Vegetarian Fitness
Being a vegetarian requires a full understanding of the
role nutrition plays in achieving your fitness goals.
There is a direct relationship between nutrition and physical performance in workouts or sports. Hard physical activity requires an increase in nutritionally dense calories and also due to sweating a higher fluid intake. Threfore you need to carefully plan what you eat and drink.
Your calorie intake needs to be balanced with your energy output and goals. If you want to lose you need to cut back on calories, if you want to gain you will need to increase calories. If your going in the wrong direction, adjust your calorie intake and/or activity levels, so you are moving towards your goals.
An important point for vegetarians to realize that they digest their foods more quickly than non vegetarians. This means you need to eat more often to compensate for the higher energy needs.
When engaging in fitness training workouts you do need to increase your protein intake, but remember excess protein that is not burned for energy will be turned into fat.
Best Vegetarian Protein Sources
It's easier than you might imagine to get plenty of protein from vegetarian foods. If you include dairy products and eggs in your regimen, look no further. These are good sources of protein. Stick to low fat dairy products to avoid excess saturated fats.
If you want to be certain that you are getting all eight
essential amino acids, you should eat learn to combine
foods to form complete proteins, such as:
Beans on toast
Cereal/muesli with milk
Corn and beans
Granola with yogurt
Hummus and pita bread
Nut butter with milk or whole grain bread
Pasta with beans
Pasta with cheese (e.g., lasagne, macaroni and cheese)
Rice and beans,
peas, or lentils
Rice with milk (rice pudding)
Split pea soup with whole grain or seeded crackers or bread
Tortillas with refried beans
Veggie burgers on bread
Note that these combinations don't necessarily have to be eaten at the same time; you can eat one several hours after the other and still benefit from the complete protein.
Complete protein can be gotten from eating soy based foods like tofu tempeh or sprouted legumes, and meat substitutes made from
soy protein.
Chris
