Episode 231
Transcript generated using AI transcription services; errors may occur. Contact Mikki for clarification
00:11
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And today I'm gonna chat about the vegetarian athlete because there are certain nutrition considerations which I feel could warrant a little bit more attention beyond just the micronutrients and macronutrients we know to be of concern. So I'm gonna run through them as I see it and then also have a chat about blood biomarkers.
00:40
just at the end. And I will preface this by saying that whilst of course I have an omnivore diet, I work with a number of athletes and individuals looking to optimize their vegetarian approach. These are conversations that I'll have in my clinic at least every couple of weeks because there is a way to do it properly so you're not going to be at risk of losing muscle mass or impacting negatively on recovery.
01:10
This is particularly for people with high energy requirements and a lot of teenagers would fall into this and particularly teenage girls who may turn vegetarian because of a moral stance or they have it in their head that this is going to help with their body composition or whatever it is. Yet often those health conscious ones take it just a little bit further than what ideally it would be taken.
01:38
And calories are of a concern in this space because teenagers particularly have high energy requirements just through the fact that they're growing plus their sport and of course to fill their brain for school etc. And there are just periods of the day where they just can't eat all day long, right? Not that you would necessarily want them to. And vegetarian based diets can be challenging in that getting quality calories.
02:07
can be limited because there is an increased fiber intake. From people who follow a vegetarian diet, which has a lot of beans and vegetables added, getting the calorie requirements in quite a high volume diet can be tricky. So, you know, if I look at the literature around this area, on balance for adults at least,
02:30
The difference in energy intake between omnivores and vegetarians might be only about 5%, which isn't actually a major in the big scheme of things. Someone may easily maintain their weight in that space, but it's just those higher energy requirements from a vegetarian athlete. And another person I would, or avatar if you like, that I would put into this camp would be potentially a male who is doing endurance-based sport, who has gone vegetarian and isn't
03:00
calories or supplementing. So they're just sort of loading up a lot on beans and rice and potatoes and and hey maybe cheese and stuff like that but find that they're actually losing weight but importantly they're unable to recover as well. So I think calories is or can be a major consideration but then of course to turn that on its head sometimes people can absolutely overdo calories particularly if they're chasing something like protein and protein which
03:29
It's more difficult to get in a vegetarian diet. And you do have to consume almost several hundred calories more to get the same amount of protein that you would otherwise find in a steak. If this is the case for some people, then their vegetarian approach by dropping out meat can in fact increase the calories and make it more challenging for them to maintain a body composition that aids performance and also aids health.
03:56
So I think that's also really worth considering too. And of course from the macronutrients, protein is the major one of consideration. And protein quality is a term which we refer to here. So it encompasses a protein's sources of amino acid composition, its digestibility, and subsequent bioavailability of specific amino acids. And also of course that metabolic fate of those amino acids.
04:23
Such factors are affected by the specific protein
Published on 1 year, 10 months ago
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