Optimize Your Vegetarian Bodybuilding Diet

Vegetarian bodybuilding is sometimes questioned because the majority of people are under the impression that meat is the best source of protein. These people are ignorant. This article will give you tips on how you can have the best vegetarian bodybuilding diet possible. One that is equal or even better than non vegetarian diets.

Tip number 1:
Supplement with whey, casein, eggs or soy protein isolate to meet you daily protein needs.

If you are on a mass gaining diet, it is recommended that you ingest a lot of protein daily. By a lot, I mean 0.8grams of protein for each pound of body weight. Thus if you are weighing 180pounds, you should eat 144grams of protein daily. To meet these needs you cannot just eat 144grams of soy or kidney beans. The reason for this is that soy beans have a Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) of 0.91. PDCAAS is just a method for comparing different protein sources in terms of their essential amino acid profile combined with the digestibility of the same source. If the PDCAAS of a certain protein source is 1, it means that the source can almost fully be digested and it has a good essential amino acid profile.
To get back to why you cannot just eat 144grams of soy beans to meet your daily protein requirements, you should supplement your protein intake whether it is with the same source, meaning that you should eat more of that source, or with a source that has a PDCAAS of 1(such as whey, Casein, eggs or soy protein isolate). You might wonder how to do these compensation calculations. I will show them to you now.
If you eat 100g of soy beans (PDCAAS of 0.91) and 20g of kidney beans(PDCAAS of 0.68) daily, with how much whey(PDCAAS of 1.0) protein should you supplement to meet your daily protein needs?
You should supplement with 39.4g of whey.How I got to it was I subtracted the sum of 91% of 100g and 68% of 20g from 144g. Simplifying what I just said, you will have to subtract 104.6g from 144g.
I hope that you understand the process and why it is necessary to supplement.

Tip number 2:
Take a multi vitamin
The reason I say this is that most meaty protein sources contain micro nutrients like zinc, iron and vitamin B12 which plant protein rich sources do not contain. Even if you supplement with whey, you should still take a multi vitamin because whey is only rich in calcium.
I hope that you have learned a few new things about how you can optimize you vegetarian bodybuilding diet.

Thomas Maxwell is an Author on Bodybuilding and Fitness. As an Author on the subject, he is at the forefront to provide insightful information about how you can improve your fitness and physique.

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