Vegan Virgin: Day 4: Vegan Virgin Diet Guideline forming

Be sure to check out Iron Daughter’s Paleo update if you didn’t see it yet 🙂
http://www.irondaughterirondad.com/hows-iron-daughter-doing-on-her-paleo-diet/

This post is / was written throughout the day (Thursday, Feb. 24). 

Today will be close to yesterday….largely because I took half my dinner home last night, so that’ll primarily be dinner tonight…so with a strong plan for dinner already in place, I can look to the rest of the day for some fine-tuning…an hour on the bike indoors, and with a 30 minute light jog, probably close to 900 calories, for a 2,900 calorie budget for the day…so nice, to be getting into a bit of a pattern, and have a little room in there with the exercise…makes things a bit easier.

For those just looking for the final numbers, in a PDF format:
click here for the details of vegan day 4 110224

Breakfast with half a vegan smoothie and a Clif bar…461 calories and 12 grams of protein (10%)…easy.

At 10:30am , added another Clif bar before a conference call, since I was feeling hungry and didn’t want to go into my upcoming workout depleted…I’ve found over the years that Clif bars are generally workout friendly for me…I can eat them before, and even during exercise…particularly long bike rides when I’m looking for something more solid…without any ‘issues’…and as it turns out more Vegan friendly than Paleo…and a soy base…who knew?…http://www.clifbar.com/food/products_clif_bar/

Vegans do read labels, that’s for sure 🙂

So bike ride for an hour on the trainer…pushed 2 x 15 minute Z2-3 intervals to get the heart rate up a bit without overdoing it…and then a ‘brick’ 30 minute jog / walk…eeeeasy pace.

So after exercise, raw vegetable juice on the way in from the run, other half of my fruit smoothie, 2 slices of Ezekiel bread (low sodium) and 3 oz of seitan with a romaine leaf: 541 calories, 30 grams of protein (22%)

…so my 3pm checkpoint after a snack of a few almonds and pistachios…again looking really good:

• 1,412 calories, 58.3 grams of protein (16%) Vegan Day 4
• 1,290 calories, 54.9 grams of protein (16%) Vegan Day 3
• 1,168 calories, 42.4 grams of protein (14%) Vegan Day 2
• 1,272 calories, 38.3 grams of protein (11%) Vegan Day 1

Going to see if I can come in under that 1,000 calories for dinner, and still get in the 42+ grams of protein to hit my 100 gram target.

For dinner, I’m going to cut at least half of the rice noodles in the leftovers from yesterday…the 190 calories and 1.6 grams of protein wasn’t worth it…also no vegetarian sushi roll, with 108 calories and 0 protein.  The Edamame at 200 calories and 16 grams of protein shows why the vegan diet likes soy…and the Soya (vegan Tofu) at 105 calories and 10.5 grams of protein…although I still don’t like the bad things that I read about soy.

Excellent dinner execution…in looking at it again, got rid of _all_ the noddles…just not worth the calories, so:

• Edamame
• white beans with bread…excellent appetizer
• spinach salad with the Soya, and vegetables from the leftovers…teriyaki sauce built-in
• 1 beer + short (3 oz) glass of wine for a taste

didn’t feel overly stuffed, entered the numbers and said “that’s what I’m talking about!’:

• dinner was 954 calories, 52.3 grams of protein (22%)…still higher than I’d like…closer to 800 calories would be better
• total for the day was 2,366 calories, 110.6 grams of protein….bam…yes!

Went to the local college basketball game in the evening…’fluffy’ wife still looks great 🙂 , brought our vegan kettle corn, so the day ended at:

• 2,526 calories, 113.2 grams of protein (17%)…now that’s what I’m talking about!…all the ‘numbers’ once again are excellent…sodium leaning high is the only thing a bit out of kilter

My thinking so far on a Vegan Diet: My Vegan Virgin Diet Guideline

I don’t want to get ahead of myself on conclusions, but one thing that I have found is that in the quest for protein, it’s pretty difficult to run 15-20% of calories as protein on a vegan diet…not impossible, but pretty darn difficult. I’ve written a earlier posts about the correct balance of fat/carbs/protein…here’s one:
http://www.irondaughterirondad.com/nutrition/carbs-protein-fat/ 

Here’s the long and the short of it so far:

• on 2,500 calories and 100 grams of protein (16%)…there are 4 calories in a gram of protein (same for carbs, fat is 9 calories/gram), food needs to average 10 grams of protein for 250 calories, or 4 grams of protein per 100 calories, or 1 gram of protein per 25 calories…so this has become my Vegan Diet Guideline…anything less than that (16%), think hard about eating it…the calories may not be worth the nutrients
• my main adjustment is that a cup of mixed fruits at 80 calories and 0 protein, certainly doesn’t do it…so I’ve cut back my fruit pretty substantially…I can build it back in on days that have a higher calorie budget…I’ve been looking at an apple on my desk for 2 days now

Things that you think should have enough protein, but don’t really…may have other nutrients, but protein isn’t strong…so think about the calories…there may be better choices:

• stuff like Guacamole…100 calories, 1 gram of protein (4%)
• white rice: 168 calories in 1 cup, and 3.5 grams of protein (8%)
• brown long grain rice: 216 calories in 1 cup and 5 grams of protein (9%)

Foods that barely make the cut, or on the edge…so ‘protein’ friendly and still ‘valuable’ for nutrients:

• quinoa: 190 calories, 6 grams of protein (13%)…a ‘heralded’ vegan super-food
• a mixture of stir fry vegetables at 110 calories and 4-7 grams of protein runs on the edge or higher, depending on the vegetables (14-25%)
• peanuts: 80 calories, 3.5 grams of protein…right at the edge (17%)
• a slice of Ezekiel bread at 80 calories and 3 grams of protein just misses the mark (15%)
• 12 almonds at 85 calories and 3 grams of protein, just misses the mark (14%)

the BIG protein hits:

• 3 oz of boiled down gluten: Seitan at 100 calories and 19 grams of protein…BIG protein hit (76%)
• and soy based 3 ounces of tofu at 120 calories and 10 grams of protein (33%)
• and soy based 3 ounces of tempeh at 175 calorie and 16 grams of protein (37%)

So with my Vegan Virgin Diet Guideline, anything that doesn’t meet the 1 gram of protein per 25 calories…think about why you’re eating it…like the popcorn this evening…I’d hit my numbers, in fact with the 900+ calorie exercise burn, actually had room to spare…and it was a basketball game after all 🙂