Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 37. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi!

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to talk about some of the things that most people talk about in January, but we did not because we were talking about veganuary things. Those are going to be some tips to kind of start getting healthier. If you're just getting into it or if you just want a little bit of information to kind of build a foundation there. We'll also have our myth of the week this week, which is that vegans kill more animals via crop deaths than omnivores do. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:29

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:30

There's a popular YouTuber, probably an understatement, MrBeast,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:34

Who... Yeah, I don't even know what he's classified as anymore. Yeah. He's just like, this guy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:39

He's a guy. Yeah. I've never actually seen any of his videos, but I've seen some like clips and I've seen his thumbnails and they all look very exciting. And I know he's really popular.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:47

Yeah. I also don't know anything about him other than I think he's supposed to like be on Survivor 50. Yeah. Which I love Survivor.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:54

That'll be interesting. He went in with a company called Upside Foods on one of his videos and tried their lab cultivated chicken alternative. Well, not alternative, I guess. If it's cultivated meat, it's technically chicken. I don't know. That's going to be a weird.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08

Lab-grown chicken.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09

Yeah. Vegan chicken. But anyway, yeah, he tried that meat on his channel and gave them kind of his seal of approval. I guess he said it was good. So I think the upshot there is that now a lot of people, I mean, he has, I think, the most followers on YouTube at this point. So now a lot of people are going to see that and, you know, think, oh, wow, if he likes it, maybe I should try it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29

Yeah. So we don't know anything about you, Mr. Beast, but good job.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33

People with big channels should talk about vegan alternatives, in my opinion.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:36

On the flip side of that, the next piece of news is that the Arizona state legislature is considering a bill that would punish the sellers of cultivated meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:45

This was crazy. It said up to 18 months in prison.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:50

Yeah. There are several states now who have banned cultivated meat for various reasons. But this is the first one I've seen that's like got a felony charge attached to it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:58

It's stupid. It's really stupid. Arizona, do you not sell cigarettes in your state? Those are actually known carcinogens that kill people, and you probably have them at every gas station.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:08

Yeah. I guess part of the justification was they're not comfortable with the way the cells are grown, and they think maybe there's a cancer risk. Of course, none of that's based on any evidence at this point. Right. But like you just said, like, there are things that are known to cause cancer that they sell.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:20

Even some meats are considered a carcinogen. So, like, what about that, Arizona?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:25

Yeah. So I don't know. From what I saw, this was just one person introducing it. I don't know how much of a chance it has of success, but it's kind of weird to me that this would even be up for debate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:36

It's nefarious, isn't it? It's almost like the meat industry is telling him what to say.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:40

It is almost like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:42

Because it is. Because that's actually what's happening.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:45

Next up, there was a study, I think it was called the SPINS study, late last year, talking about the kind of perceived decline of vegan options at the grocery store. But they found that the actual volume and demand for plant-based options as a whole was going up. It was just the demand is kind of consolidating into more common products and reorganizing the brands that are selling it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:09

Yeah it was saying something about how vegan products are like a newer product where it's like your dairies and your meats and stuff those have been on the market forever so they kind of have like the structure they're gonna have as far as how they're sold right um but i don't really know exactly what they're considering to be vegan foods because that was a little vague to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:29

Me yeah they had mentioned stuff like some yogurt alternatives and they even had like some wellness focused things like those ginger and turmeric shots and stuff like

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:37

That yeah for me that's not i mean yes it's vegan but like i wouldn't call that a vegan food like any more than i would call juice a vegan food like i would consider like you should be looking at meat alternatives dairy alternatives that kind of stuff in my opinion yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:52

I agree and one interesting note in there was that the demand and the volume of selling for plant-based alternatives that had a protein focus was up 24

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:02

That's interesting i wonder what those were yeah Because it was like we're also seeing meat alternative brands disappear.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:11

Yeah. It sounded like people are more interested in like the healthier version, whatever that is. So they don't want like the process, quote unquote, Beyond Burger.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:20

So tofu? Yeah, maybe. Interesting. I feel like if you have a favorite smaller vegan food that you like, make sure you're buying it so they don't disappear.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:32

Yeah, I think a lot of the issue is the bigger brands are putting in plant-based options and swallowing up the smaller brands. Right. But the problem there is like the bigger brand can come in and try this plant-based thing for a year and then they just pull it. But in the process, they killed off all these smaller brands. So now there's just not an option anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:50

Yeah, they have no allegiance to the vegan agenda, right? Right. So, I don't know. We're still buying Follow Your Heart and Cheeze and Thank You and the small brands. I wouldn't say they're small, but like the smaller than Kraft.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:03

The vegan-focused brand.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:05

Yeah, vegan-focused brands with vegan as their mission. Yeah. So, not Morningstar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:10

And, I mean, it is great that the bigger brands are offering those options. Yeah. I think, as a whole, we want to be careful that we don't stop buying the other options. And just rely on this brand to keep this product.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:21

Yeah. And I think the same goes for like vegan restaurants, right? Like we're seeing a bunch of vegan restaurants close in Chicago because, I don't know, I read that it was because omnivore restaurants are offering more vegan options. But come on, guys, they're never going to be as good of vegan options as vegan restaurants. So, like, make sure you're supporting your local vegan restaurants. Make sure you're buying like smaller vegan brands.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:43

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:44

I think that was my takeaway, even though that's not what the article is about.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:47

No, yeah, I agree. And I think it'll be interesting to see how this continues to evolve over time, but.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:52

Yeah. I mean, like, look at Miyoko's. Yeah. Gone. Unfortunate. I think, I don't know. I don't think we have an update on that, but.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:58

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:59

Not good. We don't want anything else to go in the way of Miyoko, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:02

Yeah. All right. So let's go ahead and get into the main segment here. We're talking about just trying to get healthier. Maybe you're just starting out or you're just getting back into it. So typically the first thing you need to decide is what is your goal? Yeah. Is it a weight-based goal? So are you trying to gain weight, lose weight, maintain weight? Even if your goal isn't necessarily determined by a weight, you still have to decide how to manage your weight because it's going to be part of informing your goal. You're always going to be gaining weight, losing weight, or maintaining weight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:31

Right. Yeah. And this one is just going to focus more on like the diet side of things. Fitness, I think we're covering next week. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:38

So to keep track of your weight, you want to make sure you find a calorie target that's based on your body metrics. And that's because calories basically directly control your weight. It's a lot more complicated than that. But, you know, there's a balance between how many calories you eat and how many calories you burn. And there are a lot of things that can influence how many calories you burn, including hormones, medical conditions, your activity level, a lot of different things go into that. But to counteract any of those things, you have to basically control the intake side.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:07

It's a big material and energy balance.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:09

Exactly. So finding your calorie target based on your body metrics is usually done with something called a TDEE calculator.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:16

What does that stand for?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:17

So that stands for total daily energy expenditure. It's basically an estimate using an algorithm of how many calories you're going to burn in a day total. So this includes a couple of things. It includes your base metabolic rate, which is how many calories you burn by just existing, basically. And then it includes, like, you burn some calories in food digestion. You burn some calories with actual exercise. And then you burn some calories with kind of non-exercise activity, which is just like going about your normal life.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:44

Walking to the office. Right. That kind of thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:46

Yeah. And even fidgeting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:48

Yeah. I read, like, fidgeters burn, like, 100 calories more a day. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:51

It's crazy. And actually, it's interesting. This is a little off topic. Well, not really off topic. But a side topic is there are some cases where you lower your calories to a certain point that you stop fidgeting pretty significantly. So then you could technically bump up your calories and your body would kind of turn some of those systems back on. You'll start fidgeting more and then you'll be burning more calories. So there's some very small parts inside the calorie spectrum where you could increase your calories. And that technically increases your deficit because it increases your activity kind of subconsciously a little bit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:22

That's interesting. So you're not in like hibernation mode. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:26

Exactly. Yeah. So you can use a calculator. There's a bunch of them out there. I have one on my website. I'll link to in the show notes. But you basically give it some stuff about you, your height, weight, age, your sex, and then you give it some estimates of your activity level and it'll give you a number.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:40

Those are always so broad, too. Yeah. The activity level pieces.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:43

Oh, yeah. They're very broad. And they're also defined differently in a lot of ways. And even in the original algorithm, they're not super well defined, which is fine, actually, because it's just an estimate. And we'll talk about how you have to adjust that going forward. They range from sedentary, which is basically you have like an office job where you're sitting all day and you don't really exercise. And then it goes all the way up to like athlete level. And there are four levels typically. And then, so I mentioned the base metabolic rate, the BMR. A lot of people see that number and think that's the number they have to work with to target their calories. But that actually doesn't factor in any of the activity and stuff. So you want to make sure you're using your TDEE and not your BMR. So yeah, you'll run your information through this TDEE calculator. And it basically spits out a number that says, this is the number of calories you need to maintain your current weight every day. So now that you have that number, that result, you need to decide what you want to do with that number, basically, which means do you want to gain weight? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to maintain weight? If you want to maintain weight, you basically just start eating at about that calorie target that it spits out because that is your maintenance calories. If you want to lose weight, you want to eat a little fewer calories than that. And that puts you in what's called a calorie deficit, which is how you lose weight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:49

Do you have recommendations on like how much you could lose a week?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:52

Yeah, I would say it depends on your starting point a little bit. I would say definitely don't lose more than a pound a week in almost all cases.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:01

Which would be 3,500 calories.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:02

So approximately 3,500 calories equals a pound of body weight. So if you want to lose a pound of weight, you want to be in a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories a week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:12

Or 500 a day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:13

Right. So yeah, if the TDEE calculator spit out like your maintenance is 2,500 calories, Then if you're trying to lose a pound a week, you would say, okay, I'm going to eat 2,000 calories a day because that puts you in a 500 calorie deficit every day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:26

What about like... All these girl magazines that are telling you you can lose 10 pounds a month. Would you recommend that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:32

Well, you can probably lose 10 pounds a month the first month of eating healthy because you're going to lose a lot of water weight. But you're not going to lose 10 pounds a month of like actual body mass in a month.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:41

You'd have to be like negative 1,200 a day, right? Yeah, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:45

Especially for a female.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:46

I think especially if you have a lot to lose, you probably don't want to go that intense because that's going to be a long journey anyway, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:52

Right. And you want to make sure it's sustainable. So I guess the way I think about it is like when you're trying to lose weight, you don't really want to drastically change what you're eating. You just want to try to eat a little less. That way, when you get down to the point where you're like, okay, I don't want to lose any more weight, you're not switching back to like your old bad eating habits. You're just like eating a little more food now. So it's definitely not a good idea to do some like totally drastic, intense thing to try to lose a lot of weight quickly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:16

Yeah. And also if you do that, I feel like you can end up in an eating disorder pretty easily.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:19

Yeah. There's definitely some concerns there. And then also, if you lose weight faster than about a pound a week, you risk a lot more of losing muscle mass while you're losing weight, which nobody wants. Even if you don't know, that's not what you want because you end up with more fat, but smaller, you know?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:35

Yeah, skinny fat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:36

Yeah, skinny fat is what they call it, basically. But, like, you're down to your goal weight, but you still have, like, loose skin. You're not very toned, right? Yeah. A lot of people want to still look pretty fit when they get down to their weight. So you want to make sure you're maintaining your muscle mass.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:51

Yeah. So what if you were trying to do like a surplus, like you're trying to grow muscle, what would you do?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:56

Yeah. So it's in the other direction. So you'd be in a calorie surplus. So let's say we go back to the example where the calorie calculator spit out 2,500 calories as your maintenance. You want to make sure you're eating a little more than 2,500 calories. And it doesn't need to be a lot more for muscle growth. So if you are gaining like half a pound a week, that's probably sufficient for maximizing muscle growth for somebody who's not taking steroids or something crazy like that. So you could just have an extra 250 calories a day, basically. There's an old, like the old bodybuilders and stuff, they would do, and still a lot of people still do this, but they basically call it like a dirty bulk where you're just eating thousands of calories a day of like junk food and whatever, just to try to completely maximize muscle mass. But the more and more research that's done on this, the more it seems like you really just need a slight surplus to gain the maximum possible muscle because muscle grows very slowly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:45

Yeah. And then you don't have to lose much weight, right? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:47

Because, yeah, if you're gaining faster than your rate of muscle growth, then you're just adding on extra fat. And there's no hopeful reason for that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:53

Except you get to eat junk food. Oh, that's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:56

And if you're ever in a long winter and you can't get the food, you get a lot more stored calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:01

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:04

Yeah. So once you know kind of what you want your target to be based off of your goal of either gaining weight, losing weight or maintaining weight, you have to decide how do I eat the food to make up that goal? so there are three things that make up calories protein carbohydrates and fats and so those are kind of the three levers you have to make up your calories for the day a couple of those do have recommended ranges especially if you're trying to maintain muscle build muscle things like that for protein i would say just for like a normal person trying to get fit um anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight is appropriate and then if you're somebody who's like really in the gym pretty serious about it trying to optimize muscle growth i'd say hit the minimum of 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:50

What is that in grams per pound.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:52

So in in grams per pound uh the conservative range from 1.2 to 1.6 would change to about 0.5 to 0.8 it's actually like 0.54 to 0.73 but if you're trying to use an easy number in your head just do 0.5 to 0.8

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:06

Okay so like, the pounds you use is that your actual body weight or like if you have weight to lose what do you are you using your body weight yeah if.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:15

You have weight to lose you can use your goal weight or if you happen to have a really accurate measurement of your body fat percentage which almost nobody does you can use your lean body mass basically the concept there is like your extra body fat doesn't need the

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:27

Protein that helps a lot i think because like if you have a lot of weight to lose and you're trying to hit a 0.7 times your pounds that's going to be like potentially a lot right Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:38

And, you know, even more, because potentially if you're like in a calorie deficit, you might need a little more protein. If you're over 60 years old, you might need a little more protein and vegans might need a little more protein. So those things all kind of add up. So if you're like hitting it in the gym, you're pretty overweight and you're trying to optimize all this stuff and you're 60 years old, you're really looking at probably closer to like a gram per pound of body weight being optimal, which would be pretty problematic if you're 250 pounds.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:04

Yeah. And you only have like 2,000 calories to eat. Right. So your goal weight.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:07

Your goal weight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:08

Your goal weight times 0.5 to 0.7 in pounds or your goal weight times, what'd you say, 1.2 to 1.6 if you're in kilograms.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:19

Yeah. And then, you know, again, if you're taking it pretty seriously, you're in the gym like four or five days a week, you might as well make sure you're just hitting that minimum of 1.6 grams per kilogram or you can just call it 0.8 grams per pound.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:30

Yep. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:32

And then for fat, this is a lot more preference-based. It's really just you want to make sure you reach a minimum threshold to make sure all your fat-soluble vitamins absorb and stuff like that. But a range people tend to use is 0.3 to 0.6 grams per pound, and this one is body weight-based.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:46

What about kilograms? Making him do math today, kids. He loves math. Don't feel bad for him.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:53

And that would be about 0.66 to 1.3 grams per kilogram. It can only be a nice round number one way or the other. yeah and fat has some hormonal impacts and it can help a little bit with anabolism which is like muscle building and stuff but as long as you're somewhere in that range you're probably in pretty good shape is

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:13

There any difference between like what men and women should eat on fat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:18

Um i think women can probably eat a little more but i think either way as long as you're in that range we just talked about you're probably in the optimal area

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:25

So kind of like choose your own adventure. Yeah. Like whatever you prefer.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:28

Yeah. What I typically like to do is I pick a calorie target, I pick a protein target, and then I just kind of vary carbs and fat based on personal preference.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:35

Yeah. Like do you like peanut butter or do you like bread? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:38

Or pasta.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:39

Or pasta. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:40

And then carbs, you just kind of fill in the rest of the gap. And then you want to make sure you're getting in fiber as well with your carbs. The actual recommendation for fiber for For men under 50 is 38 grams, and for women under 50 is 25 grams. And then if you're over 50, it goes down a little, 21 grams for women and 30 grams for men.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:00

Now, are the women and men numbers based solely on weight differences, or is that like actual body function?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:06

It's mostly based on average body size and calorie intake. And then also there's a component where the recommended for women is a little less to have less bloating.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:19

Hmm. Maybe around your time of the month. Yeah. But yeah, like he said, if you're a vegan, you're probably definitely getting like 25 grams if you're eating... whole-ish foods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:30

Right. Yeah, especially, so you might in some cases need to manage your fiber a little bit, especially if you're like trying to gain weight because you're going to be eating quite a bit of calories. And as a vegan, that's going to come with quite a bit of fiber. Yeah. So you may want to try to go for more calorically dense foods like fats just to get the calories in without adding in a bunch of extra fiber. So let's go through an example person and see what we would do if we were this example person okay so our example is going to be a male a five foot nine inches tall 190 pounds 30 years old with a goal weight of 160 pounds what's his name um timmy so yeah 190 pounds wants to lose about 30 pounds um and and kilograms that would be a starting weight of 86 kilograms and a goal weight of 73 kilograms okay so if we punch timmy into the tdee calculator, it's going to spit out that his maintenance calories are 2,492 calories. And we're assuming light activity. He's going to start trying to do some workouts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:31

Yeah. What does he do for a job, Timmy?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:33

Uh, Timmy is a professional tutor.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:37

For the ACT, the SAT and ACT prep.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:40

Yeah, exam prep. Yeah. So the protein range that we would use for Timmy, if he was just interested in health and not super into fitness, super into building muscle, he'd probably target somewhere in the range of 88 grams to 117 grams. And if you wanted to be optimal, he'd target at least 117 grams.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:55

And that's based on his goal weight.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:57

That's based on his goal weight. Okay. Yeah. For fat, he'd target roughly 57 grams to 114 grams a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:03

114 could be so much peanut butter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:06

That's a lot of peanut butter. And you do want to make sure you're limiting saturated fats. So this needs to be in like the healthier fats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:11

What kind of fats are healthy?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:13

Monounsaturated, polyunsaturated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:14

Give me examples. What can I eat?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:16

Seeds, nuts, oil, extra virgin olive oil.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:19

Avocados.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:19

Avocados. Yeah, lots of nut butters are a good go-to for these. And then for carbs, it is the rest of what we have. So let's say since we punched it in and we got about 2,492 calories, We're just going to round that to 2,500 calories for his maintenance. We're going to try to make Timmy lose about a pound a week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:38

Okay. And just like a side note, it really doesn't matter if you're in a surplus, maintenance, or calorie deficit. Your protein target is going to be the same because it's based on your goal weight, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:51

That is true, although some recent studies have shown you might want to aim a little higher for protein and a deficit just to help retain some of your muscle mass and make sure you're not losing more. Especially if you have a more extreme deficit. So for whatever reason, you have like a medically supervised deficit with a registered dietitian where you're like trying to lose two pounds a week because you have like a lot of weight to lose. Then you might definitely need a little more protein just to make sure you're preserving that muscle mass on the way down.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:17

Yeah. Plus protein for me makes me feel fuller.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:19

Yeah, definitely. So from the 2500 TDEE calculation, we're trying to lose a pound a week. We're going to target 2000 calories a day for Timmy, the professional tutor. So what I would probably do if I was in Timmy's shoes here is I would do, I'd be 120 grams of protein, 85 grams of fat, and then like 188 grams of carbs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:36

Yeah. This doesn't sound like it'd be hard to do at all. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:40

So you have put together a couple of example meal plans in the past in some of your e-books. So we're going to use one day from one of those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:47

My free e-books.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:48

Right, my free e-books. We're going to use a day from one of those to show what this 2,000 calorie, 120 gram of protein day might look like. And I think this day actually in the meal plan ends up with a little bit higher protein because it's pretty easy to hit, like 120 grams on 2,000

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:01

Calories.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:02

But we'll show what the example is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:04

And this one doesn't use protein powder. That's right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:06

So for breakfast, Timmy could do two orange cranberry TVP muffins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:10

Yeah. Those are pretty good. Those are good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:12

They're also pretty filling.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:13

They are filling. And they have a lot of fiber.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:15

Yeah. For lunch, you could do two servings of vegan crab rangoon dip with tortilla chips.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:21

Yeah. This is tofu-based, and it's delicious. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:24

For dinner, we get enchiladas.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:27

Yeah. Winner.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:29

Yeah. Great day. And then a snack, two servings of chocolate seitan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:33

Sounds like a good day to me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:34

You hear the word chocolate in there and we're still hitting our goals?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:37

Going over our goals, technically.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:39

Yeah, going over our protein goal. And I just use the word chocolate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:43

And enchilada.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:44

I think we should check out your website. Yeah. So that's an example today. That'll end up at about 2,054 calories and 148 grams of protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:53

Easy. Yeah. And actually, most of these are pretty good for like meal prep. They don't take too long to make. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:00

Pretty easy day. And you can make a couple days at a time. So, and that's one of the keys is you want to try to make, especially when you're first starting out, and especially if you're not very good at cooking or you don't like cooking, try to make recipes that'll last you a couple days at a time. It's basically meal prep. And you can find some that'll last like a week, but with the vegan protein options, it's a little tricky because tofu only keeps in the fridge for a couple of days.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:19

Yeah, like three to four days. Right. Yeah, but like, I like the TVP muffins. Those are usually my biggest recommendation if people are asking for meal preps for breakfast because they actually freeze really well, too. You can make a dozen at a time. You can make two dozen. I remember I was on a turnaround for my last job and we made like three dozen one weekend. It just chucked them all in the freezer. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:40

Plus you wake up every morning and you have muffins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:42

Yeah. And they're really good. And they make you happy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:44

They're very good. Yeah. So if you're trying to decide what to meal prep, if you're in a deficit, I would go for some higher volume foods. So, you know, a lot of like water-based ingredients and greens and stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:56

Fiber. Silken tofu, I think is a good one. One of my favorite, like, higher volume foods is, like, a pasta primavera type of thing with, like, a silken tofu sauce, red lentil pasta, and then a bunch of vegetables. Yeah. That is super filling, and it feels like you're eating a lot of food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:12

Yeah. Really feels like you're gorging there, but it's only a few calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:16

It's like, oh, my God, I still have more to eat, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:20

Yeah, so those will help you kind of manage that appetite throughout the day. And you're not getting to the end of the day and you're like, oh, I had all these things that digested in two hours. And I'm starving.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:31

Yeah, that's the thing with, like, junk food. If you're eating a lot of junk food, you will be really hungry probably the whole time. Yep, definitely.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:39

But then on the flip side, if you're in a surplus, especially as a vegan, you know, running into some fiber issues, you're going to want to probably swap out some of the carbs for like calorie dense fats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:50

Yeah. Nuts, nut butters.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:52

Because if you're trying to do like 3,000 calories in a day, that might be coming with like 90 grams of fiber if you're not careful.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:59

Yeah. Also, if you're doing like 3,000, 3,500 calories in a day, that's a lot of cooking. So you might want to find like nuts are easy. It's a lot of calories. Yeah. in a serving and you don't have to prepare it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:10

Like a handful of, I think it's 23 almonds is like right at 200 calories. Yeah. That's 10% of your calories for the day right there. You might have to find ways to manage how your stomach feels depending on your calorie goal. And you can just tweak your carbs and fats to modify that most of the time. And also you might just need some lower fiber carbs. So like more simple carbs, things like that might be a better option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:31

If you're in a surplus, you probably want to stay away from like the low carb tortillas that have, like, 20-plus grams of fiber per... Like, I enjoy eating them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:41

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:42

But, yeah, I think if you're eating, like, 3,500 calories, you might want to stay away from those because you end up with, like, 200 grams of fiber.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:48

No, that's true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:49

Which I don't really know. I've never eaten 200 grams of fiber in a day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:53

I've gotten up to 100 before.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:54

Does it make you feel any sort of way?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:56

I mean, it makes you feel pretty gassy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:58

Does it?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:59

Sometimes. It depends also. Like, there's not anything inherently wrong with a lot of fiber, but... It depends on your tolerance, like how much

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:07

You've worked up to it. Yeah, and if you've worked up to it. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:09

Because most of the days, you know, when I'm hitting my goal, I hit like 60 to 70 grams of fiber. Yeah. So going up to 100 from there is not like drastically different. But if you're somebody who gets like 20 grams of fiber a day, going to 100 grams of fiber a day is going to be drastically different.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:22

No, I remember my parents visited and we made them TVP tacos and they were like talking about how like it must have been too much fiber because their stomachs hurt. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, I think I've gotten up to like 80 and I haven't really, it hasn't really affected me too bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:38

Another tip is to come up with some good go-to meals. Like if you go to the recipe site and you find a couple of recipes you like and they're like easy to make, I would just kind of put those in your arsenal. I was like, these are the five or six recipes that I will make when I don't feel like cooking or when I'm in a hurry or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:53

And maybe find some go-to meals that, like, if you really, really don't feel like cooking, you can, like, grab something from a local restaurant or. Yeah. We do noodle bowls when we don't feel like cooking because you can get, like, double tofu on them and the macros aren't too bad. Yeah. Whole food ingredients.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:11

Yeah, noodle bowls come in clutch a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

We've also been doing bean bowls. we literally will split a can of beans and do two tablespoons of nooch each and like a half a teaspoon of um taco seasoning and then mix that all together and throw some vegan cheese on top and it's actually really good in filling we've been doing that for breakfast and we don't even get hungry until like noon yeah so find like easy stuff that you will enjoy eating over and over and over again and then yeah i think if you have like a family you might want to look into more meal prepping type stuff. We are a family of two, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:49

Yeah, we can just do beans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:50

We can just do beans and kids aren't going to cry. But if you have kids, you might want to do TVP muffins. I heard kids like those. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:57

Assuming you're tracking your food to hit your calorie target, one good tip can be to plan ahead in the app or whatever you're using to track that food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:05

Yeah. So what we do, because I actually put all of my recipes into my Fitness Pal's global foods, so you can just like add those. And what I'll do if I'm like planning our meal prep for the week is I'll go through and basically fill out what each day is going to be for the whole week with like my recipes and like whatever else you're adding in like carrots and clementines or whatever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:29

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't even realize you can go fill out future days in there. Yeah. And then you can see this is the food I have planned for the day. What is that going to do to my calories and my macros? And then you can kind of understand, do I have room for some little snack or something like that? Or like, if I have a snack, I'm going to have to take out one of these options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:45

Yeah. And it kind of helps you figure out like, especially if you are single, like only cooking for yourself. It kind of helps you understand like, am I going to be able to eat all of these servings? Or, like, where are my gaps going to be where I don't have food for the week?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:59

Right. Yeah. I find it really helpful. Especially with all your recipes being in there. It's much easier. Yeah. You just type in PDV enchiladas. PDV TVP muffins. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:08

I don't know if anyone else uses it, but, like, even if no one else used it, I'd still do it because it's really handy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:13

Yeah. I think even if you weren't here making all the food, I think I would exclusively use your recipes just because they're so easy to put in a muffin.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:20

You don't have to add all 19 ingredients. Right. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:25

Uh yeah and then there are also some situations where as you're going through a day tracking you'll end up with like you're kind of close to the end of the day you're short on like one or more of your macronutrients you've got some calories left and you're trying to figure out like what's the best thing to eat for this to hit that rest of my goal so like if you're short on protein what do you think some good options might be to just shore up the protein without affecting the other macros okay

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:49

Um i don't know you could definitely do vegan greek yogurt would be a good option if you have seitan on hand that's always a good option for protein but like also tofu tvp yeah are good options they do require some effort yeah but those low carb protein tortillas we talked about have pretty good macros usually about 40 protein yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:08

And if they're high fiber they're not really contributing to the carbs too much and those carbs aren't contributing to calories too much there's also

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:14

A lot of good protein snacks on the market there's the endurance protein chips and uh what is like crisp power protein pretzels the gym snack they have like some cheddar bites some of the vegan jerkies are okay yeah but definitely like there's some snacky foods like if you like at the end of the day you don't feel like cooking there's some options there yeah do you have any other.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:35

Ones well worst case scenario if you're on the go or something you can just do a protein yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:38

I always forget about protein shakes because i hate them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:40

There's also a dry roasted edamame which is like 40 protein or i guess if we're in 40 protein realm we can do like protein bars or something like that. Yeah. Like a nice no cow bar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:50

You can make edamame puff rice crispy treats.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:53

Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:53

Those take five minutes. That's what I'd do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:55

That's actually the best protein bar there is. You just have to do a little bit of protein. I mean, they only take a couple minutes to make.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:59

Yeah, they're really fast. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:01

Yeah, so that's what you might do if you're running a little behind on protein. If you're a little behind on fat, I would definitely focus on like a nut or nut butter. Peanut butter is kind of the go-to. A little bit of protein, a lot of fat. And then if you're low on carbs, wow, the world is your oyster.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:15

Yeah. I think if you're like low on carbs, but really hungry, fruit's a good option, fruits and vegetables, because they're high volume. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:24

Also oatmeal, if you like oatmeal, it's a good option for carbs. Got a little bit of protein in it as well. So, yeah. You'll learn as you kind of do the tracking over time, which foods are like, oh, this is a combination of protein and fat, like a peanut butter, or this is a combination of protein and carbs, like beans and things like that. And you'll just learn to kind of slot those in like Tetris pieces.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:43

Yeah, I kind of do that with vitamins, too. When I'm looking at my micros, it's like, okay, I need some vitamin A. I guess I'll go eat some carrots. Or like, oh, I need vitamin C. I guess I'll eat two clementines, you know, something like that. Yep.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:56

It's a good way to do it. Food gives you nutrients.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:59

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:00

All right. So there are kind of three main ways to hit your calorie and protein goals in the day. There are, you know, endless combinations of these things. But these are the three main ways. You can eat your normal food, which you like to eat. And then you can just chug a couple of protein shakes throughout the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:16

You'll have to eat a little less of your normal food so you have the calories for the protein shakes. But at least you're getting the food you like. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:22

So this is like, I really don't want to make all this protein-heavy food. I just want to eat the food I really like and also want to hit my protein goal, which is kind of what protein shakes are made for.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:30

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:31

So then the option is you eat a bunch of food that has protein powder mixed into it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:39

Yeah. Okay. So this is the method I saw most when I went vegan and was looking for high protein recipes. And actually the reason why I started the website, because I hate this method, because basically this is my opinion. Yeah. Right. So take it or leave it. But I have never had a recipe, really, that I've just mixed protein powder into and it made it taste better.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:59

Well, the protein oats that I make.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:01

Yeah, yeah, those look great. Like, aside from, like, smoothies or, like, some of your standard stuff, it's like there's people mixing protein powder into, like, pasta sauces. Yeah. And, like, protein powder into, like, various things, right? Right. But it's like, I'm taking a food I like, I'm mixing protein powder into it. The food is going to taste worse, but I won't have to chug a shake. But you basically chugged a shake because your protein has been protein powder the whole time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:29

Right. And then you're in a situation where it's like, well, I did not just eat the good food and drink the protein shake right after it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:34

Yeah, that's how I feel. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:36

And then there's kind of the third option, which is I think the gap that you kind of fill with your recipes on the protein deficient vegan site, which is you all almost all of your food is just like near this average protein target that you need for the day. So if like 30 percent of your calories are supposed to come from protein, you just eat a bunch of foods that are right around 30 percent protein. Yeah. So it's not like super high protein, like you have a bunch of protein powder jammed in there, but you get to the end of the day, you've eaten all these highest protein foods, and then you don't really have much left in your protein target.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:08

Yeah, this is what I do because I pretty much almost never actually eat protein powder. Yeah. But it's like, okay, so if you like muffins for breakfast, throw in some TVP instead of flour. Right. Or like half the flour with TVP. The texture is still the same. The taste is still the same. But I get protein muffins. Right. Yeah. Yeah, because when I saw people that were like mixing protein powder into pasta sauces, I was like, why don't you just mix in blended silken tofu? Right. That's what I do. That's just my opinion. Yeah. Or like instead of pasta, maybe you do red lentil pasta or protein pasta that has like a bunch of different beans and stuff in there. Yeah. That's just, that's how we do it here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:48

Right. So, yeah, those are some tips to get you started and go down the path of, you know, what do I do with my calories? What are some good ways to structure this meal plan? What are some good like options for a meal plan? Things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:59

Yeah. And I think like everyone's going to have one that works better for them because like if you have a family that does not want to eat like protein pasta, they hate red lentil. Like you have kids that don't want to eat red lentil pasta or something like maybe you are just going to cook normal and drink a protein shake. And that's like totally fine. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:15

There's nothing wrong with it. And I know a lot of people also won't want to track their food every day forever. But I strongly believe that tracking for a while will teach you a lot about like how food nourishes your body. Not to sound too loosey, but, you know, how the nutrients in food are kind of combined to make up your calories for the day. So it's just really educational and helps you understand, you know, what kinds of things should I eat on a regular basis, even if I'm not tracking my food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:42

Yeah. And kind of tangentially related, but if you're going to be tracking your food, you should also be weighing your food. Yeah. Especially like powdered ingredients and stuff. Oh, man. Powders are so bad. Or like condiments can really screw you over. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you haven't weighed those, you should look at that. Yeah. Peanut butter. Peanut butter will blow your mind. Yeah. You don't get two tablespoons my ass. Mm-hmm. It's like, okay, I don't believe you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:10

Nobody has ever in the history of anybody put one serving of peanut butter onto a sandwich on purpose.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:16

Yeah, and thought it was one serving.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:18

Right, and thought it was one serving. Exactly. You're like, you put your peanut butter on your bread. You're like, if you just do it the way you normally do it, right? Okay, so if you took peanut butter and you put peanut butter on a sandwich or something the way you would normally do it, and then you weighed that, it would probably be like three servings.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:33

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:35

Which is, by the way, like 600, 700 calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:39

Oh, peanut butter. We'll fuck up your shit. But yeah, I think, you know, if you are trying to lose weight or gain a specific amount of weight or even maintain weight and you're tracking your calories, the best thing you can do to track your calories accurate is to weigh a lot of your foods. Yeah, definitely. And a kitchen scale is like 10 bucks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:57

Yeah. A kitchen scale is probably... Like one of the biggest determining factors for whether or not like trying to track your calories is going to be successful for you or not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:08

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:08

Because, again, it's another piece where it's like, okay, this teaches me that I was eating way more than I thought. And you understand what actual servings are supposed to look like. It's just a super helpful tool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:20

Or cereal. Oh, yeah. Cereal blew my mind. Oh, man. I thought a serving was like a bowl of cereal. No. It's not a bowl of cereal. It's like a fourth of a bowl of cereal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:31

A serving of cereal is like a spoonful of like three, probably four spoonfuls of cereal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:35

Yeah, it's pathetic. Cereal does you dirty.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:38

So anyway, you learn a lot when you first start tracking and weighing your food together.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:42

And then like similarly, if you are hitting a certain calorie target each day, but you're like have a goal in mind, you should probably be like weighing yourself to see if you need to adjust your calories over time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:54

Oh, yeah. So we talked about getting the estimate from the TDEE calculator, but something to know there is that it is an estimate based on like very average population. So your personal number is almost definitely going to be different than the calculator.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:06

Yeah, and it could be very different.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:08

It could be very different. It could probably be up to like 500 calories different, which is basically your entire deficit that you were trying to hit. Yeah. So you'll see a lot of people say like, oh, I've been eating in a deficit for three months and I haven't lost any weight. In that case, you're really, you're thinking about the definition backwards because if you're not losing weight, you're not in a deficit. Right. You are eating 500 calories less than what the calculator told you to, but you're not in a deficit. Right. So the only ground truth there is measuring your food intake and weighing yourself on the scale. So the way that is most accurate for weighing yourself is to try to weigh yourself every morning or at least several times a week, and then take an average of all those times you weighed yourself throughout the week and then compare your weekly averages, that one number, week over week. Yeah. Because that's going to help smooth out any of those weight fluctuations and things like that day-to-day, especially for women. The menstrual cycle causes a lot of fluctuation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:55

Honestly, even if you're menstruating, Even a weekly average could still be like super, you could have some weird outlying stuff. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:02

But it's about as good as you can get, I think.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:04

Yeah. And then you can. We got it rough, girls.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:06

Well, and if you're thinking longer term, too, I mean, you're going to have your weekly averages and then you could average those up into a monthly average. Yeah, exactly. You can measure that month to month, which is probably more appropriate for like a woman. But a lot of people don't want to think that long term. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:18

Yeah. Well, yeah. Plus, if you're eating over your calories and you're already doing that and you're trying to lose weight, I wouldn't think you'd want to wait a couple months. to figure that out so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:28

Yeah the week to week is much better for tweaking it but month to month will show a really good picture of like am i doing what i'm

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:33

Supposed to be yeah and you can buy a pretty cheap scale too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:37

Yeah you

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:38

Don't have to have all the fancy uh bells and.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:40

Whistles as a matter of fact don't get all the fancy bells and whistles because most of the things other than weight on a home scale are bullshit and not accurate yeah so get like the like a nice scale it's not going to break on you you can get a smart scale if you just want to have it sync to your phone but don't get a smart scale because it's telling you your body composition and your left arm or how your bone density is how much water

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:59

Is in your body today yeah yeah make sure you set it up in the same place too because sometimes your floor is like a little uneven or something, So always set it up in the same exact place. That's just my opinion.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:10

And I also wouldn't set it on carpet, even if it comes with a little carpet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:12

Oh, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:13

Don't do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:14

Or squishy floor. Like, try hard floor or, like, tile.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:17

Yeah. I have one of the Withings scales because I do like it to sync to the phone. And it comes with carpet feet. And we have pretty short pile carpet. But I tried it first on the carpet feet. It was off by, like, 30 pounds.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:27

Yeah, no, it's really bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:28

It wasn't even, like, a little off.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:30

So don't do that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:31

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:32

Find hard flooring, whatever, like, even if it's in your kitchen or, like, most bathrooms. are hard yeah right unless you have carpet in your if you have carpet in your bathroom i would love to hear about that yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:44

Bathroom is the best place

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:45

For it yeah but i would say like pick a spot that you're always going to set it up in because we have tile in our bathroom and like the tiles are like some of them are a little i don't know not level so if you put it on a different tile you might get a different reading they're very.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:58

Sensitive to like the actual positioning of the scale

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:00

Changing yeah yeah the legs need to be level that's my two cents you didn't ask for right so So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:06

Yeah, to tie that back to adjusting the calories, basically, you want to get that weekly measurement, that weekly average, and you can say week over week. It's like, okay, I thought I was eating in a 500-calorie deficit because my goal was to lose a pound a week, but I'm only losing about half a pound a week. Yeah. So then you just take whatever you have been eating, and you can either decrease your calories by another 250 calories a day, or you can find ways to increase your activity to something that would be roughly equivalent to like 250 calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:33

Like cardio or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:34

Just basically add a cardio session or two. There's no way to really accurately measure how much any particular session of cardio does burn for a person outside of a lab setting. I would think of it roughly as probably 200 calories a cardio session, something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:47

For how long?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:47

For 30 minutes. 30 minutes, yeah. So if you don't want to lower your food more, try adding in a dedicated 30-minute cardio session and see if that's got you, you know, weak.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:55

Yeah, and look at the next week. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:57

So, yeah. You will definitely have to adjust as you go. And then as you lose weight or gain weight, your number changes anyway. So if you've got to go to lose 30 pounds, by the time you lose 10 pounds, you might need to eat 100 calories less a day anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:09

You're just always going to have to eat less. It's really depressing. on that high note.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:15

Right so yeah it's definitely something you have to keep an eye on and monitor and just tweak little things over time i would really recommend tracking just because that's the most direct way to get there to make sure you're doing what you're doing but if you don't track you can just know okay i need to eat slightly smaller servings or do a little more activity or whatever to tweak the reality towards your goal all right so i think that is about it for this segment as far as managing your weight managing your calories things like that if

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:40

You have any specific questions, leave a comment or hit us up on our socials or email us.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:45

Yeah, definitely. Also, I have a new e-book that I put out that I'll link in the show notes that is basically 50 pages of how to get started trying to get fit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:54

It kind of covers all of this, but in a little bit more detail. And then you have it like in a form that you can go back and read it and not have to listen to us talk for 40 minutes. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:02

Especially when it comes to the numbers. A lot of that's really hard to digest in audio form, but you want to hit the highlights to make sure you understand some concepts. All right, so let's talk about our myth of the week this week. This week, the myth is that vegans kill more animals with crop deaths than omnivores do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:18

I see this a lot. The omnivores love this one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:22

Yeah, so crop deaths basically means, like, when you go to prepare the ground for a crop, or even while the crop is growing, there are a lot of, like, bugs and wild animals and stuff like that that get either displaced or killed by the big farm machinery.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:36

Yeah, or the pesticides, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:37

Yeah, all that stuff. So, like, basically animals that die as a result of farming the land.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:41

And then you're eating the crops, so you are held accountable for that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:45

Right. So, the first thing to know is that many crops, and actually in the U.S., it's most crops, as far as food crops, go to feed animals and not to feed humans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:54

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:55

Globally, I think it's about half and half, but in the U.S., it's predominantly food crops are going to feed animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:01

Yeah. Plus, if you look at it, like, if you think about... How many crops does a cow need to get to the size it is before you would eat it versus how many crops do I need to eat to make up the calories of eating a cow? Yeah. I think it's like a 20 to 1.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:17

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:19

It's insane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:20

It's very calorie inefficient to feed an animal a bunch of calories and then eat the animal instead of just eating the calories that the animal eats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:28

Exactly. So, like, that part already is debunked. It's going to be less if you're eating an animal versus eating the crops.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:36

Yeah. So we're harassing all of these animals to actually get less calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:39

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:40

So because there are so many crops that go to feeding animals, really a large amount of the crop deaths come from the crops that are used to feed the animals that people eat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:49

Right. So if you actually cared about reducing the number of crop deaths, like if these omnivores actually genuinely cared about reducing the crop deaths, they'd go vegan anyways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:58

And I know it's counterintuitive to say if you care about crop deaths, eat exclusively crops. But just because of how many calories animals have to eat, that's the way it works out. Yeah. There was actually a study on this. And theoretically, if the world went fully vegan, the amount of cropland you would need to grow food goes down by about 75%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:18

Oh, I believe that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:20

It's huge. Because like you said, it's like 20 to 1.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:22

Oh, yeah. It's like totally energy inefficient, crop inefficient to feed cows until they get to their adult size. And then eat them. It makes no sense. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:31

It's like me right now. Would you rather, you know, eat the meat that I would produce if you slaughtered me? Yeah, yeah. Or would you rather have all the food I've ever eaten in my entire life?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:42

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:43

I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. But yeah. And that's, you know, that 75% reduction is without consideration for like non-food crops, for things like growing fiber, like cotton and stuff like that. And then corn that goes only to ethanol. Yeah. And that kind of thing. You know, we'd still need some of those. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:59

But we would probably get some of that back. Like for, for example, the corn that goes to ethanol, there is a byproduct called dried distiller's grains and that goes to cows. That's a cow feed. Right. So I assume they would just figure out a way to make that a viable food option for humans because the macros on it are actually really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:17

Yeah. Well, with all the ways they're, you know, figuring out to make the textured proteins out of a bunch of different vegetables and grains and crops and stuff, I'm sure there's a way to do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:24

Fun fact is that I worked at an ethanol plant for seven years, and when I first started there, they had told me about, like, these dried distillers grains that somebody came and did a demonstration of, like, teaching them about dried distillers grains to operators, and then they made a cookie with them. And I think this, like, lodged into my brain and waited to hatch for, like, a decade until I discovered TVP, and that's how I decided to cook with TVP as, like, a baking thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:51

Yeah, it worked out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:52

So, thank you, ethanol experience.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:56

But, yeah, so it's, I mean, again, it's really counterintuitive, but the way to have less crop deaths is to eat more crops directly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:04

Yeah. And then, you know, I think the other piece is, like, veganism as... a philosophy isn't to eliminate animal harm. It's like to do as much as you feasibly can, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:16

Well, maybe eventually we'll have 100% live-grown meat if we can get all the governments to stop trying to shut down the cultivated meat industry. I don't know. But there are probably options in the future. But for the moment, like we're eating a lot of meat that is very calorie inefficient, and we don't need it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:31

Yeah. And I think also if you're vegan and you're worried about crop debts, something that you could do is grow your own garden. Also, even if you're like in a climate that you can't really grow a lot of foods outside. They make these hydroponic gardens that you can keep in your house. Like we have one called Lettuce Grow Farm Stand or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:48

The Lettuce Grow, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:49

And you can't make a ton of vegetables in it. We're not making soybeans in that. Yeah, like lettuce and herbs and stuff. But like it kind of cuts down some of that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:58

So anyway, I think that covers the myth.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:00

I would say debunked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:01

Yeah, it is counterintuitive. So I can understand why people might think that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:05

I don't think they actually think that. I think it's an argument in back faith, as are most of them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:09

I don't think they'd bother. But I think even if they did think about it, it would be harder to think about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:12

I think it's pretty obvious, right? Like, that cows need to eat crops.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:16

The calorie inefficiency thing does seem pretty obvious to me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:19

But I do think, I think there is, like, some lack of overall understanding of that. We actually saw this play out on Survivor because we watched Survivor. Oh, right, yeah. So, like, this is the worst part about Survivor is, like, the chicken situation. And sometimes you'll have vegans on there that are like, we're not killing the chickens.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:36

And it actually usually happens every season. Right. Is they decide not to kill the chickens. But there was this one season where they were talking about they got chicken feed as part of like the challenge. Like you have to feed the chickens. Yeah. And they were like, what if we just ate the chicken feed? And I'm like, oh, my God, you're so close to understanding like the whole like energy inefficiency of animal agriculture. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:56

All right. So, yeah, I think that's it for the myth. Get into the protein deficient vegan updates for the week. What do you have going on?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:03

I have been doing a lot of things with, like, vital wheat gluten, which is a common theme lately. I will get off my vital wheat gluten kick, but not yet. But I've had a couple people ask me if I have, like, a cinnamon roll recipe. So I've been dicking around with cinnamon rolls this week. Yeah. And I'd say they're pretty good. the.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:24

Cinnamon rolls are good and then the cinnamon rolls inspired a uh garlic roll type

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:29

Creation we don't know what to call it garlic pizza roll thing oh that might be the name yeah i don't know uh basically it's like similar dough to the cinnamon roll and and then you kind of roll it up the same but instead of sugar it's got garlic confit yeah like mushy garlic that's cooked in olive oil or whatever and then like some parmesan and mozzarella and holy shit those were like pretty fucking good they're.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:54

So good and they smell so good i was downstairs trying to do my workout while these were cooking and i could not focus at all i'm just like drooling while i do squats it was ridiculous they're they're incredible

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:04

He had to stop and come up and eat them and then go back downstairs but yeah those are coming to a website near you after i take some pictures and you know dial in the recipe so right, What about you? What do you got going on?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:19

Yeah, so I just put out the new e-book, the Fitness Jumpstart Guide. So that's on the website. It's just like a couple of dollars if you want to grab that. That's the one I ended up sending out to everybody that entered the contest. Hopefully they can get a little jumpstart even if I'm not able to coach them. Again, I would have liked to just take everybody, but that would have been pretty infeasible.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:38

Yeah, I think with the jumpstart guide and then like the Discord channel, though, I think you can get pretty far on your own.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:45

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:46

And you have like a little group to be accountable to. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:49

The Discord has been popping pretty good lately. A lot of people talking about a lot of different things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:53

Almost up to 50 people. I know. You should join it. It's a lot of fun. We got a lot of good people in there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:57

Yep. You got a link to the Deficient Vegans Discord right down in the show notes here if you want to join.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:02

And are you going to link to your book too? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:04

I'll have a link to the book down there as well. We've been getting a lot more comments on Spotify lately on the podcast. So that's pretty cool. We appreciate it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:11

Thank you guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:11

We really enjoy seeing those. You can also leave a comment on YouTube if you follow the podcast there. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That actually helps us out a lot. Get the podcast put up a little higher in the rankings and people search for things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:25

So really helpful. Yeah. And if you have any, like, questions about the topics we talked about today or if there's anything that you'd like us to talk about, let us know. Because we just come up with random ideas and then shoot the shit for 50 minutes plus. Right. So if you have any specific topics you want us to cover, let us know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:41

Yeah. And if you don't want to leave a comment, if you'd rather, like, reach out to us directly, you can find us on social media. Instagram is the most common one we're on, but we've got all of our social media linked in the show notes. You can also go to the website. You can leave a comment on your recipes there or, you know, use the contact form and reach out. You've got a lot of ways to get a hold of us.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:57

Yeah, and we'll respond.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:58

Yeah. All right. Well, I think that wraps us up for this week. Thanks for listening, everybody. Do you want to say bye? Bye. Bye, everybody.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:05

Bam.