Can You Build Muscle On A Vegan Diet?
First of all, I want to make it clear that the intended audience for this post is vegans who lift weights on a regular basis, want to maximize their muscle and strength, and look great without clothes.
If you’re an endurance athlete or someone who just does the odd casual hike or yoga class, and you just want to be healthy, then the recommendations in this post aren’t for you. Maybe at some point I’ll write a follow-up article for the general population.
People follow vegan diets for various reasons but quite often it’s due to personal ethics, a concern for the environment and compassion towards animals.
Due to the high levels of emotion and ideology that are often associated with a vegan lifestyle, it can be quite a polarizing topic. Unfortunately, just like with any other polarizing nutrition topic, there’s a lot of incorrect info about it from all sides on blogs, social media, and especially food documentaries.
When it comes to the purported health benefits of strictly plant-based diets, they’ll either make you wither away into a malnourished rack of bones or turn you into an elite athlete and let you live until age 105, depending on who you choose to believe.
Quite arguably the biggest science-based argument against strict vegan diets is that they’re inherently unsustainable due to being low in protein, Vitamin B-12 and D, omega-3 fatty acids, and calcium. Hold on for a second though, before global trade and modern supplementation existed, that would have absolutely been hugely detrimental to health but now there are ways to thrive on a vegan diet with the help of supplements and fortified foods.
There’s also a lot of confusion over how much protein we actually need in our diet. Many vegan diet proponents will point to government dietary guidelines as proof that we get enough of it. The big problem with those guidelines is that they are clinical in origin and based on the minimum amounts required to keep you from wasting away if you’re sick in a hospital bed, not to thrive as an everyday person, athlete, or especially someone trying to improve his or her strength and physique.
One major concern when it comes to vegan diets for muscle gain and other athletic endeavors is that plant-based protein sources are incomplete and therefore inferior to animal protein sources and that solely consuming them will lead to easier muscle loss and greater difficulty gaining muscle.
Before we even go there let’s take a second to talk about protein. Our muscles, nails, bones, hair, connective tissue, organs and bodily enzymes are largely made up of protein obtained from our food. Proteins are made of tiny building blocks called amino acids. Picture all of your lean tissue, including muscle, as being a brick house. Now imagine protein as the bricks and amino acids as the sand and clay that the bricks are made from.
There are 20 amino acids in total. Out of those 20 amino acids, we have to obtain 9 essential amino acids (EAA’s) from the food we eat, since our body can’t produce or store them. Our body is constantly building and breaking down lean tissue in a process called protein turnover. When the synthesis of amino acids exceeds breakdown it leads to lean tissue gain (anabolism). When breakdown exceeds synthesis it leads to lean tissue loss (catabolism).
Next, let’s talk about complete and incomplete proteins. Complete proteins contain all of the EAA’s, while incomplete proteins contain...you guessed it. only some of them. In order for dietary protein to stimulate muscle-building anabolism, the food we eat must contain the full range of EAA’s.
The bad news is that meats and dairy typically contain all of the EAA’s, while plant-based protein sources tend to be deficient in some of the essential amino acids.
The good news is that you can combine different incomplete foods or add supplemental protein to your meals in order to ensure that you’re consuming a sufficient variety and quantity of essential amino acids.
Now this is important because there’s something called indicator amino acid oxidation, a process that occurs when you eat incomplete protein sources which don’t contain all the EAA’s. It’s based on the principle that your body cannot store EAA’s in the same way it can store carbohydrates and fat..
What essentially happens if you only eat incomplete protein sources is that if one or more of the EAA’s is deficient then all the other amino acids, including that one, get oxidized for energy rather than getting used for lean tissue and muscle-building.
It’s like putting a group of your friends on a party guest list but telling the door man not to let any of them in unless they all show up at the same time, rather than letting in one or two people at a time as they arrive. The use of the different amino acids for protein synthesis (including muscle-building) works in the same all-or-nothing kind of way.
For the above reasons, it’s very important to either eat complete protein sources or to combine incomplete sources that make up for the missing amino acids and prevent all of them from getting oxidized for energy.
How much protein do I really need?:
The evidence-based recommendations for omnivores who lift weights and want to build or preserve muscle are between 0.8 and 1 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day (or 1.7 and 2.2 g/kg).
It can be argued that since plant proteins are less bioavailable and digestible than animal protein, vegans can benefit from an even higher intake. If you resistance train and you’re dieting aggressively for fat loss, then you should probably err towards the higher end of that range. If you have a hard time eating enough protein on a strictly plant-based diet to meet those guidelines then it's a good idea to include protein shakes with your meals. Soy protein isolate is the most complete plant-based protein supplement. Pea protein powder has also shown positive results when compared with whey protein in resistance-trained people.
Take-home points:
Protein quality matters. Most plant-based protein sources have incomplete amino acid profiles and are also less digestible and bioavailable than animal protein sources.
Combining incomplete plant-based protein sources can help ensure that you’re getting an adequate quantity and quality of protein for optimal muscle-building and retention.
Incorporating a quality supplement such as soy protein isolate can also make a significant difference, especially if you’re in a calorie-restricted (fat loss) dieting phase.
If you’re someone who resistance trains, follows a plant-based diet, and your goal is to build muscle and strength, then aim for at least 1 gram of protein per pound of your bodyweight.
Thank you for reading this article. Let me know you found this information useful or if your have any questions or other topics you would like me to write about.