Anyone here Meat-Free?

[quad6]

I'm not, just curious. I was watching a shaolin monk documentary today. Their training is full-on every day and they're doing some pretty crazy physical feats. When they sit down to eat... what's on the menu? mung bean sprouts, steam buns and rice. They don't eat meat. full stop.

Interestingly, for the most part, they don't look scrawny or underdeveloped either. Vain but this would probably be my main concern about a diet like this. I'm a natural ectomorph and it's taken a lot of work over the years to get just a mildly athletic looking body. I eat a variety of meat, fish plus eggs and a truck load of carbs. I feel that is all good but I'm curious to know if anyone here is meat-free and if so, perhaps what their daily diet looks like.

[Philip Chubb]

Just goes to show you that adaptation still takes place. Especially since their cortisol is probably a bit lower (no traffic lights).

Just in case he doesn't see this topic and answer himself, I think there is a member named VeganMartin who doesn't eat meat. Sorry if I got the name wrong.

[Rafael David]

"In your constitution, the meat nourishes the meat, otherwise the man weakens. The conservation law imposes upon man the duty to conserve your energy and your health in order to fulfill the law of work. He shall feed, Therefore, according to your organization requires. "- Book of Spirits

That is, we can eat meat, but not given us the right to abuse it, as modern man does, treating the animal as a product or object, without the least respect, different from the way the Wild Man is . But it is expected that a being who has forgotten God, forget that the animals are his work too, is sad.

All meat eaters (me too) should watch this video at least once and reflect:

I doubt after watching this video, when someone is eating not remember it. I almost cried the first time I ever saw.

[Joshua Naterman]

Guys, try and keep in mind that the majority of strength is in your nervous system, and that these monks train the same things over and over and over for years on end. This builds a highly efficient and powerful nervous system. This does not require anything but calories and sufficient electrolytes and other minerals to keep the body functioning optimally. You get both from plant-based diets in much greater quantities than meat based diets. The main point here is not that the meat is causing problems but rather that the lack of large quantities of plant matter is causing the problem.

For what they do monks require the minimum amount of muscle necessary, just as a gymnast does. It is all about relative strength. Unless you specifically train to be big you will always be very strong for your size. Also, those monks are pretty darn slender. That's actually an advantage for them, since slender = lighter = faster. All other things being equal(absolute power output), the lighter man is the faster man. Shaolin kung fu is built on speed. Yes, there are other characteristics, but speed is the main one. These guys are NOT trying to grow muscle. They are trying to build skills, and strength IS a skill. Muscle mass is not.

As a side note, mung beans have more protein than any plant I have ever seen. every quarter cup has 23 or 28 grams of protein and like 40g of carbs. Of course, that protein is fairly inefficient for the body to use, but there's a LOT of it. Sprouted seeds are the most nutritionally dense foods in nature aside from bee pollen.

[Rafael David]

The main point here is not that the meat is causing problems but rather that the lack of large quantities of plant matter is causing the problem.

Yes, you're right, but nobody said that meat can cause a problem... You know they do not eat meat for other reasons... Mostly what you think is more important than what you eat...

For what they do monks require the minimum amount of muscle necessary, just as a gymnast does. It is all about relative strength. Unless you specifically train to be big you will always be very strong for your size. Also, those monks are pretty darn slender. That's actually an advantage for them, since slender = lighter = faster. All other things being equal(absolute power output), the lighter man is the faster man. Shaolin kung fu is built on speed. Yes, there are other characteristics, but speed is the main one. These guys are NOT trying to grow muscle. They are trying to build skills, and strength IS a skill. Muscle mass is not.

FOR ME is good news, because I already think about abandoning the carnivorous habits for a while ... and besides I never had the intention of getting big, only to be strong and healthy ...

As a side note, mung beans have more protein than any plant I have ever seen. every quarter cup has 23 or 28 grams of protein and like 40g of carbs. Of course, that protein is fairly inefficient for the body to use, but there's a LOT of it. Sprouted seeds are the most nutritionally dense foods in nature aside from bee pollen.

Red kidney beans are nice too and along with rice makes the most popular Brazilian meal ...

[quad6]

Might have eat me some of those mung bean sprouts.

[Joshua Naterman]

Keep in mind that the beans are much more dense than the big sprouts. Your best bet is to buy mung beans and soak them for 12 hours, using at least 3x as much water as beans, and then let them sit for 12 hours after you have drained them. They will be about 3x the size they were dry with little sprouts, and will be a denser, similar tasting snack.

[Rafael David]

hmmm nice!

[Joshua Naterman]

After draining, leave the beans in whatever you drained them in and put it in a cabinet. That will keep them moist, which they need to be. You could also put them into some sort of cloth bag and hang them up for 12 hours in a closet.

[Razz]

Also keep in mind they do nothing but train, eat, meditate and sleep. This lifestyle lets you get away with things you can't in a normal lifestyle

[Rafael David]

Also keep in mind they do nothing but train, eat, meditate and sleep. This lifestyle lets you get away with things you can't in a normal lifestyle

Can not get away from what? And define normal lifestyle, please.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Wow, I'm planning on reading Fast Food Nation and I've been aware of the meat industry's behavior for a while, but that video was hard to watch.

Slizzardman, are you saying that it's theoretically possible that someone could become very athletically successful and healthy on a hugely carb dominant diet?

I've been reading a lot of Mark's Daily Apple, Robb Wolf.com, PaNu (or Archevore), and it seems that, scientifically, meat is a hugely healthy thing. I don't know much about nutrition besides what I read, but I understand the process behind making a logical decision, and it seems to me that if we were to find out exactly what it is in good meat that it so healthy than we could see what other types of food have the same attributes. Obviously it's one of the most, if not the most, dense food we have available, but is it the fat or protein in the meat that is so healthy? If it's the fat, we can get a ton of fat from coconut milk/oil/cream, right? If it's the protein, like you said, there are plants that have a lot of protein, although I don't how well the human body can actually use it.

You do agree that eating like a vegetarian is not at all the best way to become very athletic (with some muscle), right? You and Ido are constantly confusing me with your (sometimes) differing opinions, but both of you are very knowledgeable and athletic.

--

I had to leave the post for a few hours, and I lost my train of thought... hopefully what I wrote above makes a little sense.

[Joshua Naterman]

Razz is pointing out that monks live an extraordinarily low stress lifestyle. There is no energy spent on anything but training, cleaning and gardening duties, and meditation. Even meditation is training, and the others are usually of a sufficiently low intensity to be considered a form of recovery exercise.

I don't think very many of us can claim to have such a focused lifestyle with so little else requiring our energy. The more you have to deal with the more it gets in the way, even if it is nothing more than being unable to spend as much time training throughout the day.

[Joshua Naterman]

Wow, I'm planning on reading Fast Food Nation and I've been aware of the meat industry's behavior for a while, but that video was hard to watch.

Slizzardman, are you saying that it's theoretically possible that someone could become very athletically successful and healthy on a hugely carb dominant diet?

I've been reading a lot of Mark's Daily Apple, Robb Wolf.com, PaNu (or Archevore), and it seems that, scientifically, meat is a hugely healthy thing. I don't know much about nutrition besides what I read, but I understand the process behind making a logical decision, and it seems to me that if we were to find out exactly what it is in good meat that it so healthy than we could see what other types of food have the same attributes. Obviously it's one of the most, if not the most, dense food we have available, but is it the fat or protein in the meat that is so healthy? If it's the fat, we can get a ton of fat from coconut milk/oil/cream, right? If it's the protein, like you said, there are plants that have a lot of protein, although I don't how well the human body can actually use it.

You do agree that eating like a vegetarian is not at all the best way to become very athletic (with some muscle), right? You and Ido are constantly confusing me with your (sometimes) differing opinions, but both of you are very knowledgeable and athletic.

--

I had to leave the post for a few hours, and I lost my train of thought... hopefully what I wrote above makes a little sense.

A lot of people are very successful athletes on high carb diets! I'm not arguing that cutting meat out is a good or bad thing, I am simply pointing out where the benefits of a plant-based diet come from. You can just eat tons of plants and have the same benefits while also getting the benefits of eating meat, if you keep eating meat as well.

Also, meat is nowhere close to the most nutritionally dense food on the planet. (Untrimmed) Meat has a lot of calories, which is very convenient, and fat soluble vitamins (depending on what the animals ate), but overall can not compare to a reasonable variety of plant matter in micronutrient density. You have to try and remember that you can get macronutrients everywhere. They are primarily for energy and generic building blocks, which can be obtained from almost any source you can dream up. Micronutrients are what make the big difference, and there are far fewer great sources of those, for a variety of reasons.

Obviously I am not going to state that the vegan diet is ideal athletically, but there are many people performing at an extremely high level on this type of diet. There are also many people with other diets performing at very high levels. If I were to put together a "perfect" athletic diet it would have a crapton of leafy vegetables, a good amount of cruciferous veggies, as many colors as possible throughout the week, and many of these would be cooked with grass-fed animal fat. I would probably use whey protein as the primary protein source. Why? Because it is the most biologically efficient protein on the planet that we know of. Your body can do more with 1 gram of whey than with one gram of anything else. We're talking about perfection here, not practicality. However, I can tell you from occasional experience that this kind of diet is pretty easy to set up.

That concept probably won't be popular, and that's ok. If you are going to have a discussion about perfection you better be prepared to forget about the box altogether. You can't just think outside it, you have to remove all guidelines and start from scratch basing everything you do off of the most complete knowledge available. What you come up with will usually look very different from what most people, even experts, recommend because they all have BIAS. Bias is based on preconceptions. If you remove all preconceptions and follow the trail where it leads with no expectations you will find that some commonly accepted ideas aren't necessarily bad but are not ideal either.

If you want to achieve the most you have to train yourself to be an explorer. See everything as new all the time. Try to actively destroy any emotional attachment you have to any of your knowledge. You need to be able to discard and re-evaluate as objectively as you can for as many times as necessary, and this can not be done when you are attached to a certain "way." I know, it's very buddhist, but this has allowed me to step beyond conventional limitations and accomplish things that I never would have otherwise.

I highly recommend this, it is a very exciting and rewarding way to live. Of course, you will also have to learn to not express yourself this way to others most of the time, because they can not relate to the ideas. You will run into a lot of resistance if you try and this can be discouraging. I have found that I just ask and listen, and don't actually talk very much anymore because what I have to say is not what people want to hear in many areas. They want to be agreed with, and as long as you're not contradicting them they assume you agree. I see all of this as a good thing, because this is the development of people skills that allow you to navigate many situations. You'll get used to seeing right away what you can and can not say to any given person, within one or two minutes at the most. You become a very socially agile person, which I think is a highly valuable skill to possess. It all starts with removing the boxes altogether.

[Rafael David]

Razz is pointing out that monks live an extraordinarily low stress lifestyle. There is no energy spent on anything but training, cleaning and gardening duties, and meditation. Even meditation is training, and the others are usually of a sufficiently low intensity to be considered a form of recovery exercise.

I don't think very many of us can claim to have such a focused lifestyle with so little else requiring our energy. The more you have to deal with the more it gets in the way, even if it is nothing more than being unable to spend as much time training throughout the day.

Most of the stress caused by this so-called "normal lifestyle" is because people engage in futile tasks. If all the futility of this lifestyle was dismissed, there would be no stress and it would be possible to focus on what matters in life. Do you think life is a playground of fun? 99.9% of people think that. It's called materialism, from whence most of the ills of mankind.

[Joshua Naterman]

Razz is pointing out that monks live an extraordinarily low stress lifestyle. There is no energy spent on anything but training, cleaning and gardening duties, and meditation. Even meditation is training, and the others are usually of a sufficiently low intensity to be considered a form of recovery exercise.

I don't think very many of us can claim to have such a focused lifestyle with so little else requiring our energy. The more you have to deal with the more it gets in the way, even if it is nothing more than being unable to spend as much time training throughout the day.

Most of the stress caused by this so-called "normal lifestyle" is because people engage in futile tasks. If all the futility of this lifestyle was dismissed, there would be no stress and it would be possible to focus on what matters in life. Do you think life is a playground of fun?

It can be if you adjust your viewpoint accordingly. I think that fits in with what I just posted rather well, since they both require the same basic process.

I think that a certain amount of stress is inevitable in modern life. We have to make time for the store, training, tv programs (let's be realistic), social interaction and the stress that comes along with undesirable social interaction (which is not always avoidable, you can't control what others do or say) such as annoying family members or coworkers, a workplace where you have to make sure you're on good terms with the leadership if you intend to earn a series of promotions, and trying to balance all of this with our personal lives and the drama that comes there.

I realize I may be alone here, but I like women and I like being in a relationship. You automatically assume the stress of your chosen companion when you form a relationship, because they ARE going to share their daily life experiences with you. No matter how you spin it, this will lead to stress. This WILL impact the rest of your life, especially considering how much else there is to deal with. If this was the only factor then it wouldn't matter much.

We haven't even added children to the mix yet, or even pets with this busy schedule!

Life is a fun playground, but it is not all fun and games. We are human, and we need breaks from all of that, and it is becoming harder and harder to get those breaks. The older we get and the more we have to do each day and each week the more it all adds up. It is ridiculous to say that all of this is futile, unless you want to say that living a balanced life is futile.

You can certainly base everything around what is good for you personally, and live in the playground forever, but you will quickly find that you are not going to be able to do so with a constant romantic companion and god forbid children, to say nothing of anything else. Building close relationships always involves a certain amount of less than ideal moments, which all add stress. There's nothing wrong with that, and it even happens with close friendships from time to time, so let's not pretend that it is possible to avoid this altogether.

I do agree that with proper self-talk and programming that we are capable of drastically reducing the unnecessary stress in our lives. Unfortunately we desire a lot of the sources of this stress, so I don't see too many people successfully pulling that off. This lies fairly in line with what I have observed personally.

[Rafael David]

You're wrong. That's all I have to say. Everyone has their time to understand things, my problem is I forget it all the time. :oops: :roll:

[Razz]

Sliz nailed my point. You have to realize that stress comes from everything: food intolerances, light exposure during the night, toxicity, radiation from cell phones/wifi etc. This is without even mentioning the things that sliz pointed out, aswell as traffic, noise from all our modern machinery etc. Try to go sit by the ocean all alone and tell me that the city noise doesn't bother you.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

A lot of people are very successful athletes on high carb diets! I'm not arguing that cutting meat out is a good or bad thing, I am simply pointing out where the benefits of a plant-based diet come from. You can just eat tons of plants and have the same benefits while also getting the benefits of eating meat, if you keep eating meat as well.

Also, meat is nowhere close to the most nutritionally dense food on the planet. (Untrimmed) Meat has a lot of calories, which is very convenient, and fat soluble vitamins (depending on what the animals ate), but overall can not compare to a reasonable variety of plant matter in micronutrient density. You have to try and remember that you can get macronutrients everywhere. They are primarily for energy and generic building blocks, which can be obtained from almost any source you can dream up. Micronutrients are what make the big difference, and there are far fewer great sources of those, for a variety of reasons.

Oh! That's good to know!

As for the carbs, Ido gets very few carbs and is very athletic (although I don't know how enduring he is). He seems to believe that one of the best (or the best) ways to get lean and strong fast is to get low carbs (around 100g or less) and get a LOT of fat and protein. You were fat adapted not too long ago, weren't you? How'd you like it? Did you get a lot of extra energy afterwards like Ido says most people get?

I understand that macronutrients are macronutrients, but it seems like all the vegans I've ever seen are very, very thin with hardly any muscle mass! They perform well (The Shaolin's do), but outside of extreme endurance athletes who tend to be very thin anyway, they all seem to be very thin. In fact, if it were not for the fact that I've seen the Shaolin monks perform so well, I would think they were unhealthy and underfed at first glance. Maybe the thinness is generally caused by not getting enough fat. I've looked it up a number of times, but I can't find a list of high fat vegetables anywhere! Maybe if they were drinking coconut milk and omega-3 fish oils they'd be thicker.

Obviously I am not going to state that the vegan diet is ideal athletically, but there are many people performing at an extremely high level on this type of diet. There are also many people with other diets performing at very high levels. If I were to put together a "perfect" athletic diet it would have a crapton of leafy vegetables, a good amount of cruciferous veggies, as many colors as possible throughout the week, and many of these would be cooked with grass-fed animal fat. I would probably use whey protein as the primary protein source. Why? Because it is the most biologically efficient protein on the planet that we know of. Your body can do more with 1 gram of whey than with one gram of anything else. We're talking about perfection here, not practicality. However, I can tell you from occasional experience that this kind of diet is pretty easy to set up.

I know I'm going to sound stupid, but I have to ask... why obviously?

So you definitely suggest eating more than 100g of carbs? Without eating over 3500 carbs, how would you get a lot of carbs, fat, AND protein? I currently (for the last few days) eat about 190g fat, 175g pro, 105g carbs.

That concept probably won't be popular, and that's ok. If you are going to have a discussion about perfection you better be prepared to forget about the box altogether. You can't just think outside it, you have to remove all guidelines and start from scratch basing everything you do off of the most complete knowledge available. What you come up with will usually look very different from what most people, even experts, recommend because they all have BIAS. Bias is based on preconceptions. If you remove all preconceptions and follow the trail where it leads with no expectations you will find that some commonly accepted ideas aren't necessarily bad but are not ideal either.

If you want to achieve the most you have to train yourself to be an explorer. See everything as new all the time. Try to actively destroy any emotional attachment you have to any of your knowledge. You need to be able to discard and re-evaluate as objectively as you can for as many times as necessary, and this can not be done when you are attached to a certain "way." I know, it's very buddhist, but this has allowed me to step beyond conventional limitations and accomplish things that I never would have otherwise.

I highly recommend this, it is a very exciting and rewarding way to live. Of course, you will also have to learn to not express yourself this way to others most of the time, because they can not relate to the ideas. You will run into a lot of resistance if you try and this can be discouraging. I have found that I just ask and listen, and don't actually talk very much anymore because what I have to say is not what people want to hear in many areas. They want to be agreed with, and as long as you're not contradicting them they assume you agree. I see all of this as a good thing, because this is the development of people skills that allow you to navigate many situations. You'll get used to seeing right away what you can and can not say to any given person, within one or two minutes at the most. You become a very socially agile person, which I think is a highly valuable skill to possess. It all starts with removing the boxes altogether.

I couldn't agree with you more.

[Rafael David]

I understand that macronutrients are macronutrients, but it seems like all the vegans I've ever seen are very, very thin with hardly any muscle mass! They perform well (The Shaolin's do), but outside of extreme endurance athletes who tend to be very thin anyway, they all seem to be very thin. In fact, if it were not for the fact that I've seen the Shaolin monks perform so well, I would think they were unhealthy and underfed at first glance. Maybe the thinness is generally caused by not getting enough fat. I've looked it up a number of times, but I can't find a list of high fat vegetables anywhere! Maybe if they were drinking coconut milk and omega-3 fish oils they'd be thicker.

WTF?! Try google Mike Mahler or Mac Danzig... I do not know you know Brad Pitt, Christian Bale or Chris Evans , they are very unknown, but they are vegans and do not seem so thin, only citing a few examples ... :roll:

[Quick Start Test Smith]

I understand that macronutrients are macronutrients, but it seems like all the vegans I've ever seen are very, very thin with hardly any muscle mass! They perform well (The Shaolin's do), but outside of extreme endurance athletes who tend to be very thin anyway, they all seem to be very thin. In fact, if it were not for the fact that I've seen the Shaolin monks perform so well, I would think they were unhealthy and underfed at first glance. Maybe the thinness is generally caused by not getting enough fat. I've looked it up a number of times, but I can't find a list of high fat vegetables anywhere! Maybe if they were drinking coconut milk and omega-3 fish oils they'd be thicker.

WTF?! Try google Mike Mahler or Mac Danzig... I do not know you know Brad Pitt, Christian Bale or Chris Evans , they are very unknown, but they are vegans and do not seem so thin, only citing a few examples ... :roll:

Mikael, don't forget the difference between a discussion and an argument.

Mike Mahler is, in some pictures, a thick guy, as is Mac Danzig. The rest of the people you mentioned are actors (read as body builders, only interested in appearance), not athletes who train hours every day. Even if they were, that would be almost meaningless. Five people who who got thick with the vegan diet against the thousands who don't look so thick. Some people get big no matter what they do, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that five out of every few thousand got big.

[Rafael David]

Mikael, don't forget the difference between a discussion and an argument.

Mike Mahler is, in some pictures, a thick guy, as is Mac Danzig. The rest of the people you mentioned are actors (read as body builders, only interested in appearance), not athletes who train hours every day. Even if they were, that would be almost meaningless. Five people who who got thick with the vegan diet against the thousands who don't look so thick. Some people get big no matter what they do, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that five out of every few thousand got big.

Dude, you said that "ALL the vegans I've ever seen are very, very thin with hardly any muscle mass", generalize less next time. I am not clairvoyant, try to better express their ideas. :|

[RatioFitness]

Vegans can be muscular but I would guess that most got that way from eating meat first. Research shows that you can maintain muscle mass on lower amounts of protein. Also, I read an article one time on vegan MMA fighters some of the fighters admitted to using protein supplements, which probably accounts for why they seem to be doing fine on a "vegan" diet.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

Ratio Fitness, I've read similar.

Mikael, don't forget the difference between a discussion and an argument.

Mike Mahler is, in some pictures, a thick guy, as is Mac Danzig. The rest of the people you mentioned are actors (read as body builders, only interested in appearance), not athletes who train hours every day. Even if they were, that would be almost meaningless. Five people who who got thick with the vegan diet against the thousands who don't look so thick. Some people get big no matter what they do, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that five out of every few thousand got big.

Dude, you said that "ALL the vegans I've ever seen are very, very thin with hardly any muscle mass", generalize less next time. I am not clairvoyant, try to better express their ideas. :|

That's right. "All the vegans I (me, personally) have seen are very, very thin." I said, "I", not "All vegans in the whole wide world." I was speaking from personal experience.

[Rafael David]

You're right, man ... :oops:

Vegans can be muscular but I would guess that most got that way from eating meat first. Research shows that you can maintain muscle mass on lower amounts of protein. Also, I read an article one time on vegan MMA fighters some of the fighters admitted to using protein supplements, which probably accounts for why they seem to be doing fine on a "vegan" diet.

Mac Danzig said that just eat non-animal foods, including supplements...