Show Notes

Ever wondered how vegans manage to stay fit and still indulge in mouth-watering holiday feasts? As your hosts, we promise to guide you through the complexities of maintaining a fitness-focused vegan lifestyle, especially during the festive season. We unravel the mystery of protein sourcing for vegans and how we handle the often taxing conversations with those who don’t quite understand our lifestyle choices. Our advice? Always lead by example and refrain from engaging in arguments.

Check out the blog post this episode is based on:

Navigating the Holidays as a Vegan – Mentality

Also check out the newest recipes, including the ones we mentioned:

Recipes

Full Podcast Transcript

VeGAINS: Hi, welcome to episode three of the Vegans Fitness and Nutrition podcast. I am VeGAINS and I’m here with the awesome protein deficient vegan who’s been very busy with holiday recipes this week. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Hi.

VeGAINS: So first things first. Sorry for the podcast being a day or two late. We’ve been really busy. Like I said, she’s been working on a lot of recipes and we also had a website kind of redesign and migration thing going on. Hopefully everybody enjoys the new website. It looks less like we designed it in middle school and more like we designed it for normal adult humans to read and we think it’s a lot better. So let us know. Go check it out. So we are doing this week kind of a follow up to last week’s episode about navigating the holidays as a vegan, somebody with a fitness mindset. So this week we’re going to talk a little bit about the mentality of that going into the holidays or any kind of situation where you’re around friends and family and food and you don’t have a lot of control over the situation, you might get asked some of the kind of cliche and common questions that people like to ask vegans. The most popular one, I think out there is how do you get your protein? Yeah, so a lot of the times the answer to that, especially if you Google it online or whatever, it’s going to be lentils, beans, quinoa, things like that, those are really good sources of protein, but they tend to come with a lot of carbs. And typically, if we have fitness goals, we want to maybe limit the carbs, focus on the protein a little more because we’ve probably got some kind of calorie goal to hit and some kind of protein goal to hit. So a lot of the sources that we like to focus on are tofu, tempeh, seitan and TVP. If you’re not really familiar with how to use some of those or you haven’t used them in the past, we have a lot of recipes on our site that use all those different things. Our site, if you haven’t been there, mostly focuses on high protein recipes that don’t use protein powder. So we’ve actually got tags you can kind of look around for all the TVP recipes or all the tofu recipes, anything like that. The second kind of question you might hear a lot is what do vegans even eat anyway?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Everyone thinks you just eat salads.

VeGAINS: Yeah. Which is probably the last thing you want to eat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Most days I don’t even know the last time I ate a salad actually.

VeGAINS: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Months. It’s been months.

VeGAINS: Me neither, actually. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I think people think that vegan is some kind of magical food that only vegans have access to. And they don’t really think about the fact that just like a lot of the stuff they eat anyway is vegan or vegetarian. Potato chips, French fries, Oreos. Oreos. Oreos are vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So good.

VeGAINS: Yeah. It’s just you’re not eating the animal products, right. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff you can still eat and a lot of stuff they probably eat. One of the concerns that also comes up from people who are either actually concerned or want to feign concern to start a conversation is about your vitamins and nutrients. And if you keep eating vegan, you’re probably going to drop dead next week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. As soon as you mention you’re vegan, everyone’s a freaking doctor.

VeGAINS: Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s just a reason to be like, well, I can’t be vegan because all of these other concerns.

VeGAINS: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So now I’m a medical professional and you’re dying.

VeGAINS: Yeah. I think it mostly stems from the fact that B12, you probably know, is something that vegans do need to supplement. You can’t get that from anything that’s not an animal product. And you really only get it from animal products because they inject it into the animals too. So nobody actually gets B12 real naturally anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They do inject B12 into vo life shredded cheese, though.

VeGAINS: There you go. Yeah, you can either supplement B12 or you can eat a whole lot of violife shredded cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I’d vote for violife.

VeGAINS: Yeah, there’s a couple of other things you can get, but it’s a little harder as a vegan, like vitamin D, zinc and selenium. I think if you just take a multivitamin and a B12, you pretty much have those bases covered. The one I like to use, not sponsored or anything, obviously, but I like to use Wholier. It’s specifically made for people on a plant based diet and it’s only got like the five or six vitamins that are hard to get. Pretty good option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I kind of struggle with iron even if I eat high iron foods, but I don’t really think that’s necessarily a vegan issue.

VeGAINS: So aside from people just asking you general questions, some of them might get a little more in depth with you and try to get into a whole discussion or maybe even an argument about your choices, whether that be for vegan or your fitness choices or what you’re trying to eat, anything along those lines. So I think my opinion on that is just kind of a live and let live situation. You can talk to them about it and entertain a conversation, but I wouldn’t get into it as a you versus them kind of thing. I think if you just do your thing and lead by example, maybe they will eventually come around and start asking you questions in a more casually curious, friendly type way. Or they won’t and that’s okay too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Or they’ll just be dicks forever and one day you’ll finally snap. Not that that’s ever happened to me before.

VeGAINS: What happens when you snap?

Protein Deficient Vegan: You just snap and then they usually don’t bring it up again.

VeGAINS: So that actually brings us to the next topic, I think on the blog post. Snapping, I guess, could be seen as standing up for yourself, right? So you want to kind of stand up for yourself. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re doing things out of obligation. I think a common example is somebody invites you out to dinner or something and you know there’s not going to be any food for you there. So you go and you just sit and you don’t eat and you socialize and everybody thinks it’s awkward because you’re not eating.

Protein Deficient Vegan: You feel awkward and you’re hungry and you have a miserable time.

VeGAINS: Yeah, I mean, you want to treat yourself a little better than that. You don’t deserve to be in a situation like that. So if it’s something you’re not comfortable with, you can just say no. No is a complete sentence, that’s okay. And if there is some accommodation that can be made, if people are willing to switch it up and go to a restaurant that has a real vegan option, that’s not salad, that’s cool. Or in the case of like this holiday gathering, Thanksgiving kind of thing you have coming up, maybe you can convince a family member that is a good cook to do some vegan swaps for some different ingredients in the food, switch out butter for just oil, or whether other options along those lines.

Protein Deficient Vegan: That means you have to trust people though, which I don’t like doing because people are liars.

VeGAINS: Hopefully your family won’t lie to you about those things, but I guess you never know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They might lie to you about those things.

VeGAINS: Well, if you’re worried about them lying, like I said, we do have a bunch of recipes on our website.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Bring your own food.

VeGAINS: Bring your own food. Make your own dish. And the benefit of that is you get to bring vegan food and show people what it’s like and what good vegan food can be like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Conversion is definitely always an option.

VeGAINS: So kind of along the same lines with both trying to reach your fitness goals and having a belief system like being a vegan or plant based something along those lines, you’re always going to have every day to make some tough decisions or push back on something or decide that you can’t do something that day or some other thing that you have to do. I mean, you have to make basically a bunch of little decisions every day over a long period of time to reach a long term goal. So you just try to make as many of the right decisions as you can. And if you can get most of them right and you get a few wrong, that’s going to be just fine. But one thing that can help you kind of stick to that long term goal is to really keep your why in mind. Like why do you have that goal? What is it that you want to achieve long term or what is it that you want to say? I believe in this and I want to behave as if I believe in this long term. So if you can just really kind of maybe even say it out loud, write it down. I don’t know what your why is, why you feel that way or why you want to behave that way. It can really help you mentally deal with peer pressure or any other kind of outside pressure. So you understand kind of within yourself why it is that you’re pushing back and you’ll feel better about it and more confident. So just keep in mind that you have to make these decisions every day. And whether we’re talking about veganism or fitness, these are both kind of lifestyle long term choices. So just make sure that the things you restrict yourself to and the choices you make are things that you can deal with long term.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. And the sooner you know why you’re doing something and you have a strong, firm belief in it, it’s more about what you want and what you think and less about trying to explain yourself to others. And once you feel more strongly about what you’re doing, the less you’ll feel like you have to explain yourself to others, I think. And then usually they just leave you alone.

VeGAINS: Yeah, they’ll leave you alone and then sometimes they come back a couple of years later and ask like, hey, how do I do that thing? Yeah, cool. Yeah. Well, if you want to read a little more about some of these topics, like I said, we do have the blog post up on the site. I’ll put that in the show notes. I want to move on now to talk about this crazy list of recipes that you’ve been working on all week. We’ve got a lot of really good food. Lucky for me, I get to try it all. So first up, we’ve got a high protein mac and cheese, 30% protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: The cheese sauce, and then we use TVP for the breadcrumbs. That’s how we get to 30% protein. It’s pretty magical.

VeGAINS: Yeah, TVP is awesome. We’re using it in all kinds of stuff lately. Typically, I think it’s seen as a savory thing. In this case, we use it as a savory dish. But we’ve also got some muffins and cookies and stuff out there that use it in sweet dishes. So it’s, like, super versatile.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Did you like the mac and cheese?

VeGAINS: Yeah, I really like the mac and cheese. It’s really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s like, so creamy, right?

VeGAINS: Yeah, it’s super creamy. Next up, we’ve got a sweet potato pie with 27% protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: This one’s, like, my favorite thing we’ve made lately.

VeGAINS: It’s definitely my favorite dessert.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It’s so good. We ate it for breakfast.

VeGAINS: Yeah, you can, because it’s 27% protein, you can eat it whenever you want.

Protein Deficient Vegan: You kind of feel like a piece of shit, but then you’re like, oh, wait, it’s 27% protein. I can do whatever I want.

VeGAINS: Yeah. The other day I was sitting there for breakfast with, like, a pie and one of the protein cookies or something, and my brain was like, what are you doing? We don’t eat pies and cookies for breakfast. And I was like, I mean, I’m going to hit my protein goal today. And it’s not protein powder, so I really don’t see the problem.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And it technically has vegetables too in it, which is all very weird, but it tastes great.

VeGAINS: I’m convinced that you’re, like a dark wizard.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I am a dark wizard.

VeGAINS: Next up, we have a sweet potato casserole. This one’s not high protein, but it’s vegan and it’s delicious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes. And we do use extra firm silken tofu in it to make it, like, more creamy than normal.

VeGAINS: Yeah. So it’s got some protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, some not. I wouldn’t brag about it.

VeGAINS: Next, we have twice baked potatoes, which are super amazing. Incredible, awesome. I’ve had loaded baked potatoes a lot my whole life, and I think these are the best ones I’ve ever had. What is the creaminess? It’s like the silken tofu.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it has silken tofu and the potato filling. And then we made fakon bits out of TVP.

VeGAINS: Oh, yeah, the facon bits are really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Facon bits. Yeah, it was really good. When we had this, he was like, this is my birthday meal. You will make this for me on all of my birthdays to come.

VeGAINS: I don’t know if I was quite that demanding.

Protein Deficient Vegan: It was so demanding, he threatened me.

VeGAINS: I’m definitely cutting that out. All right, next up we’ve got TVP pumpkin pecan muffins at 20% protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, those were freaking good too.

VeGAINS: Yeah, those are good. We got a lot of TVP muffins going on lately, but it’s hard to argue with.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, they’re a good little breakfast. They’re a good little, like, pre workout snacko. Yeah, I really like them.

VeGAINS: Me too. I also got a high protein mushroom gravy, 52% protein. That goes with another recipe, the garlicky mashed potatoes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, the garlic mashed potatoes are not high protein at all, but if you put high protein gravy on them, it kind of cancels it out.

VeGAINS: Yeah, it’s really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, they’re really good together.

VeGAINS: Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I don’t know what else you can do with the gravy. Probably, like, you can probably put it on a whole bunch of other shit, I think.

VeGAINS: Biscuits.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Biscuits.

VeGAINS: Definitely be good on biscuits.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Maybe, like, what’s that Canadian fry thing?

VeGAINS: Oh, poutine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Maybe you can use that. I don’t know. I’ve never actually had poutine.

VeGAINS: Yeah, you could use it for that, for sure. We also have a high protein TVP stuffing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: This is 49% protein, which doesn’t make sense for a stuffing. But if you cook TVP and season it just the right way, it comes out a similar texture to, like, stovetop stuffing. And I would say the taste is pretty much there.

VeGAINS: Yeah, it seemed pretty similar to me. I haven’t had stovetop in a long time, but it seemed like what I remembered. And then the last up here, we have fudgy vegan sweet potato brownies. These are so squishy and fudgy, it’s kind of insane.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, they’re super caloric, so you probably shouldn’t make these every week. Yeah, we need to stop making them, actually. They’re addictive.

VeGAINS: Yeah, but it just goes to show that you don’t have to never eat fun things again. You just have to make sure it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Fits into your macros and lie to yourself and say, there’s sweet potatoes in these brownies. I can totally eat these.

VeGAINS: It’s a vegetable serving of vegetables for the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Even though it’s like three quarters of a cup of sweet potatoes across 20 brownies. It’s totally a serving of vegetables on each one.

VeGAINS: Yeah. Another thing we kind of like to do is talk about any new vegan things we find out there. Products or anything like that. We tried a new thing this week called what? Chomp Chocolate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Chomp chocolates. We actually tried them at Halloween, too. They had like a Halloween variety pack and then this time they had like a holiday variety pack or something. But they’re really good. Yeah, they’re a little more expensive than normal chocolate, but if you read their website, I guess they do ethical sourcing of chocolate. So that is why they’re more expensive. But they’re really good.

VeGAINS: Yeah, they had like little frosted flakes or something sitting on top.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah.

VeGAINS: They had like mini wheats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: A muddy buddy one.

VeGAINS: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Puppy Chow, like whatever people call it across the States.

VeGAINS: I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Puppy chow?

VeGAINS: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: What?

VeGAINS: No.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it’s like chex and then you put like the peanut butter, chocolate and powdered sugar.

VeGAINS: I’ll take your word for it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: That’s what’s on there.

VeGAINS: Okay. I’m sure other people know what that is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Poppy chow. Muddy buddies.

VeGAINS: Cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Anyway, it’s really good. And there was also a chocolate orange one, which is like. I really like that combination.

VeGAINS: I heard that’s big in the UK, but I don’t think I’ve ever had that combination.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And then there’s a chocolate peppermint, which he hates, chocolate and mint, so I definitely shoved a whole one in his mouth.

VeGAINS: Yeah, that’s not fun. She thinks I’m going to like mint every time she gets something that’s mint and it’s never going to happen.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Okay. But as someone that likes it, it’s freaking amazing and you should probably go try it.

VeGAINS: All right, well, I think that’s pretty much it for this week. Next week we plan on talking a little bit about how to travel and stay within your fitness goals and more importantly, how to do vegan food on the road, which is extra hard mode. Normally, just eating high protein on the road is pretty tricky, but vegan high protein on the road is expert plus. Expert plus plus. So we’re going to talk a little bit how to eat or make your own food in Airbnb or a hotel or something like that. And then maybe some tips for picking things off of the menus at the.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Local restaurants or gas stations.

VeGAINS: Or gas stations are a really good source, usually better than the restaurants, actually, for some reason. At least they’re reliable. You kind of know what your options are in a gas station. We will talk about gas station options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, gas station options.

VeGAINS: Cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Classy. We keep it classy here.

VeGAINS: We’re definitely not eating out of a gas station most of the time. All right, everybody, I hope you enjoyed and thanks for listening, and we’ll see you again next time. Say bye.

Vegan that likes to pick up heavy things and put them down again.
USAW Level 1 Coach
NASM CPT

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