Amino acid deficiencies are actually a huge concern as a vegan weightlifter, aren't they?

@deacongirl I'll have to crunch the numbers to see how much is actually in a serving, I'm away from my computer rn. I don't know how I am "looking for problems". I'm just trying to learn lol.
 
@tripp1523 I think you need to try to seriously gain for like an entire year. If you're off track after that you can mix this stuff up and check into things. Looking at spreadsheets and getting stressed that you're not going to gain x lbs of muscle in one year or whatever is just going to stress you out.

And bad news, millions of non vegan body builders set insane goals and never reach them. Focus on sustainability, mental health, and balance. The sleep you lose trying to reinvent the wheel will hurt your gains more than any "knowledge" you "discover" will help.

It's good to not just take stuff on faith, but you also can't google your way to a PhD in nutritional science and sports medicine.

 
@tripp1523 So I don't disagree with you but my rebuttal is thus: even if veganism makes you a weakling it's still better than killing animals AND there's lots of jacked vegans so clearly it works out somehow.
 
@ola08 Not in the same ratios as animal products, which is really important for bodybuilding though. A quick look at online hemp protein seems to be just as deficient for maximizing muscle growth
 
@tripp1523 imo the importance of Essential Amino Acids is overstated.

Remember that survivorship bias story of the planes that come back with bullet holes in? People originally said "we should armor the planes where the most bullet holes are". It makes sense. But then some genius guy said - "No, we should armor the planes where the bullet holes aren't. The places the holes are are where the plane can get hit and still survive"

I think the same thing applies to "essential" amino acids. The reason we no longer have the synthetic pathways for these amino acids is that we could afford to lose them, and still survive as a species.

Therefore I believe the key amino acids to focus on are not the "essential" ones, but the opposite.

Which is the most abundant amino acid in the body? Glutamine.

It's levels in the body are 10-100x that of the other amino acids. To me this says that Glutamine is critical (we even have taste buds specifically for glutamate, it's precursor), and if we're going to focus on any one amino acid it should be that one.
 
@tripp1523
For example, whey threonine per 28 gram scoop is 1708, whereas 28 grams of soy is only 805 grams. Over a 100% difference. A 63 gram, roughly equal combo of pea and rice protein gives only 1887 threonine, compared to 3843 threonine in 63 grams of the whey. Over 100% gap. And this is just threonine.
Click to expand...

How much threonine do you actually need? A recommendation I found on the first result I got from google says 8mg/kg of body weight. If you weigh 100kg (220lb), your 28g of soy hits the nail on the head, so you're bang on, even if nothing else you eat for the rest of the day has any threonine in it. If you're 200kg (440lb), your 63g pea/rice split gets you over the 1600mg that you'd need.

Same question for the other essential amino acids - not doubting that there is a gap, but my question is does the gap actually matter? I genuinely don't know if it does or not by the way, I would be very interested in the answer (and may look into it myself).
 
@tripp1523 Why don't you just use multi component protein powder? It should cover a complete amino acid profile, something you probably won't achieve with just pea and rice (even though I'm not sure on that).
 
@tripp1523 Not a nutritionist but, I've been vegan for about 22yrs and I do lift. I use Body Health Perfect Amino. The meat eaters don't seem to be lifting anymore than me so, I think it's working out ok.
 
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