Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

Note: While all posts in my blog reflect my per­sonal opin­ion, I want to explic­itly make that state­ment again for this post as it does bring up a topic that is some­times too hotly contested.

I was born a veg­e­tar­ian and was one for most of my youth. Most of my clos­est friends were (and are) meat-eaters, and I just turned into one as well. But I was never com­pletely happy about it or at peace with it. So, a cou­ple of years ago, I finally decided that I couldn’t do it any­more and became veg­e­tar­ian again. What is the point of this post? I am writ­ing about this now because I am con­tem­plat­ing eat­ing meat again. This is mostly a per­sonal post, so feel free to skip to the last paragraph.

Why am I veg­e­tar­ian in the first place — espe­cially if I am seri­ous about fit­ness? The moral argu­ment of being a veg­e­tar­ian is mostly moot. I com­pletely under­stand that. Even though I buy cage-free, free-range eggs and try to buy milk from happy cows, it is near-impossible to be per­fect about this. Plus, even if am vegan, that does not mean I wont have blood on my hands. Agri­cul­ture is one of the fore­most causes for the destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment. Not to add the amount of ani­mals that are killed while grains are har­vested by machines — rab­bits, cute lit­tle har­vest mice and the like.

Plus, no one is really vegan

Then there’s evo­lu­tion. We are evolved to eat meat. I accept that. No argu­ments. If you want to read some related research to this, here’s some paleo related research. Or how/why meat was nec­es­sary for evolution.

Then what is it? It just comes down to the fact that I can­not kill an ani­mal and eat it. And I always said if I am ever going to start, I have to do some­thing like what this per­son did. I highly rec­om­mend you to read that piece.

But what does this mean for peo­ple who will never eat meat in their diet?

If you want to be a seri­ous ath­lete and reach your genetic poten­tial, it is still pos­si­ble to achieve it with a veg­e­tar­ian diet. Yes, it is a lot harder to do it this way, but not impos­si­ble — not by a long stretch. So, do not fret — you can get really fit by being veg­e­tar­ian. There are a few sim­ple things you can do to help you get there:

1. Get ade­quate amounts of Omega-3 and Fish oil — Vegetarians/vegans do not get ade­quate amounts of EPA or DHA in their diet. Flax-seed oil and other alter­nates do not pro­vide one with enough EPA or DHA. While I under­stand ‘fish oil’ comes from fish, I just want to throw it out there. Yes, it really does make that big a deal. For more infor­ma­tion, check this out. Or for a more aca­d­e­mic arti­cle, check this.
2. Pro­tein — Pro­tein sources are in short sup­ply as well, for veg­e­tar­i­ans and veg­ans. There are issues with over-consumption of soy, tem­peh etc. And while legumes (for exam­ple) do con­tain pro­tein — the amount of car­bo­hy­drates it comes with makes it a very poor pro­tein source. I will let you fig­ure out what works for you. Hemp pro­tein is one thing you could ben­e­fit from — it con­tains all essen­tial amino-acids and is not illegal.
3. Fat-soluble vit­a­mins — Take some sup­ple­ments for this. Easy insur­ance. For some detailed read­ing, check out Robb Wolf’s post on this topic.
4. Food Intol­er­ance — Eat­ing the same foods can cause an intol­er­ance, and that leads to adding…
5. Diver­sity in your food — Eat as many dif­fer­ent things as you can.
6. And eat real food. none of that processed stuff.

Once again, being vegetarian/vegan does not mean you can­not be fit. Some things are a lit­tle harder, that’s all. For a related post and more read­ing, go here.

Maybe some day, I will taste some awe­some fish from Las Pal­mas — Ted talk; the related arti­cle if you dont feel like watch­ing a video (you should watch it).