Plant-Based Diet Nutrient Breakdown – Prevent Deficiency and Thrive – BHP52

Anyone who has switched to a plant-based diet has heard the normal set of questions and remarks from friends, family, and co-workers: “How do you get enough protein?”  “What about fish?”  “What about eggs?” “What about dairy?”“How do you get enough calcium?”  “I don’t think I could live without my _____.” “I am just not sure if this type of eating is really for me.”  “I exercise a ton and feel like I would need more calories than I could get from just plants. “These are not bad questions and comments.  They were things that I thought about before I started on this journey myself over 5 years ago.  You can’t help but have these feelings and concerns when you have eaten completely different for your entire life.  It is totally normal to wonder if you will be able to perform at the same level with such a major shift in diet.Since I am often asked how I get enough nutrients to keep and put on muscle while training aggressively in both cardio and strength disciplines, I decided to finally go ahead and break it down for a day.  I am not suggesting this is the holy grail of nutrient breakdowns, in fact I even highlight a few opportunity micronutrients for myself. Instead, my goal is to show that plenty of nutrients can be acquired through plant-based nutrition, even for athletes. I am not a calorie counter or macronutrient obsessor, but I do have a few simple self-induced nutrition rules that I follow:  * I fast every night for at least 12 hours* I fast once per week for 24 hours * I only eat plant-based whole foods* I eat when I am hungry if it has been more than 2 hours since I ate last and I am not fasting* I make sure to eat fruit, vegetables, healthy fat, protein, and carbs with each meal* I supplement daily with B-12, a multi-vitamin, 5 grams of master pattern aminos, and 5 grams of creatine First let’s take a look at dietary reference intakes to establish a goal.  This  Dietary Reference Intake Calculator (DRI) is on the USDA website and was created by the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.  It appears to be a purely scientific tool to help healthcare professionals recommend general nutrition guidelines based on age, gender, height, weight, and activity level.  It doesn’t seem to be tainted with any obvious influence from big agriculture like other tools.  For example the Choose My Plate tool still has “dairy” as it’s own category along with fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein.   What is dairy doing there?  I think we all know.  Anyway the DRI seems free of this kind of influence so I decided to use it for reference with my plant-based diet to see how I was doing. So I put in my inputs into the DRI calculator: Gender – MaleAge – 40Height – 6 feet and 0 inchesWeight – 174 poundsActivity Level – Very active (highest level)

For my listeners and readers outside of the US, don’t worry it has the option to do the calculator in metric system units as well.