How I Learned to Gain Vegan Muscle

The core principles involved in gaining muscle as a vegan

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

(Edit: This article turned out longer than I expected so if you want a quick summary/list of my main points you can scroll to the bottom!)

When I became vegan I had already been actively training every day for a few years

with the goal to build the best physique I could. I started off my athletic journey on the lighter side at around 120 lbs which is what really drove me to become athletic in the first place, the fact that it made me feel better than I ever had before was just an amazing bonus.

But when I (basically) turned vegan over I definitely took a hit in my size. That’s only because I suddenly changed for ethical reasons and thus was super unprepared for what laid ahead. What laid ahead was healthy, ethical, tasty and low-calorie. As someone who actually WANTS to gain weight, this quickly became something I had to learn to adjust to and overcome.

Eat Frequently

Luckily, I grew up and started my athletic journey as an ectomorph, so weight gaining issues were nothing new to me. The new issue was gaining muscle weight solely on plant-based products, which as an uninformed individual seemed like an arduous and daunting task. One of the ways I knew I needed to eat was frequently enough so my

the body would spend a minimal amount of time in a fasted state. In the field of ketosis, your body can always be placed in one of two categories; fasted and fed. A fed state, as you probably could guess, is when your body is fed and is using the energy provided by your last meal. Whereas a fasted state is when your body has resorted to other sources of energy, typically your previously-stored fat cells. If you have ever heard of intermittent fasting, these are the body processes that lifestyle aims to manipulate. So for me, I needed to stay in a fed state in order to consume more energy then I was using.