and on the way down they'll lose both muscle and fat and then they're not really happy with the way they look even at the lower weight because they also lost some of the muscle mass.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:05

And doesn't muscle burn more calories than fat? Yeah. Just like being sedentary even.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:10

Yeah, it does. If you have more muscle mass on you, you know it is burning some more calories over time, so that's also helpful.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:16

It's like not that much, but yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:18

Every little bit helps at that point, especially when that means I get to eat more food. So I think if you're trying to lose weight, lose body fat, the general recommendation would be like, lift at least twice a week to make sure we're, you know, keeping body composition in check, not losing muscle mass. And then do cardio kind of as time allows, but not necessarily for weight benefits. It'd be for like the non-weight related benefits, like helping your heart and lungs, your work capacity, your recovery, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:43

Okay. Now with these recommendations, like do you have a time, like an amount of, you're saying like twice a week or whatever. What, like how long?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:51

Yeah. So twice a week it would be, it would depend on your program really. But, um, it's usually gonna be lifting for like an hour if you have a well-made program.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:59

What about cardio?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:00

So the recommendation from the American Heart Association for Adults is to get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity cardio, or 75 minutes a week of vigorous cardio, or a combination of both, and preferably spread throughout the week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:14

What counts as moderate? Is that just walking?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:17

You would just think of it in terms of heart rate, but moderate would be kind of what they refer to as like zone two cardio, where it's like you're still just able to have a conversation, whereas vigorous cardio would be like, you can't really hold a conversation while you're doing it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:30

Okay. What if you're just like doing walking, walking? Is that not good enough people? There's lots of people that just walk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:36

So if walking is your preferred method of cardio to get to the moderate intensity level, they recommend walking at least 2.5 miles an hour. So it'd be brisk walking if you're just out for like a very casual walk, we're not really even in the realm of like a cardio activity for the purposes of the heart recommendations.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:53

Okay, that makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:54

But it's still good exercise. I'm not saying don't walk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:56

It's not leisure walking. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:58

If you're gonna walk, walk with purpose, you know, if we're trying to do it for exercise.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:01

I think most people that are exercising are probably walking with purpose though. Like around the neighborhood or like there are people that walk at the mall. Have you seen the mall walkers?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:09

Oh, the mall walkers? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:09

Yeah. Well, that's pretty cool.'cause the, you know, the malls are kind of dying, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:14

In case you didn't know, some malls, I think actually open early for mall walkers before the stores open. So if you don't have anywhere to walk, or if it's winter, go check that out in your area.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:22

Yeah, it's actually a great idea. Yeah. Because like walking tracks and stuff outside probably aren't gonna work for you if you're like, living where we live where it's really cold.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:30

Yeah. And you're, you know, it, it gets a little old if you're just trying to walk in circles in your living room or something like that, so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:35

Yeah. Check out your malls.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:37

Yeah. So doing cardio directly after your lifting session, if losing weight is your primary goal, can be a good idea.'cause we're already at the gym and you just kind of tack on, depending on how you like to do cardio, 30 minutes to an hour of cardio right after you do your lifting. Technically that could have a little bit of an impact to your muscle growth, but that's not your primary goal and it's a very minor effect. So we're not really too worried about that. If you do it before your lifting session, you're probably just gonna be really tired and not have a good lifting session. But you could also do it on totally different days if that's easier for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:04

That's probably what I do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:06

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:06

Because you're gonna be tired, you're not gonna be able to give it your all anyways. Yeah, spread it out. Spread the love.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:12

And then most importantly for losing weight, keep your diet in check. That's gonna be the most important thing to create a calorie deficit that's required for fat loss or weight loss. So again, if you're not really tracking your calories and you go super intense on your exercise, that might actually cause you to eat a lot more.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:25

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:26

And maybe, you would actually be ending up with more calories than you would've if you didn't exercise. So if you are concerned about that, just track your calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:34

Completely off the subject topic.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:37

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:37

Okay. If you've been on social media at all, you've been seeing these weighted vests, do those actually help with cardio?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:45

I've actually been seeing, I guess there were some recent studies about this, um, and it turns out, no, not really.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:50

Interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:51

I do use them for other things, like people use them for pull-ups. I haven't used them for that before, but I use them for like calf raises. Mm-hmm. And anything else where basically you need some extra body weight so you can use 'em for pushups, things like that. Anything where you're trying to do a body weight exercise that you wanna put the extra load on, they're good for that. But apparently they don't really do much of anything for like walking or cardio.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:10

Really?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:11

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:11

Didn't even help your heart rate get up. It feels like it's harder. So your heart rate would be higher, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:16

Yeah. It sounds like it. It does go up, but it's just not enough to make a difference.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:19

That's interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:21

So you're saying all these TikTok girlies are scamming us?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:24

Well, they probably think it works, so I don't know if scam's the right word, but it doesn't seem like it's, it's working out in research to be worth it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:30

Don't trust influencers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:33

All right, so now let's talk about if your primary goal is building muscle. So this is maybe you don't have weight to lose or you just don't really care about losing the weight and you're just primarily focused on building muscle. In this scenario, your lifting sessions are gonna be the priority. So cardio is still useful for the general health benefits and also improving your work capacity and your recovery for your very hard lifting sessions. But they're not gonna be like the primary thing you're gonna focus on. So also make sure if you are in a calorie surplus, if you're building muscle, you're probably gaining weight. Keep that pretty low so you don't put on extra fat. You really only need to be in a surplus of like 250 to 500 calories a day to optimize muscle growth. Muscle does not grow that fast, and there's no reason to just put on an extra bunch of body weight, so like the old school dirty bulks and things like that, where you're gaining, you know, 50 pounds over a year for some reason. It just doesn't make any sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:23

And then you, you have to lose all of that too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:24

Yeah, you have to lose it all. You're creating health issues, raising your blood pressure, putting more strain on your heart, and you're getting no additional benefit for the most part. So, uh, I wouldn't recommend that. So if you're trying to build muscle, make sure you're lifting three to four times a week. Three's probably gonna get you like 90% of the way there. If you have extra time or you just want to have shorter workouts, you can spread that out to four times a week because if you have like an hour and a half session, three days a week, you can probably cut that down to like a 50 minute session four times a week. But just spreading out how you do your volume. I would probably still try to get in two cardio sessions a week and probably on non lifting days or just a totally different part of the day. So you could do like cardio in the morning and then lift in the evening, something like that so it doesn't interfere with your workout. And again, that effect is pretty minor as far as interference. But like you were saying, you'll also just be kind of tired.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:09

Mm-hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:09

And we just want to try to avoid that since our primary goal is building muscle in this case. And then try to minimize the high intensity interval training cardio, if that's a cardio style you like to do, because that actually will kind of impact your muscle recovery a lot more than normal cardio, where you're doing it for 30 minutes to an hour.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:26

Why is that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:27

So it's using your leg muscles a lot more than just normal cardio.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:31

They wouldn't just build your muscles faster?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:34

Uh, well, no, because you're already doing your lifting sessions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:37

Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:37

But if that was all you were doing, it would certainly build your muscles faster. It's like how bicyclists have huge quads. They also do squats, but they're getting a lot of quad growth from bicycling.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:46

So it's more like it takes so much energy from your legs or whatever that you wouldn't be able to do your actual lifting workouts as well, because you'd be exhausted, right? Is that basically, yeah. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:55

It'd be like you snuck in a set of half weight squats or something on days where you were trying to do recovery.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:01

Right. So then when you go to actually do your workouts, you're not gonna perform as high.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:04

Yeah, exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:05

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:06

Yeah. So, and then the general recommendation for all goals is to try to do both cardio and resistance training, but just do them in a way that makes sense. You can lean more towards one or the other based on your specific priorities. But the one that usually happens is like, people just avoid cardio. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:21

Well, yeah.'cause it sucks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:23

Yeah. And most people it does suck. You can find a form that's fun, but even if it's not, like, even if you're not trying to lose weight. It is really helpful and important to try to do it for the heart and lung benefits and like just daily life moving around, things like that. So cardio is really good for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:37

This was brought to you by the American Heart Association, right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:43

Okay. So now let's get into our myth of the week this week, and the myth is that animal products naturally have vitamin B12.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:49

Hmm. This one's kind of fun because you know, B12 is the one that vegans have to supplement, and this is the one that I hear a lot of non-vegan be like, I'm not going vegan because I don't wanna live off vitamins and supplements for the rest of my life.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:03

Yeah. don't know why it's such a contentious topic, especially since vitamin B12 supplements are extremely cheap and easy to take.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:11

I think it's just one of those easy outs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:13

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:13

Like they act like that it would be unnatural to take a supplement.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:17

Right. So. Uh, ruminant animals, which are like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:20

What does that mean?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:21

Yeah, it's like, kinda like you think about mammals walking around that we tend to eat for meat. So it's like a cow, a deer, a goat, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:30

Like things that eat grass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:31

Yeah. That's what ruminant.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:33

Ruminant means. Things that eat grass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:35

More or less. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:35

Okay. The things that eat grass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:38

Yeah. Bison also. Anyway, they, and I think this is where some of the confusion comes from on this old vitamin B12 thing, because ruminant animals do synthesize their own B12. But it comes from them eating cobalt, which is a mineral. So, they can only do that if they get enough cobalt or if they happen to eat. Uh, so vitamin B12, originally, the original source of vitamin B12 is from like bacteria and Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:02

Like mushrooms and mushrooms, stuff like that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:04

Right? So back in the olden days, ruminant animals would get enough B12, and naturally, naturally from the ground. In a modern farm situation, that's not really the case.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:14

And humans would too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:15

Right. And humans would do because eating, even if they were, we'd be eating dirty things a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:18

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:19

And from feces, which is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:21

Oh, oh good. So feces is an option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:23

So actually in some cases, like with with chickens, some of the B12 that they get does come from them eating feces.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:30

Oh, that's amazing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:31

Yeah. Uh, sad. But, um, anyway, so most modern farmed ruminants don't get enough cobalt either from like grazing or something like that. Mm-hmm. So they get just a general mineral mixture supplemented into their food and cobalt is one of the minerals, and they do it with the cobalt instead of B12 directly, just because cobalt's a lot cheaper and it absorbs better, and they can use their natural process.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:53

Yeah. And I'm gonna let you in on a little secret that if you're worried about having like supplemented or processed food from being vegan. You probably should look into what's going into your meat supply.'cause it they get pumped with a lot of shit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:09

Yeah. Yeah. Especially, you know, if there's some kind of, uh, disease going around the farm or they're trying to avoid something or like they have some sick animals, something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:18

Or just like in general how, um, chickens no longer even resemble their ancestors because we've pumped them full of so many hormones and stuff so that they grow faster.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:28

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:28

I mean the factory farms are not natural. They're not natural at all. They're like the furthest thing from natural you could possibly imagine. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:34

It's just a big like machine made to optimize how much yeah output they get.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:39

It's gross. So if you're grossed out by supplementing B12, you should really look into factory farming. Right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:45

Uh, yeah. So the ruminants basically are supplemented with cobalt, which may as well be, I mean, supplemented with B12. B12. Yeah. What's, what's the difference? Right. And so, I don't see how that's any different than us just taking the supplement instead of the animal taking the supplement. Yeah. So it's, it's still not like a naturally occurring source from the animal with no intervention, which is what people seem to think it is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:04

Yeah, they just don't know. Most people don't know about their foods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:06

Right. And that's just for the ruminants. So for the non ruminants, which you like. Chickens, like chicken, turkeys, chicken turkeys, porks, yeah. Pigs, things like that. They exclusively get b12 from like direct B12 supplements in their feed. Right? So it's just fortified with B12.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:20

Just like vegans take bitches.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:22

Right. So, the bottom line is basically vegans do need to take a B12 supplement, but so does everything else because, in the modern world, there just aren't really good natural sources of B12 for anybody, animals or humans at this. Right. At least farmed animals, like animals out in the wild with everything growing. They're just eating whatever's in the forest and it's not pastures that have been reused 10 times, something like that. You know, they're getting B12 through that. But, farmed animals and humans don't really have reliable ways to get B12 for the most part.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:51

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:52

Naturally.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:54

And I mean now there are some fortified with B12 foods that vegans can eat if they don't wanna supplement. Like they make a fortified nutritional yeast. And I think several of the plant-based milk options have fortified B12. And so does some of the vegan cheeses actually.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:10

Yeah. I think they're putting it in a lot of things these days. I mean, there's not much downside.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Yeah. So I mean, the other thing is like. If it's fortified, it's kind of the same as like supplementing anyways. So I mean like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:19

Right. And foods have been fortified for a long time. Like cereals have always been, always vitamins and things. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:24

Cereal used to be a food group. I mean, even if you're eating like a lot of nutritional yeast and vegan cheese, I feel like I would still take a vitamin B12 supplement just in case.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:32

Yeah. I'd still take it. I mean, it's water soluble. It's, I won't say impossible to overdose, but like extremely unlikely to overdose on a vitamin B. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:38

Meaning you pee out the excess.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:39

Right. And it's super cheap. Like you just take one a day. I don't know exactly what the cost is per month, but it's I think probably in the single digits.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:46

Dude, I got a B12 deficiency before I went vegan. B12 deficiencies are highly common. They even have those, uh, shit I remember at work they had some stupid wellness fair, I guess it wasn't stupid, it was just a wellness fair. I just associate everything with that job is stupid. But they had a wellness fair and they were going around and they had, uh, a booth set up for B12 shots. So like they even have B12 shots, like where it's like a very potent, uh, dose of B12.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:15

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:16

But that's like a thing that you can get at various places.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:19

Yeah. Yeah. I think I've mentioned before I ran into a slight B12 deficiency in my blood work at one point eating a very standard American diet, you know, back in the day and I started taking B12 supplements, which are also very common in the fitness and nutrition space anyway, like that's always been a very common thing. So I've always taken a B12 supplement for the most part, for like the last, you know, 20 years almost. So yeah, it's not even really a new supplement to me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:42

Yeah, it's just not even a big deal. Plus like the side effects from having a B12 deficiency aren't great. Oh yeah. You might as well just freaking take one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:50

Yeah. I think that we can say it's a myth that animals just naturally, magically, all animals naturally, magically create B12 with no help from supplements or anything like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:00

Yes. Your animals are taking your vitamins for you. Stop being a little bitch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:04

Exactly. So next we have some updates on the protein deficient vegan front. What have you been cooking up?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:12

Yeah. So it, um, well by the time you hear this, it's still not New Year's, which means that you can still eat treats and desserts and junk food. Right. I think that's the rule.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:21

Yeah. The last week of the year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:23

Between Christmas and New Year's is just like no man's land. Yeah. That like you're not getting work done at work. Like everyone's just being weird, right? Yeah. Like you're just kinda like in this stasis. So I put out a couple more junk food dessert recipes that you might wanna check out. Hello Dollies, which we actually took to my parents. Um, my brother really likes them. He actually requested them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:47

And my brother does not request vegan food. So. He was like, they taste different than mom's. And then I was like, oh yeah, it's 'cause I use biscoff cookies instead of graham crackers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:56

Hmm.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:56

So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:57

Yeah, the biscoff crust is clutch. That stuff is so good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:00

It is good. It adds like an extra warm Christmasy taste to it. I also put out chocolate peppermint rice Krispies, which, what did you think about those?'cause you're not a big chocolate peppermint person.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:09

So these I really liked, I don't really like mint normally, but these, I don't know if it's just like seeing the little candy cane chunks on top, or the fact that it's a white chocolate mint, maybe it's just tricking my brain, but.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:18

I mind fucked him.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:18

Yeah. I really, I really actually like these, so it might be the only mint dessert I've ever truly enjoyed other than. The, uh, frozen thin mints, which you also put me onto.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:27

Yeah, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:28

I always hated thin mints until you told me to freeze them and whatever. That makes 'em good for some reason. So I like those too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:32

I know it's weird. Right. So those are there too. And those are actually like 30 percent protein, so they're actually, they're not too bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:41

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:41

And they're like holiday festiveness. They're a good time. The Veganuary ebook, this is the third annual one is actually coming out on, well, January 1st.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:51

If you're already on the mailing list, you may have already seen an advanced copy in your inbox by now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:55

Because you're special and you should definitely join the mailing list if you're not already on it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:59

Yeah, if you're not already on the mailing list, just go to the proteindeficientvegan.com site and go to eBooks and you can just sign up to directly get the Veganuary book right there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:08

It has 40 recipes like breakfast, lunch, dinners, and desserts and snacks, and it's got a bunch of tips and tricks and stuff and.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:15

110 pages.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:19

It took forever to make. Honestly,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:21

it looks great though. We have lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:24

This is my masterpiece.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:26

Lots of good information in there for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:28

Yeah, and it also has sample meal plans, so like if you are trying Veganuary or if you're just trying, if you've been a vegan for a while and you're trying to hit like a protein goal, it has, um, sample meal plans at 1500, 2000, 2500, and 3000 calories. So it'll help you figure out how to hit your protein goal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:44

And the meal plans are for like a week or?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:46

Yeah, they're just a week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:47

Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:47

But I also have some information on, I don't know how many of you guys know this, but I actually put all of my recipes into MyFitnessPal as global foods. So it's really easy to use those to build your own meal plans inside of MyFitnessPal. So I go through. Basically how I do it to come up with the sample meal plans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:03

We also have the Deficient Vegans discord that we just started a couple of weeks ago. You can find the link to join that in the show notes. We're up to probably about 20 people now in there. Mm-hmm. Um, we've had a couple of discussions, so it's going pretty well. I definitely recommend joining. Need more extroverts if that's your bag.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:19

Yes. We are introverted, so we're not conversation starters, but if you are an extrovert or an introvert, we want you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:26

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:26

We also like introverts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:29

They usually have the best memes, I think.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:31

Oh, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:31

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:32

You gotta speak volumes through very small interactions.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:35

Right? And some days I talk entirely in GIFs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:37

I know you do. I'm aware.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:41

If you have any other questions or feedback, you can contact us through the send us a text link in the show notes, or you just go to the social media links there, or one of the websites. You can use the contact form to reach out. You can also leave a comment on Spotify, which a few people have been doing lately.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:56

They're always so good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:57

As long as you're on Spotify or on Apple Podcast. Or YouTube or YouTube, oh yeah, you can, you can leave comments on the YouTube if you do the podcast on YouTube thing we're on there as well. And then if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, that'd be awesome. Or just a like, and the subscribe on the YouTube podcast channel. We'd really appreciate it. All right, well, I think that's it. Do you wanna say? Bye

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:16

Bye.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:16

Bye, everybody.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:18

Happy New year.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:19

Happy New Year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:19

Woo.