I came across this article today and wanted to share it with you. I was just having a conversation with one of my girlfriends last night about this very subject. I was trying to explain that animal proteins are not very usable to our bodies and when cooked, protein is actually decreased even further. So, this is just part of the article, but it makes a few very good points. Sometimes I think it's good to hear this stuff from someone else besides me! Enjoy!
Building Muscles On A Raw Vegan Diet – Really?
by Charlie Abel
by Charlie Abel
Can you really build muscle by lifting weights on a raw vegan diet? That's the second most frequent question I'm asked. The answer is, "there's no reason why you can't lift weights and build muscle on a raw vegan diet, and there are many benefits in doing so."
On a raw vegan diet, your muscles are still there, of course. You use them every day to walk, run and lift things. You can increase their size and strength if you know how.
It seems people assume that in the absence of consuming milk, meat or eggs, protein must be lacking, and that isn't true at all. This assumption indicates that the questioner is uninformed about nutrition, but you won't get anywhere telling them that!
When we eat a raw vegan diet we can avoid the negative effects of cooking food. In their complexity, protein molecules are known as "macromolecules" which are damaged when heated. Their chemical structure changes, making them less usable by the body; they become less digestible in proportion to the amount of heat used in cooking. So, if your friend thinks that you're not getting any protein because you won't eat a steak, you could tell him that you adopted the raw vegan diet to get more protein, since the heat of cooking makes it less usable. As your friend eats his steak, you might ask him where he gets his protein!
Since fruits make up a large portion of a proper raw vegan diet, it's also good to know that the protein content of ripe fresh fruits (and vegetables) is actually in the simple form of amino acids, which are much easier to digest than the larger macro protein molecules in meat and dairy products. Thus, a raw vegan diet really does supply adequate protein for building muscles. It will not cause the health problems animal proteins do; and it is easy to digest, allowing your body to conserve energy from digestion and instead use that energy to recover from your demanding muscle building workouts.
What exactly makes muscles grow? Hard work! You have to get out of your comfort zone. The harder you work the muscles, the bigger and stronger they will grow.
We have to do this properly, and the key word is "gradual." You incrementally build up to hard work according to your ability.
If you've never strength trained before, merely exercising your muscles with relatively easy resistance exercise is harder work than you're used to, and will induce your muscles to grow. Some of them, anyway. And this may be enough for some people, but if you want bigger muscles, then you need to make the exercises harder.
To make the exercise harder, you increase the amount of weight (resistance) used for your exercises. This fatigues your muscles down to a low point, and this stimulates your body to go ahead and build bigger muscles. As you grow stronger, this becomes tougher and tougher to do because you will find that on a raw vegan diet, your body will adapt very quickly. This may be the result of the increased availability of protein, through avoidance of heat cooking.
Starting out, I'd recommend a full body workout, on three non-consecutive days of the week, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Start with light, easy weights, and increase the resistance gradually.
