Giacomo

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo Marchese and I’m Taylor and this is our fourth episode and today we’ll be talking about New Year’s resolutions. as usual, the holidays have been so much stressful for us, but I’d say it’s been going pretty well so far as far as fitness goes, I’ve definitely been getting my workouts

in a little more consistently than I have in the past, which is great. And, yeah, no complaints really on this side. Hope the holidays have been well for everyone out there.

Dani

Yeah, we hope everybody had a really good holiday. whatever it is you celebrate, we hope you were surrounded by lots of delicious vegan eats and people who love you. holidays went pretty good over here.

Giacomo

I’d say we’re still surrounded by some delicious vegan eats and I have to finish that stuff off.

Dani

There’s, there’s leftovers, there’s for sure. Leftovers.

Dani, Giacomo

My mother had three dozen vegan gingerbread cookies left over, like, every time we go over our house she just keeps feeding us.

Giacomo

I mean, I’m not complaining at all. I love it.

Dani

Yeah, we’re just like bottomless pits to them. But anyway, we hope everybody had a great, great,

holiday season and we have one more holiday right around the corner. New Year’s Day.

Giacomo

Actually, we’re going to my family’s house for New Year’s Day and, and I would imagine, you know, well, if I know my family there’ll be more food there than all us can eat for the next two weeks.

Dani

Probably. I think this episode is actually gonna air on New Year’s Day. Maybe on New Year’s Eve.

Giacomo

No, we have it on New Year’s Day. New Year’s Day is, it’s Thursday. Right. I’m losing track of time.

Dani

I can’t keep track of the days anymore. but hopefully this will air then and we’re gonna talk a little bit about New Year’s resolutions and if you guys have any cool New Year’s resolutions, we’d love to hear about them. It’s always great to hear about other people’s goals for the Year. You can get some really good ideas that way. Yeah.

Giacomo

I mean, I could certainly get some good ideas myself. I can’t say that I’ve sat down with myself and really thought about what my New Year’s resolutions are. What about you?

Dani

No, not really. I have a couple of ideas, but I’m not a big New Year’s resolution because I don’t like putting my goals off. Like, if I want to do something, I just start it ASAP. But I know a lot of people are really motivated by the idea of New Year Fresh start. All that jazz. So I totally get it. I would just, I’m just impatient.

Giacomo

I remember last year I, I think I had two resolutions. Last year. One was to make a happy journal where I wrote three things that went with gratitude journal. Yes, a gratitude journal. I, I’d write down three things that I, I appreciated each day. About the day. How’d that go? It lasted for about two months. I, I just didn’t, I didn’t keep up with it. What was the other? What was the other it was now?

Now I forgot. I slipped my mind. But anyway, I think, I think for this for this New Year. No, I’m not necessarily, I don’t necessarily have a specific goal in mind but, but I’d say something that I really want a goal of mine that I wanna fulfill in 2015 is to, to compete at my first powerlifting meet and, and to really, you know, make a strong showing.

Dani

So today we’re gonna talk about three specific New Year’s solutions. We’re gonna talk about people who have decided they want to try and go vegan in 2015. How to start eating right for your goals, whether that’s to build muscle or, or lose weight or whatever, that’s usually a pretty popular goal.

Dani, Giacomo

And also I got it time out.

Giacomo

I was supposed to be dancing a little bit every single day for the whole year.

Dani

I can’t believe you interrupted me for that anyway.

Giacomo

Go ahead. Sorry.

Dani

And the last goal is to start weightlifting people who want to start lifting weights, not really sure where to start or how to make that last. So, those are the three that we’re gonna tackle today.

Giacomo

A lot of our listeners I’d imagine are either veg curious or are already vegan and perhaps they know someone who’s interested in going vegan into the New Year. And that’s why we decided that it would be a good idea to talk about that. Of course, you know, being that we’re starting, we’re going into New Year, you can take that fresh start and this could, could be a good time to think about trying

to go more plant based. And, hm, I mean, what, what are, what would you say are the most common

common, hurdles for people that are trying to switch to a more plant based diet?

Dani

I think for most people, the idea of going vegan is like completely foreign to them. It’s probably like hearing a different language or something. People are raised that the food, the main part of your food is, you know, the steak on the plate and then the vegetables are just, you know, what’s around the steak on the plate.

So the idea for most people is that while you going vegan, you take the steak off the plate, what do you have left? Not a whole lot and, and that scares people and I get that you feel like you’re not going to have anything to eat. So the first thing that I would recommend is figure out why you want to go vegan.

Dani, Giacomo

There’s so many reasons now that people decide to go vegan or give up animal based foods, whether it’s for your health, for the environment, for the animals, for ethical reasons of any sort.

Dani

Right. And I think knowing what, what your reason is, is really, really important and sticking with that goal.

Dani, Giacomo

And I think that goes for every goal, you know, remembering your, why is really important and something that’s going to keep you, keep you doing it for the long term.

Giacomo

I mean, if you have, you know, say you wanna, you know, you have a short term goal, you want to be fit for the summer and that’s, you know, you’re gonna fall off the wagon that way. It’s not necessarily, it’s got to be a stronger reason.

Dani

Yeah, I think finding a, a reason that really resonates with you is really important. And if you’re kind of wishy washy about what your reason is, like, you kind of feel like you want to do it, but you’re not really completely sure why. you don’t really feel steadfast in that decision. I would recommend watching some documentaries and sort of educating yourself on the subject as much as you can.

some really good ones are Forks over Knives, educated, vegetated, fat, sick and nearly dead is a good one. Earthlings. If you really want to get into the ethical side of veganism, it’s not, it’s not an easy watch by any stretch. But if you can get through that movie and not want to go vegan, I think you’re a pretty rare breed. So I think finding a reason is super important and that’s just going to help you to be more successful. So you have your reason why you’ve decided you want to do

this. The next step to me would be to decide how you’re going to do this. A lot of people just go cold turkey, so to speak and they just try and go vegan overnight and see how that works out. And for some people that’s very successful, if you feel like that wouldn’t be the easiest way for you to do it. Many people decide to cut out one food group at a time, you know, red meat, white meat, fish eggs.

Giacomo

That’s, that’s definitely the way that I did it. I started cutting out one food group at a time myself. Trying to think my, my, well, my, yeah, my initial reason for going vegan was I believe that it would feel my myself better as an athlete. And then I started getting into the ethical side of things and, you know, I definitely didn’t go cold turkey. I mean, it was, it was a big change for me at the time, 10 years ago, for me, I, I’d say I ran, I transitioned over the course of a year in, into

going vegan about 10 years ago. And basically I cut out meat first, then I cut out dairy and then I started to read labels and basically that’s as simple as checking things that you would normally buy and making sure that they don’t have, you know, butter in them or eggs or, and, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to switch from one item to the next.

Dani

Well, you’d be surprised how many foods that you’re already eating are actually vegan. And we call that accidentally vegan things that weren’t specifically made to be vegan, but they just happen to be vegan. And I think when people are first making that step to be vegan, it’s really good to know, to know the foods that are quote unquote accidentally vegan.

It just makes your life so much easier than sort of going out and learning 100 new foods that you’ve never heard of before. It’s just much more comfortable to eat things you’re already used to. So, somewhere on the P A website, there is a very good list of foods that are just in a regular supermarket that are vegan, which brings me to my next point.

Find, find vegan substitutions for the foods that you already love. A lot of people want to talk down mock meats or veggie burgers or veggie dogs. Right. But the fact of the matter is when you’ve been raised on hamburgers and hot dogs and steaks and all that stuff and then you just cut them out of your life. A lot of people are going to miss them and they’re going miss those flavors and things.

Yeah. And things like that. And I think that the mock meats, I don’t have a better, I don’t like calling them mock meats, but I don’t have a better word for them right now. If anybody can think of a better word for mock meat, that doesn’t make the food sound like meat. Let me know. No, I don’t like that either. I don’t want to use the word meat, but for the purposes of what we’re saying right now, I think you get it and I think they’re really, really wonderful transition foods and most

people love them. You know, if you love burgers, if you love cheeseburgers, for example, you’re probably really gonna love like a garden burger with DEA on it. I’ve given them to people in my family and various things like that over and over and over again.

Dani, Giacomo

And I have yet to hear a complaint and there’s more and more of them coming out too.

Giacomo

They just keep coming out.

Dani

When I went vegan. 12 years ago, there were tofu pubs and boca burgers and like that was it.

Giacomo

And I have something called a Beast Burger coming out by beyond meat.

Dani

For example, there’s a lot of stuff out there and I highly recommend looking into them and finding out, you know, if you love yogurt, check it out, there’s coconut yogurts and almond yogurts and soy yogurts. And that’s just an example. The hardest one for a lot of people is cheese. You know, we’ve, anybody who’s vegan has heard it a million times like I could, I could give up meat, but I could never give up cheese.

You hear it? I hear at least once a week and again, back when I went vegan, 12 years ago, there was one vegan cheese on the market and it was nasty. And now there’s so many really, really good vegan cheeses for various occasions. You know, there’s, there’s deo, which is probably the easiest one to find. There’s the chow cheese now from field roast. That’s great. there’s teas from Chicago, vegan foods, which is awesome there. I’m gonna, I’m gonna butcher this name. Miko’s kitchen.

I haven’t, I haven’t actually tried them yet but everybody rants and raves about them on crackers. There’s Heidi Ho Portland, there’s just so many, there’s, there’s, and they’re all made out of, you know, nuts and coconuts and, you know, really healthy whole foods full of vitamins and minerals and they taste really good. So, one of the biggest things I think in being successful is finding ways to continue to eat the foods that you love to eat, but cruelty free.

Giacomo

One of the things that can happen when you decide to transition to a different type, a different way of eating, whether it’s vegan or what, whatever it is, whenever you make a change, you, something that can happen is you wind up not eating enough because, well, you’re removing things from your diet that you, you normally eat but you’re not replacing them with other items.

And that, and that’s, and that’s why, you know, it really is important to find substitutes for foods that you had. And that’s where the vegan meats come in handy and the cheeses and whatnot. Right.

Dani

This is one of the things that you hear a lot when people try to go vegan is, well, I tried to go vegan but I just felt terrible and run down and blah, blah, blah.

Dani, Giacomo

And a lot of times I find most of the time, almost all of the time I find they weren’t eating enough, they weren’t eating anywhere near enough, but they never realized it because they weren’t looking into what they were eating before they went vegan and after, and they just assumed, well, it’s the vegan diet but it’s not really the case.

Giacomo

I mean, you have to really be conscious of how much you’re eating and make sure to keep eating even when you make a transition and you’re having different items in your, your diet.

Dani

Plus a vegan diet is typically a lot higher in fiber than a non vegan diet. And a lot of fiber calories, about half of them basically just pass through you without much nutritional absorption. lots of benefits to fiber, but a lot of times it makes foods lower in energy or calories than they appear to be just by looking at the label. So in my experience working with a lot of people, mostly vegans, some non vegans, a lot of transitioning people, you can typically just eat more as a vegan.

This is not to say that calories don’t matter like we spoke about on the last episode. It’s just that your metabolism seems to respond a little bit differently to vegan foods than non vegan foods. I have no data to back that up at all. It’s just my own personal observations that in general vegans are able to eat more than non vegans, which means if you’re switching to a vegan diet, make sure that you’re eating enough, especially

at first better to err on the side of caution and eat a little bit more than to undereat and feel really crummy, right and, and bear in mind eating fiber is going to fill you up.

Giacomo

So if you find that you’re, you can’t eat and you’re just not hungry, but you know that you should be eating more, maybe remove some of the fiber diet, choose things that are maybe like a, a white potatoes all starchier unless fibrous as opposed to a sweet potato, for example.

Dani

Right. But just make sure that you’re eating enough, keep track of your food. I’m, I’m always a big fan of keeping track of your food, regardless of your goals. But keeping track of your food while you’re going vegan, it’ll give you a record to look back at and see maybe where you might have gone wrong or what’s really working for you or what have you.

Giacomo

Another really helpful thing to do is to familiarize yourself with different recipes and different ways to prepare vegan food. Isa Chandra Moskowitz has some awesome cookbooks out there. Vegan with a vengeance is wonderful cookbooks because some of them can have, the recipes can be a little more complicated vegan with a vengeance.

Dani, Giacomo

Has some very simple, easy recipes that are delicious.

Giacomo

Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, she even teaches you how to make your own Seitan, which is time consuming. But if you have the time you can make Satan for pennies on the dollar basically. And that, and, you know, you can flavor it all sorts of different ways anyway.

Dani

I think that most people when they do go vegan, I can speak for myself and lots of other people I’ve talked to when you go vegan, you basically like relearn your way around the entire kitchen and learn how to cook certain foods. And it can be very, very helpful to learn how to cook foods that maybe a lot of people who were not vegan before are not familiar with cooking in large batches like dried beans, rice, quinoa, learning how to cook tofu is huge.

And I get people who have been vegan for 10 years that say, I don’t know how to cook. Tofu, learn some good tofu recipes. It’ll change your life. I promise you that tofu doesn’t tofu is not terrible. It’s just about how you cook it. It can be absolutely delicious. Another thing that I recommend is to always have vegan, like prep prepared vegan snacks on you pretty much at all time.

Like we mentioned earlier, you can, you can tend to eat more as a vegan. You also get hungry a little bit more frequently. I think when you’re vegan. So keeping snacks on you almonds, Clif bars, primal strip jerky fruit, apples, bananas, hummus pack and veggies. These are all great things to have on you because when you’re brand new to being vegan, getting caught off guard hungry and without something to eat right there.

A lot of times that’s where people fail because they don’t know what to eat. So they just cave and eat something that isn’t vegan and then either feel bad about it or they just give up all together.

Giacomo

Also knowing what kind of options you have in restaurants that you can like restaurant chains that you can find just about anywhere.

Dani, Giacomo

Like for example, Taco Bell or Chipotle, there’s, I can’t remember, I can’t, there is a really good list online of vegan food in fast food type chains that you can find all over the country.

Dani

If you just Google, that vegan fast food. I think the first thing that pops up on Google is a list of vegan options in restaurant chains that are all over the country. And although obviously that’s not ideal, sometimes when you’re stuck, it’s good. It’s just good to know good to have in your back pocket. But I think what’s super, super important is if, when you’re trying to go vegan, you’re going to have missteps, you’re going to probably accidentally eat something that isn’t

vegan. And don’t just don’t just call it quits and say this is too hard and I failed like it happens even to Giacomo and myself, you know, over a decade later, every once in a while we’ll be eating something that we were sure was vegan. And suddenly we realize like, oh, you know, this recipe must have changed because now it has milk in it and we didn’t know and we’re not just like, oh, well, being vegan that just doesn’t work, I’m just going to stop. You just, you know, shit happens and you

just can move on. Being vegan is about doing as little harm as possible as, as, as is reasonably possible and that’s going to be different for everybody. And it’s a learning process and when you’re trying to make those steps, it’s really important to be forgiving of yourself and understanding of yourself. And also to reach out because there are so many vegans who are just dying to help other people go vegan.

Giacomo

It’s a very supportive community.

Dani

It’s a pretty supportive community.

Dani, Giacomo

It has its ups and downs when it comes to other people wanting to go vegan.

Dani

It’s a very supportive community, I would say because that’s what we want to see more than anything is the end of animal suffering. And the more people that go vegan, the closer to that, that we are. So I would say reach out, there’s so many Facebook groups that are just there, that’s their whole purpose is to help other people along their V journey.

And it can be great to have that sort of accountability and other people may be doing the same thing that you can commiserate with. And I think that the more of a support system you can build around yourself, the more likely you are to be successful. So if anybody is thinking about going vegan in 2015 and they have any questions about it, Feel free to shoot us a shoot us your questions.

We’d be more than happy to help with any newly vegan inquiries that anybody has. And we wish you the best of luck. The next resolution we’re going to talk about is eating for your goals or eating better in the New Year. This is particularly geared towards people who are already vegan and have decided that they want to make better food choices in 2015.

The first thing you need to think about with this resolution is what are your goals? There are lots of different goals you could choose from obviously really popular ones for New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight to get in shape, which typically is code for simultaneously building muscle and losing fat, which is only something that’s possible if you’re brand new to, you know, the fitness scene.

building muscle is a good goal getting junk food out of your diet. I say that in quotation marks because like we talked about last week on the clean eating episode, junk food is going to be different to everybody. And although I am perfectly ok with the idea of, you know, quote unquote junk foods in people’s diets as long as they’re fitting in, in a certain way, some people do have a problem with, you know, sugary foods or they can’t stop eating them.

And if that’s something that you want to try and remove from your diet to, you know, get away from the addictive behaviors that you have around certain foods, maybe that could be your eating better goal for the New Year.

Giacomo

Some people want to prepare more foods and buy less packaged foods. Others might want to be able to eat out less. For example, some people may want to find out how they can eat out more but still eat

healthy.

Dani

Some people may want to start doing if it fits your macros instead of a meal plan or clean eating or vice versa. So, where would you start with your goal? What would be the first step that you would take?

Giacomo

The first step is figuring out where to start? And of course, that would be taking a look at what you’re eating right now.

Dani, Giacomo

Well, not just what you’re eating right now, what you’re doing right now, being honest with where you are right now, how it’s working for you, how it’s not working for you.

Dani

Yeah, evaluating what you’ve been doing and seeing what needs to change and what is going really well for you is super important.

Giacomo

One of the traps that people fall into when they’re looking to make changes is they start getting into a pattern of eliminating. Well, I don’t like the way I’m eating now. So I have to remove foods Xy and Z and before, you know, it, it becomes a pattern where you’re basically restricting so much that you’re, you’re not even enjoying how you’re eating anymore.

Not to mention it’s, it’s, it can wind up doing more harm than good for you both mentally and physically. Anyhow, I think a, a more helpful approach would be to find out not only how to substitute foods that you’re already eating for, options that will be, work better for your goals, but to also try to add more foods, introduce new things into your diet that, that are healthy as well so that you have even more of a variety.

And you’ll find that the, the more options that you have, the better off you’re going to be because you, you know, you won’t get caught and, and feel like you’re, you’re trapped if you need to keep, keep going basically on, on a healthier path.

Dani

One thing that a lot of people really like to do in this regard, you know, think about adding foods to your diet rather than taking foods away. And obviously the first thing that comes to mind when I think I’m going to add more of certain foods to my diet is I think vegetables and a lot of people have great success adding a green smoothie to their day or a big salad for lunch. That’s one my favorites is to have a giant salad every day, which I haven’t been doing very much of lately in the cold

months. But in the summer, I really do try to have at least one big salad a day. And in doing that, it’s sort of like by eating more healthy foods, healthy, whole foods, like fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and grains, you’re sort of crowding out the room for the junkier food because you’re just, you’re full, you’re not hungry for them. So that’s one way to help yourself. Stop eating too much calorie dense processed food is by including more fresh whole foods.

Giacomo

Plus you really can get creative with a bowl of salad. I mean, a lot of people hear the word salad and they immediately think, oh, I mean, it’s just some iceberg or romaine thrown into a bowl and it can get boring real quick. But you can mix so many things into a salad, nuts, seeds, all different types of vegetables, fruits. You can make so many different types of dressing.

Not to mention cooking some vegetables like broccoli or spinach. That’s when you can really have fun with all different types of spices and mixing that in with some other grains and whatnot. Basically, what I’m saying is variety, variety, the spice of life and keep mixing it up.

Dani

Also, I’ve mentioned many, many times how strongly I feel about tracking your food. And I think if you have a goal that you’re working towards whether that be to lose weight or build muscle or something in between that just general body rec composition, tracking your food, whether it’s with pen and paper or a spreadsheet on your computer or my fitness pal, I think is going to be the most accurate way to do that and holding yourself accountable.

However, that is for you, maybe you put a dollar into a jar every day that you actually track your food and at the end of the month you go by yourself, new headphones or something like that. That’s one way to hold yourself accountable for tracking your food. But like everything else, I say these records of what you’re eating and what you’re doing are so so important to figuring out what’s working and what’s not working for you for a New Year’s resolution of eating better or eating for

your goals. I think tracking your food is paramount. So tracking your food and think focusing on what you are adding into your diet rather than what you’re taking away from it are both going to be very, very important in the success of this resolution.

Giacomo

Also realize it’s not an all or none type situation. Basically, whatever your goal is, there are going to be

steps to get there. I think a lot of people fall off the wagon with their goals because they have this, this finish line and they’re working towards it. But then they stumble, or they get derailed one way or another and before you know it, they’re like, oh, well, it’s

just gonna, you know, this was just too much positive reinforcement take, you know, figure out whatever it is that your long term goal is and then set some shorter term goals.

Dani

Lastly, a really, really important thing about reaching your food goals in the new Year is taking the time to prepare your food because you are most likely to fall off track when you are hungry and you don’t have anything prepared. And I feel like we’ve all been there where it’s time to eat, but we don’t have anything and it’s gonna take 45 minutes to cook up what it is that we know we should be eating and we end up eating something that is subpar because it’s faster and it’s more

convenient. Or eventually you just get so hungry, you don’t even give a flying and eat, you know, garbage until you’re ready to explode. So I think whether you take a day to meal prep, which is what Giacomo likes to do. He likes to meal prep. A, a large amount of his food on one day or what I prefer to do is in the morning.

Make all my food for that day. It’s a little bit fresher that way. But it does take a little bit more time overall because if you have your food already prepared, it’s so much easier to just, oh, I’m hungry. I’m just gonna eat this thing that I already have made that I know that I like and carry on with my day.

Giacomo

Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly what I was thinking. It’s going to work different for everybody, not just for personal preference, but also for your schedule. Some people don’t have the ability to take six hours out of a day and prepare large batches of food to have over the next couple of days. And some people do. Some people, you know, can spend an hour or two out of the day and prepare their food for the whole day. Jesus.

Dani, Giacomo

No, like 30 minutes, whatever.

Giacomo

I mean, you know, basically, all I’m trying to say is that there is no, no cut and dry it. It really isn’t because, you know, a lot of people like to think that if you don’t plan three meals a day for the next seven days in advance that you’re going to, you’re not gonna get there or that’s the best way to get there. And, you know, for some people, it really, it really does work, but for others waking up in the morning, like Dani said, anywhere from a half an hour to a little bit longer

depending on, on how long it takes you or how much time you have to make your food that, that can work better. It’s, it’s really a matter of personal preference and, and your schedule and what, what fits it.

Dani

But plan ahead, knowing how to plan ahead is super, super important to eating in line with your goals if you know that you’re leaving the house and you’re going to be at work all day, pack your food in your lunch box and take it with you, which most vegans in general do anyway, we’re used to bringing our food with us. But if you’re specifically trying to eat for weight gain or weight loss, you want to eat food that is specifically in line with those goals, which we sort of touched upon, I

think in episode 10, actually it was episode two about, you know how to eat for your muscle building goals, for example, and take those foods with you. So like we said, when you’re hungry, you’re not totally caught off guard and forced to eat something crummy or something that doesn’t fit with your calorie or macro goal.

Giacomo

And like we were saying earlier, those healthy snacks have backups because you’re not always going to have a chance to go shopping. You’re not always gonna have access to a restaurant on. Sometimes you’re gonna forget to pack your food but have, have backups. Have some sort of a game plan where if things don’t go the way that you intended that you’re, you’ll have an option, you’re not gonna go hungry because you don’t want that.

Dani

Even the best planning is gonna fail sometimes and you’re just gonna be stranded with nothing to eat and it, it, it’s just gonna happen. It happens to everybody and in those situations just make the best choices you cant. I try to make half of my plate vegetables when I’m stuck in that sort of a situation. And even if that means, you know, going to a Chipotle or something like that, you can do it, you can make it work almost anywhere. And those are some of our tips for the New Year’s

resolution of eating better in 2015, no matter who you are. I believe that strength training is a huge part of any fitness based goals, resistance training, weight lifting. However you want to look at it and it’s a big goal for a lot of people is this year I’m going to start lifting weights. So now we’re gonna give you some of our advice on how to get into weightlifting for the first time.

Giacomo

Lifting weights can be intimidating to some, but it doesn’t have to be, it’s as simple as joining a gym and committing to go there a couple times a week. But for some people, the gym can be a scary place because they’ve never been in there before. Obviously, when you go into a gym, there are going to be

people who have been lifting for a while and you look at others and compare yourself to them.

And that’s, that’s where, that’s where people go wrong right then and there. Yes, it’s good to have others to, to look up to or to motivate you. I know when I started working out again consistently about 2.5 years ago and I joined the gym over here. I had others that I was looking up to and aspiring to. But, but ultimately, you know, your biggest inspiration should be how you’re going to change yourself where you are now and where you want to be going.

And when you look at it that way, there’s really, there’s really nothing to be concerned about when you get into the gym, it’s you and it’s the weights and learning how to use them and figuring out how they’re going to help you get towards your goals. So step one, find a place to, work out. And if you don’t have access to a gym right away and you don’t know where, where, what gym you wanna join you, you can still get started at home.

Dani

Step one would be joining a gym Most places these days have gyms nearby that are pretty affordable. Ours is like $15 a month. We have seen some that are quite expensive, but usually you can find a decent gym with reasonable rates fairly close by. If you have access to this, I highly recommend joining a gym over just buying a of dumbbells and starting out in your spare bedroom or what have you.

And there’s a few reasons for that one going to the gym on a regular basis, builds up a schedule for you that your body becomes used to. And while yes, you can do that at home. Obviously, a lot of us don’t put the same oomph into our home workouts that we would in a gym workout. I don’t know why. I guess it’s just the motivating environment or what have you, but that’s just what I’ve seen in my experience too.

There’s way more equipment in an established gym than you are likely to have in your home gym unless you are very, very fortunate to have a sick home gym and it’s good to learn all different, you know, all different types of machines and free work weights and different exercises that you can do with various free weights and things like that.

Three, that motivating environment can really, really do a lot for you there. Of course, there are going to be people there who are just, you know, just jerks, swinging weights around that don’t make any sense. But there’s a lot of knowledge in most gyms from people who are experienced and nine times out of 10 even people look like they’re angry and mean, when they’re lifting weights, most of the time, people are a lot nicer than you would just assume by looking and they’re more

than happy to help you or teach you four most gyms now offer a free personal training session when you sign up if you’ve never lifted before, take them up on it. Take advantage of the free session. It may not be the best trainer in the world. I get that and they may not be super committed to giving you the best work out of your life because it’s a free session and they’re probably getting paid garbage for it.

But they can show you around the weight room floor, they can show you the basics and they can help you get a little bit more comfortable just being on the weight room floor and working out.

Giacomo

And I mean, even even if you don’t have access to the personal training session, it’s still helpful to familiarize yourself with the equipment and to not be afraid to venture out and try machines that you haven’t used, try exercises that you’ve never done. Just, you know, work, work your way into, into the gym floor.

Dani

And once, once you feel comfortable being in the gym environment, I think the best thing you can do first is focus on learning how to do the big lifts, dead lifting, squatting overhead press bench.

Giacomo

I’d say dumbbell work is a little easier to learn because it, it really teaches you how to balance your left and your right side properly.

Dani

Dumbbell work can be really helpful, especially for women because the Olympic barbell is 45 pounds and in a lot of exercises that’s going to be a little bit heavy for you to even start with.

Giacomo

I have light of bars in the 40 five, right?

Dani

And you definitely, when you’re learning these lifts, you don’t want to go heavy, you want to learn the form form is foremost. And like I said, there’s usually a lot of experienced people in the gym who would be more than willing to help you if you see somebody and you can ask them, they will probably help you. But learning the form, especially on the big lifts or even not necessarily big lifts, but common lifts like a bicep curl, learning how to do something as simple as a bicep curl

with good form with a 10 pound dumbbell is going to yield you better results than doing bicep curls with 25 pound dumbbells with bad form. So learning, learn the form before you start to really push yourself.

Giacomo

Your goal shouldn’t be how much weight you can lift and how much more weight you can lift tomorrow than you did today. It should be. How well can you perform the lift?

Dani

And, and in the beginning it should be. How consistently are you lifting at all?

Giacomo

Well, that too.

Dani

But if you, if you don’t have somebody that you can reliably learn these bigger lifts from in person, there are a lot of great youtube videos out there. Now of people demonstrating very, very well how to do them, Scott Herman Fitness. He’s actually pretty local to where we live and he has some fantastic youtube tutorials out there about how to do almost every lift ever.

So, I highly recommend checking those out. He explains it really well and in a way that isn’t so science that you’re not going to know what he’s talking about. So, Scott Herman Fitness on youtube is a great youtube channel to learn some of those big moves.

Giacomo

Figure out how many days you can commit to working out at the gym and make sure that you’re realistic with yourself too. A lot of people.

Dani, Giacomo

Well, oh, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna work out every day for the rest of the month.

Dani

Well, that’s cool and everything, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t actually do it and, you know, you really shouldn’t work out every day for a month.

Giacomo

Aside from burning yourself out, you’re gonna feel like you’re, you’re failing if you don’t get all your workouts and you’re gonna write your routine around the days that you can commit to. So, it’s, it’s

important to, to create steps that are attainable and then to build off of that.

Dani

For most people, I think three days of lifting a week is a great place to start. And usually for people who are brand new to lifting, I recommend full body workouts three days a week. That’s a great way to get your body acclimated to the stress that you’re about to put it through without doing something like a three day split where you beat the crap out of your legs and shoulders one day and you’re back in biceps one day when you’re brand new to lifting, like your first real leg day can

make it pretty much impossible to walk and you’ll feel so terrible the next day that you’ll never want to do it again. That’s why I recommend full body workouts because it sort of eases you into that stress and this is for brand new lifters, of course. But if you, you know, used to lift and you haven’t in, you know, over a year, start yourself off with full body workouts for a week or two and just be consistent with it because that is the biggest thing of habit is just, I always say for the

first month of doing anything, trying, doing anything new, you have to force yourself through it for the first month or so. Whether you like it or not, you drag yourself to the gym even if you just show up and you’re like, nope, not feeling it, you know what you got there and you did something so forcing yourself through it for the first month and after that, it becomes so much easier.

But if you can commit to three days a week, then you’re, you’ve created a habit at that point. So you’ve committed to three days a week. What are you going to do while you’re there?

Giacomo

Figure out a realistic amount of time to spend in the gym and build a program that works right?

Dani

Most brand new people to the gym can’t just sit down and write their own workout. That will be effective though.

Giacomo

No, but there has to be some resources out there that have some introductory workouts.

Dani

Well, obviously, maybe that trainer who gave you your first free session was pretty good and you could always hire them for once a week for a month or so and they’ll write you a program and that’s one way to do it. There’s also so many free programs on bodybuilding.com and you can go in there and search

by your experience level and what you have acted, access to and what your goals are and not all of the workouts are fantastic, but there are some decent ones on there

if you do enough digging. So that’s, that’s another way to do it. And they usually have some short video tutorials that aren’t great, but give you an idea of what the move is.

Dani, Giacomo

And that’s another way to start for those of you that don’t have access to an in person coach.

Giacomo

There are lots of different coaches online that can also help you get started, write you out a routine and show you how to go through it and tailor it based on your personal goals.

Dani, Giacomo

And that would be a little more personalized than say, looking at a, a basic introductory program and once you have your program and you’ve got your form down and you’re comfortable with it, then you can start pushing the weight and lift a little bit heavier and you always want to make sure that it feels challenging, but only with good form.

Dani

Always keep that form form. First, in my opinion, don’t sacrifice that form for anything, especially when you’re brand new to lifting because that’s just asking for an injury. And the last tip is just like every other resolution that we’ve had so far is reach out. There are fitness classes at gyms, some of them are lifting. I mean, they’re usually light lifting.

But, you know, that’s people with similar interests that want to lift, especially in the new Year. I’m sure there’ll be lots of people that are going to the gym for the first time. Lots and lots of fitness communities online. A couple that I would like to mention that are vegan specific are vegan body, the groups on Facebook, they’re Facebook groups, vegan bodybuilding and fitness, vegan body building and nutrition.

If you’re female, there’s vegan gym, girls and vegan ladies who lift vegan powerlifting. If that’s something that you’re interested in those all have lots and lots of members, some of them very, very knowledgeable. Of course, there’s some, you know, woo woo stuff in some of them as well, but it’s like anything else, if something sounds very extreme in one direction or another, it’s probably not the best thing to do.

The answer is usually somewhere in the middle, but lots of, and these people are all over the world, you might even be able to go into a group and find somebody who’s actually local to you.

Dani, Giacomo

So if you’re not a Facebook user, you can always go on to a forum as well like Vegan bodybuilding.com or bodybuilding.com, for example, bodybuilding.com is usually not particularly kind to vegans and I find their forums to be sort of like an underworld of horrible humanity, but that’s just my opinion.

Dani

Instagram is great because you can just search the hashtags that you’re maybe it’s vegan lifters. Vegan lifters is a popular hashtag on Instagram plant built is a popular hashtag on Instagram. Vegan bodybuilding is a popular hashtag on Instagram and you can just search through those and find other people with similar interests. And I find the Instagram platform to be the most supportive of all the social media platforms personally, unlike say youtube and it’s a great way to

document your fitness journey as well. And if you do decide to do that, feel free to use the muscles by Brussels, hashtag so we can find you and cheer you on and answer any questions that you have.

Giacomo

And now we’re going to review our favorite product of the week, which is plant fusion protein powder, plant fusion. What I really like about it is the way it tastes and the way it mixes up, it’s a really good way to transition from a way based protein to a plant based protein because they formulated it to have a similar consistency. And the and it has a great flavor as well.

Dani

The protein based in plant fusion protein is pea artichoke, amaranth and quinoa. So it’s a pretty interesting protein blend, not super, I mean pea protein is common but the other three are not super common. It also has 4.5 g of branch chain amino acids per scoop, 2 g of which are leucine, which is the most important amino acid for muscle protein synthesis and it also has 3 g of glutamine, which helps with soreness.

So we own vegan proteins.com. So we really do get to try a lot of different vegan protein powder and there’s some really, really great ones out there. But for most of my clients, I start them off with plant fusion protein powder because it is a really good value for what you get, especially compared to other similar things on the market with the branch chain amino acids and the glutamine added to it. And most importantly, it tastes good. A lot of proteins, especially protein

powders that are heavy on the pea protein can taste really, really chalky and they sort of puff up when you blend them, which I, I don’t mind anymore. But for a lot of people, it’s just really not a pleasant tasting protein powder. So this one I really like because it doesn’t really puff up like that. If you make it thick, if you don’t use a lot of liquid, it can get a little bit thick on you. But I like to double the liquid that

it recommends on the package.

Dani, Giacomo

So I do one scoop to about 16 ounces of water and that one scoop, you’re getting 21 g of protein, which is not bad for serving. You’re getting 30 servings out of a two pound container, 20 1 g of protein, 4 g of carbs and 2 g of fat and it’s 100 and 20 cal per scoop per 30 g scoop.

Giacomo

And it’s also worth mentioning that plant fusion is soy free and gluten free for those who happen to be intolerant and have allergies.

Dani

So I like this protein a lot in I I can drink it on its own, which is always nice. I can just keep packets of it with me in my gym bag and if I’m in an emergency, just shake it up with water and it’s not hell to drink it. It’s, it’s actually quite pleasant. I love the chocolate flavor. That is my favorite. But I also like to use it in smoothies, making different kinds of smoothies with it because the texture is really, really good.

You don’t need to add a lot of fruit to it. Although if you’re going to add fruit, that’s totally fine. But if you are cutting, for example, and you are cutting back on your carbohydrates at some point and you just want to lower carbohydrate protein shake. You don’t lose a lot of flavor by, you know, cutting your banana in half or something like that.

They have some really good flavors, chocolate Manilla cookies and cream, which is a super popular flavor. And they also have a chocolate raspberry and then an unflavored one as well, which I don’t really, I haven’t even tried. I don’t think I’ve ever tried the unflavored one, but it is a little bit on the sweet side even though it only has 4 g of sugar, which are all from fructose.

So some people do prefer the unflavored one because that has like 1 g of I, I may be wrong but it definitely has less than 4 g of in it. So, out of all the protein powders that we carry, I don’t want to say plant fusion is our favorite because we do switch it up from time to time and I don’t use I don’t like to use plant fusion in baking because it is a pea protein based powder and pea protein just doesn’t bake up very well.

So there are some other ones that I prefer to use in baking. But if I’m just gonna drink a shake or a smoothie plant fusion is my go to. And if you haven’t tried it and you have written off all plant based protein powders because you think they taste gross. I suggest giving plant fusion a try and let us know what you think.

Giacomo

Moving on to our Q and A. We have a question from Mark Leros on Twitter. And Mark asks how do you transition to a plant based diet as a meat eater when looking to bulk up?

Dani

Well, I think we covered a lot of this actually in the earlier part of the show, but we didn’t specifically cover how to do it and bulk up simultaneous. So I do think that there would be a period of experimentation on yourself to see how many calories you need, especially since we went over how vegans tend to be able to eat a bit more than meat eaters, calorically speaking. So you may need to eat even more than that if your goal is also to gain weight or bulk up.

So what I would recommend in those instances are really calorically dense foods and being sure to focus on those, specifically things like nuts, peanut butter, coconut beans, grains, those are all really calorically dense foods and the beans are pretty fibrous. So if that is too much for you, I would say switch over to white rice because you can eat a lot of white rice and it’s actually pretty calorically dense and not super filling.

Giacomo

You can blend up some calorically dense smoothies.

Dani

Yeah, you can check out Derek tree size on vegan Muscle and fitness.com. He has a recipe for his bean shake. His bean gainer shake, weight gain shake. I’m not exactly sure what he calls it, but it’s definitely a bean shake, which sounds like it would be pretty gross because beans in a shake doesn’t sound very good but white beans or cannellini beans in a shake, you can’t taste them.

It doesn’t taste like beans at all. It just adds a lot of calories to it. And because it’s blended in liquid, it’s a lot easier to consume without getting super full and bloated and uncomfortable.

Giacomo

You could even take some sweet potatoes, cook them up and blend them. Yeah.

Dani

Sweet potatoes. And if you’re really cramped for time you can buy canned sweet potatoes and throw that in a shake too and that’ll amp up the caloric value of that as well. Or you could do any combination of all of these things. when you’re looking to bulk up protein isn’t as much of an issue as it is when you’re trying to cut. So I wouldn’t focus so much on super, super high protein foods because if you’re eating a lot of beans and grains, you’re probably gonna, you know, do pretty well

with that anyway. But I would focus on getting a high protein meal in fairly soon after your workout to help you repair those muscles that you’ve torn down during your workout better.

Giacomo

And if you already know how you are bulking up as a meat, meat eater, it’s as simple as taking your program and vegan it, replacing the foods that you’re eating with plant based foods and then increasing calories as necessary. Right. In other words, have foods that are good substitutes have the similar composition, similar protein fat and carbohydrate ratio except they’re plant based and, and not animal based

Dani

Laura Dale on Facebook asks in the first episode, you talked briefly about alcohol but didn’t really describe how to fit it in. Could you work alcohol into an IIFYM plan? Beer has got to be a good post workout carb. Right.

Giacomo

Well, you could definitely work alcohol into your plan in moderation, I suppose as far as being an, an ideal post workout, post workout choice. I, no, definitely, definitely not. however, you know, if you’re, I mean, I guess for myself, I, I really don’t drink often once in a while though. I, I don’t, you know, I enjoy a good beer or whatnot and ba, it’s as simple as figuring out how many calories are in the, the alcoholic beverage that you’re you’re having and fitting it into, you

can fit it into your plan by substituting it, substituting your carbohydrates or fats, not your protein. Some things to bear in mind. A light beer can be, can have as few as 75 calories when, as compared to a strong beer or like a micro brew. For example, a craft beer can contain as many as 300 calories. And I mean, you can’t always figure out exactly what, what’s in it, but it’s just good to have a general idea of that range. wine, a dry wine can have as few as say, 100 calories to a sweet

wine that could have as many as 2 to 250 calories. Hard liquor is, is pretty easy. Actually, you just figure out each ounce of hard liquor is roughly 150 calories plus whatever you’re adding to it. If it’s a mix drink, whether it’s fruit or whatnot. Well, basically take the total amount of calories in your drink and swap it out for your fats or carbohydrates or both.

Dani

So, I would recommend to be more accurate, but I would, I would probably swap it out for carbohydrates since that’s what it’s closest to like, sugar, alcohol. so I would take the number of calories divided by four. So, if it’s a beer with 100 calories in it, that’s 25 g of carbs. Exactly. And that’s how, that’s how I would count it in if you go to log stuff on my fitness pal.

I’ve found that II, I don’t drink but I’ve looked it up for, for Giacomo. I’ve found that you can find most bottled or canned, or you can find a lot of brand names of alcohol in my fitness pal and the calories in it are accurate. But a lot of times people put it in with zero fats, carbs and proteins and that’s not true. So, you sort of have to do a little mental math yourself and figure a lot of them out.

So, if you’re running high on carbs, you can do what Giacomo said and swap it out for fat. So you would take the number of calories and divide it by nine. So, if it’s 100 calorie beer, it would be roughly 11, 11 g of fat is what you would count that as.

Giacomo

But it’s not something you wanna have every day and, and mo in moderation at, at best if, if you’re really serious about your fitness goals, I mean, even having a drink every week, I, I’d say is not necessarily the best for, for your body and for what you’re trying to accomplish.

Dani

I don’t, not drink because I’m straight edge or anything. I don’t drink because once I started counting my food and tracking my food and I realized how quickly that screwed me over, you know, even going out and just having a couple of beers would just completely screw my goals over for the day. So I was just like, it’s not worth it. I’d rather eat sandwich than drink a beer. And I found that I don’t really miss it, but of course, there are special occasions and things like that and it’s

always good to know how to work those things in. So that, that’s how we would recommend to do it. And I hope that answers your question. Please don’t drink beer as a post workout. All right. Well, that wraps up our fourth episode of Muscles by Brussels Radio, brought to you by vegan Protein. Thank you so much for listening and feel free to get in touch with us on any of our social media accounts at vegan proteins.