Plant Based Diet For Athletes
From pro athletes to active folks everywhere more and more people are fast waking up to the benefits of a plant based diet by consciously eating more plants and fewer animal products. The benefits are just too good to ignore!
A plant-based diet simply means eating tons of veg, nuts, seeds, superfoods, fruits, beans and berries to become an athletic demon who laughs in the face of illness and injury, slays recovery, and keeps on smashing plateaus.
Shop our award winning plant-based sports nutrition
And being 'plant-based' doesn't have to mean being vegetarian, vegan, raw, fruitarian or any of the other secular dietary tags that may cause social pariah status among your less performance-minded peers.
Whether you go the full monty and only ever eat plants, or you simply increase your plant-based intake while reducing animal products is entirely your call.
Plant-based diets - why should you care?
Because cutting down on animal products and filling up on plants could just make you a total athletic rockstar.
There's very good evidence that eating more nutrient-dense plants and less meat, fish and dairy can boost energy levels, help your body recover faster from injury and training and reduce your illness risk from small stuff like colds and flu to bigger things like heart disease and cancer.
And it's really good for the planet - growing plants uses way less resources than growing animals. As one example producing plant-based milks has just one third of the environmental impact when compared to producing dairy milk according to a recent study from Oxford University.
Plant-based diets - are real athletes using them?
Hell yes! Legendary US ultramarathon runner and multiple Western States, Spartathlon and Badwater winner Scott Jurek has been 100% plant based since 1999.
Scott Jurek runs Death Valley for yet another win in the 137-mile Badwater ultra. All on plants
Carl Lewis, 9 X Olympic gold medal winning sprinter has been fully plant-powered since the start of his most dominant season in 1991. He said "I've found that a person doesn't need protein from meat to be a successful athlete".
Ultradistance triathlete and an athlete Men's Fitness voted one of the fittest in the world, Rich Roll has been completely plant-based since ’06.
He puts his diet at the heart of his performance, a performance all the more impressive as he’s now easing into his 50s. "I'm able to repair my body and recover well from workouts and am able to bounce back fresh day in and day out" he says.
Rich Roll is still smashing it well into his 50s. His secret weapon? A plant-based diet
But they're all skinny runners - you still need meat & dairy for power, right?
Erm, maybe not.
World champion heavyweight boxer David 'The Hayemaker' Haye fueled the comeback that landed him back in the top-ten ranked heavyweight fighters in the world on a totally plant-based diet, a diet that saw him step into the ring at his heaviest ever fighting weight.
As he puts it, "I did some research to make sure I could still obtain enough protein to fight [on a plant based diet] and, once satisfied I could, I stopped [eating animal products]. I'll never go back"
The Hayemaker delivers a plant-based heavyweight knockout
NFL American Football player David Carter transformed performance, strength and recovery since going wholly plant-based. At 21-stone of solid muscle you're welcome to argue with him. Just bear in mind he says being plant-based has also made him faster so don't expect to get away if he comes after you…
Then there's Patrick Baboumian. Germany's Strongest Man, European powerlifting champion and multiple world record holder for, among other things, beer keg lifting.
It's never been easier to up your veggie intake. Just one daily spoonful of Ultimate Daily Greens delivers a nutrient-dense hit of powerful alkalysers and antioxidants, the foundation of health and performance
He looks like a pumped-up Wolverine but - literally - wouldn't hurt a fly - his love of animals means he's been plant-based for years.
Add 23-time tennis grand slam winner Venus Williams, four time Formula One World Champ Lewis Hamilton, premiership footballer Jermain Defoe, legendary Italian rugby international Mirco Bergomasco - the list goes on.
Even Arnold Schwarzeneggar is doing it
When Arnold Schwarzenegger, bodybuilder, Terminator, erstwhile governor of California and the man who coined the insult 'you hit like a vegetarian' says publicly we should all be eating less meat and adds, "you can get your protein source from many different ways" other than animal products, there's a big shift in the air.
"I'll be back" (For a really big salad)
Plant based diet for athletes: how to get started
Good news - this is the easy bit:
- Eat less meat, fish and dairy
- Load up on plants.
Nuts, seeds, fruit, beans and veg are all in, while processed foods, meat fish and dairy are all out.
It's easy too, check the plant-based starter menu below and you'll see it's hardly 'Michelin-star-chef' territory, and nor is it trust-fund silly expensive. If anything, eating plant-based is usually cheaper.
Try these 10 simple plant based recipes
Plant-based starter menu
- Breakfast: porridge, almond milk, sliced bananas, black coffee. 100% plant-based
- Lunch: massive salad, extra chick peas, nuts, avocado and lemon water on the side. 100% plant-based
- Dinner: beans on toast, glass of red to celebrate your knockout plant-based day. 100% plant-based
If you dig this, raise up to a day a week and if you like the results, try a few days in a row.
We're not about to start writing meal plans guidelines and recipes - there are a ton of great sites out there doing that already (try No Meat Athlete for starters), all we're doing is offering up food for thought. At 33Fuel we're simply all in for anything that makes athletes faster and healthier.
33Fuel - accidentally plant-based since 2012
We’ve been crafting award-winning natural sports nutrition since 2012. Everything we do is lead by our Fuelosophy® for Performance, Health and a Fitter Future and all 33Fuel products live this, fueling your performance today, your health tomorrow and helping build a fitter future for you and the planet.
Always plant-based, delicious and with a focus on sustainability, experience this Fuelosophy for yourself here. Being plant-based wasn't something we did consciously (the term 'plant-based' didn't even exist when we started out). We did it by default because the evidence was so compelling that the ingredients and formulas we use are the best possible for performance and recovery.
A lot of love went into the development of our plant-based Amore energy bar. Enjoy 43g carbs and 379 calories in this XXL duo bar
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