How to Burn Fat & Build Muscle At The Same Time (Vegan Body Recomposition)

What is Body Recomposition?

The term “body composition” refers to the proportions of lean body mass and fat in the body. Lean body mass simply refers to everything in the body that isn’t body fat, including muscle mass, organs, and bone.

Generally speaking, a healthy body composition tends to possess higher percentages of lean body mass, and lower percentages of body fat. The better your body composition, the leaner and more ripped you are.

The trick to building a strong, fit, athletic body is pretty simple: for most people, that means burning fat and building lean muscle. Some people say that it’s possible to do both at the same time while others say it’s not. So what’s the truth?

The Truth About Body Recomposition

Let me begin by saying this... Most people cannot EFFICIENTLY shred fat and build lean muscle at the same time. But it is possible to do both at the same time if you know exactly what to eat and how to train based on your body composition and your goals.

And here's proof that it is possible…

Agata

For example, a client of ours got a DEXA scan on March 17th of this year right before beginning our program, and then got another DEXA scan on June 19th right after finishing our 90-day Vegan Superhero Academy coaching program.

And her results were pretty phenomenal! She shredded 24.7 pounds (11.2 kg) of body fat in 90 days. Pretty awesome, right? That is amazing in and of itself, but here’s the kicker…

Her body weight only dropped by a total of 13.5 pounds (6.1 kg). So how could her body weight only drop by 13.5 pounds if she lost 24.7 pounds? Because in that same 90-day period she gained 11.2 pounds (5.1 kg) of lean muscle mass.

Todd

Another client of ours, Todd, recently accomplished similar results. He got down to 9% body fat and got ripped abs at 48 years old. According to his body composition tests, he shredded 23.5 pounds of body fat while gaining about 6 pounds of lean mass in 79 days.

To get results like these, it really comes down to nailing your nutrition. When you are trying to accomplish a body recomposition goal, then nutrition is the most important part. Of course, you also have to progressively overload your muscles and give your body a reason to build muscle mass through resistance training. With the right nutrition plan and training program, you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time.

The Math of Body Recomposition

The First Law of Thermodynamics

If you are in a caloric surplus, you will be storing net energy. If you are in a caloric deficit, you will be losing net energy. Because fat and muscle tissue are separate systems, it is possible to lose fat due to the caloric deficit while building muscle due to the progressive training and sufficient protein.

But when analyzing body recomposition, the most important factor is the amount of calories you are consuming.

So how many calories do you need to burn to lose fat? Well, one pound of body fat weighs 454 grams. Approximately 85 to 90% of this weight can be attributed to stored triglycerides that can be burned for energy (the rest is water and cellular machinery) (1).

This means that you have roughly 400 grams of stored triglycerides in each pound of body fat that you must burn to lose one pound of fat. Since each gram of pure fat contains nine calories, this means that it takes about 3,600 calories of cumulative burned energy to lose one pound of fat.

And how many calories do you need to consume to gain lean muscle mass? An estimated 2,500 to 2,800 excess calories is needed to gain one pound of lean mass, though there is not any hard scientific evidence to determine an exact number. This has the effect of actually increasing your perceived deficit without having a significant impact on one's hunger levels.

So to lose body fat you need to be in a caloric deficit of 3,600 calories over time to lose 1 pound of body fat. And if you are also building lean muscle mass at the same time because your fitness and nutrition are really dialed in, that will increase your perceived deficit because your body needs to take excess calories from the food you’re eating to synthesize more muscle tissue. So you can potentially increase your rate of fat loss while also building muscle tissue.

The 3 main things that you MUST do to shred fat and build lean muscle

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #1

To lose fat and build muscle, you must focus on fat loss.

In other words, you must maintain a caloric deficit to shred fat as it is not possible to shred fat while maintaining a caloric surplus. However, your body CAN build muscle in a caloric deficit (2).

At the same time, it is possible to be too aggressive with your caloric deficit, which will slow your metabolism and result in lost muscle mass (3). There’s a sweet spot that you need to maintain between burning fat and building muscle.

I’d recommend about a 15-20% caloric deficit, which will help you shred fat rapidly, but also put you in a position to build lean muscle at the same time. You just need to be sure that you are following the exact right diet and training routine.

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #2

You must maintain a high protein diet.

Now there is nothing wrong with consuming a low protein diet, but if you want to shred body fat while gaining lean muscle, then you need to follow a high-protein diet. In a 2016 study, researchers at McMaster University split up 40 subjects into two groups (4):

Group 1 (the low-protein diet group): Researchers randomly assigned 20 subjects to a low-protein control diet (1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day).

Group 2 (the high-protein diet group): Researchers randomly assigned the other 20 subjects to consume twice as much protein as the low-protein group (2.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day).

All subjects from both groups performed resistance exercise training combined with high-intensity interval training for 6 days per week. The researchers also provided all meals and beverages for the participants to consume throughout the intervention period (with the exception of water). They all followed a caloric deficit of 40%. In other words, they ate 40% less calories than they burned every day.

Over the course of the 4-week trial, the low-protein group shredded 3.7 kilograms (8.2 pounds) of fat while the high-protein group shredded 4.8 kilograms (10.6 pounds) of fat. So the high-protein group had a slight edge in fat loss, but there wasn’t a huge difference. This isn’t surprising as a high-protein diet has been shown to increase fat loss, preserve lean body mass, and maintain your metabolism.

But here’s the true power of a high-protein diet when it comes to body recomposition. The high-protein group gained 1.2 kilograms of muscle (2.6 pounds) while the low-protein group only managed to maintain their lean muscle mass. Again, there is nothing wrong with consuming a low protein diet, but if you want to shred body fat while gaining lean muscle, then you need to follow a high-protein diet.

So how much protein should you consume?

A 2014 meta-analysis conducted by researchers at AUT University in New Zealand provided a systematic review of 6 studies with energy-restricted, resistance-trained adult subjects (5). They found that people maintaining a caloric deficit while trying to build lean muscle must consume between 1.05 to 1.41 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass (2.3 to 3.1 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass).

Your intake should be scaled upwards with the severity of your caloric deficit and leanness. In other words, the larger your caloric deficit and the leaner you are, the higher your protein intake should be. Lean body mass is everything in your body that isn’t fat (i.e., organs, skeletal muscle, water, and bone).

Vegan Body Recomposition Secret #3

When it comes to building muscle, there is one scientific principle that matters more than any other. It’s called progressive overload.

Your muscles must be given a reason to grow bigger and stronger. They don’t just grow because you want them to. They grow because they NEED to grow to handle the stresses that you are placing them under. In other words, you have to lift heavier and heavier weights over time. That’s how you progressively overload your muscles, which is the fastest way to build muscle.

The way I like to do this is with heavy weights at the gym. And I like to focus on exercises like the squat, deadlift, and bench press. But you can do this at home with resistance bands or sandbags too.

In fact, Todd and Agata accomplished most of their results while working out at home with minimal equipment. I should also add that you want to keep cardio to a minimum because too much cardio affects your body's ability to grow muscle.

factors that will determine whether you are able to build muscle in a caloric deficit

There are 4 main factors that will determine how efficiently your body is able to build muscle mass in a caloric deficit, while also shredding body fat.

1. Your level of proper training experience. Meaning, the less proper training experience you have, the more likely you are to be able to build lean muscle. For people with more than 2 years of proper training experience, I recommend that you focus on cycling between periods of cutting and bulking because trying to build muscle in a deficit may result in you just spinning your wheels and making little progress.

2. The higher your starting body fat percentage, the more likely you will be able to build muscle in a caloric deficit because you’ll have lots of body fat to lose.

3. You maintain a moderate caloric deficit, about 15-20%. So no crash dieting where you’re in a caloric deficit of 50+% as this will make it very difficult to build muscle while you are shredding body fat.

4. You maintain a high protein diet, somewhere between 0.7-1.0 g/lb of bodyweight depending on your body fat percentage.

How do you know if you are burning fat and building muscle at the same time?

The only way to know for sure is to track your weight and body fat percentage. In other words, you need to know exactly how your lean mass and fat mass are changing over time. The only way to know this for certain is to take regular body composition tests. The best one of these is DEXA.

However, as we’ve mentioned before, you can also get an idea of how things are going with more accessible measurement methods: taking progress pictures, weighing yourself, and taking body measurements regularly.

If you are already relatively lean, increases in your arms and calves and decreases in your waist and hip measurements are a good indication that you are building muscle. If the scale is dropping at the same time and your midsection (particularly your abs) is becoming more defined, then it’s likely that you are building muscle at the same time. But that’s not a very scientific approach, so there’s a lot of gray area there.

I would highly recommend getting regular body composition tests if you are really serious about body recomposition.

Summary

• You CAN shred fat and build muscle at the same time

• Your body recomposition results largely depend on your level of training experience. How much of your natural potential have you already accomplished?

• You MUST maintain a caloric deficit to achieve body recomposition. It doesn’t have to be an aggressive deficit and should be scaled upwards with your body fat percentage. The more body fat you have, the higher your deficit can be.

• You MUST maintain a high protein intake to support muscle growth.

• You MUST focus on progressive overload with your training. Focus on lifting heavier weights over time - really push yourself!

THAT'S A WRAP! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS ARTICLE!

Do you have any questions about body recomposition? Please post them in the comment section below and I'll answer them! 👇

Your vegan fitness trainer,

Leif

When to Eat to Burn Fat Faster

The Fundamental Law of Fat Loss

You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss. This is called a caloric deficit. Over the course of a period of time (usually measured on a daily basis), a caloric deficit is achieved when the sum of calories expended is greater than the sum of calories consumed.

So you definitely need to be eating fewer calories than you burn every day to lose fat, but when should you eat calories for best fat loss results? Should you graze throughout the day, or should you stick with 3 main meals? Should you eat breakfast or skip it? Does eating late at night cause you to pack on the pounds?

All of these questions relate to meal timing. Meal timing refers to how your meals, calories, and macros are distributed throughout the day.

Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! In just 2 minutes, we’ll break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

Nibbling vs. Gorging

So, the question that we need to answer to determine the optimal meal timing for fat loss is: do you burn more calories over a 24-hour period by eating a bunch of small meals or a few large meals?

Well as early as the 1960s, scientists began observing an inverse relationship between eating frequency, defined as the number of eating occasions per day, and weight gain. In other words, people who ate smaller, more frequent meals tended to be thinner.

Since then, the majority of cross-sectional studies on eating frequency and body weight have shown similar results. All of this research has fueled the idea that snacking or grazing throughout the day boosts your metabolism and causes you to burn fat more easily and stay lean. However, if you peel back the research a bit more, the truth is not so simple.

A key problem of these studies is that most people are notorious for underreporting their energy intake. In 1997, scientists at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research analyzed all pertinent studies available at the time comparing the thermic effect of food in a wide variety of eating patterns, ranging from 1 to 17 meals per day (1). The thermic effect of food is the energy required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients.

The scientists discovered that the greater the magnitude of underreporting of energy intake, the less frequently individuals also report eating. In other words, these scientists discovered that the apparent inverse relationship between eating frequency and weight gain can be attributed to the underreporting of energy intake, which is correlated with meal frequency. The people who ate fewer meals consumed far more food on average than they reported.

We see this again and again in scientific literature. Self-reporting is a major pitfall of poorly designed meal timing studies. People often underestimate their bad habits like eating too much or exercising too little. For example, a 2004 study from Tufts University analyzed data from a nationwide survey conducted by the USDA that provided the food intakes of 20,607 US adults on two nonconsecutive days (2).

The Tufts University researchers found evidence that eating frequency, eating portions, and calorie density were all underreported across the board in this survey. Again, we can’t rely on self-reporting studies.

Thankfully, there are many studies conducted over the past 2 decades in which food was provided either in a laboratory environment or pre-packaged by researchers for consumption at home (3). In other words, the subjects in these studies were given the EXACT portions of food to eat for each meal and therefore do not rely on flawed self-reporting.

If you lock people in a room, feed them fewer calories than they burn, and control all other factors, everyone loses weight as predicted. So what did these tightly controlled meal timing studies find?

Well according to a 2018 study published by researchers at the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University, the more times per day people eat, the more they tend to increase their daily caloric intake (4). So eating many small meals throughout the day does NOT help you burn body fat. It mostly comes down to how many calories you are consuming regardless of how many meals you disperse those calories across.

However, the latest meal timing research clearly shows that WHEN you eat your meals can have a measurable effect on your rate of fat loss. And it all comes down to your body’s circadian rhythm.

Circadian Rhythms (AKA chronobiology)

A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings. It’s your body’s natural clock. And it has a huge impact on how your body functions.

For example, approximately 82% of all protein-coding genes in the human body exhibit circadian rhythms in expression according to a 2018 study from the University of California (5).

So What Runs Your Circadian Rhythm?

The human circadian system consists of a central clock and peripheral clocks.

The central clock is located in your brain (specifically, the hypothalamus) and synchronizes itself to light exposure (namely, sunlight), which allows your body to synchronize behavioral and metabolic rhythms to the light and dark cycles associated with normal 24-hour periods (6, 7). Peripheral clocks are influenced by physiological and behavioral factors such as sleeping and eating.

So basically, a normal circadian rhythm is about 24 hours because a day is about 24 hours and our bodies are largely programmed by sunlight. There is a rapidly growing interest in circadian biology, which has birthed a relatively new scientific field known as “chronobiology.”

Why Does Your Circadian Rhythm Matter for Fat Loss?

Our central biological clock plays a role in physiological processes in the body that impact energy regulation and metabolism. The two processes that your circadian rhythm impacts, which have an effect on fat loss, include:

1. Your body’s resting metabolic rate (which is the total number of calories burned when your body is completely at rest - this is generally what people are referring to when they are talking about “metabolism,” though this is a bit over-simplistic).

2. The thermic effect of food (which is the total number of calories required for digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested nutrients).

Both your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food vary throughout the day in a predictable manner because they correspond with your body’s circadian rhythm. In other words, we see a circadian variation in a person’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure due to predictable variations in their resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food.

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Collectively, your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food contribute approximately 80% to your total daily energy expenditure, so any changes to these two components of daily energy expenditure have the potential to significantly impact energy balance. In other words, your resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food really matter when it comes to fat loss.

And here’s the interesting part when it comes to meal timing: energy expenditure both at rest (which is your resting metabolic rate) and after eating (which is increased by the thermic effect of food) is typically higher earlier during the day. This phenomenon is what ultimately influences your rate of fat loss.

(Side note: Having a sleep routine is important for maintaining your body’s peripheral clocks. You don’t want to fight your body’s natural circadian rhythm by having a chaotic or unnatural sleep schedule. This is the main reason why having a poor sleep schedule hinders your ability to burn body fat.)

So let’s now dive into a bit more of the science behind how your metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food vary along with your body’s circadian rhythm.

The Circadian Rhythm of Resting Metabolic Rate

First, let’s discuss how your body’s circadian rhythm affects your metabolic rate. Your resting metabolic rate follows a predictable circadian rhythm as demonstrated by a 1994 study conducted by researchers in Switzerland who found that the subjects’ metabolic rates peaked in the morning between 9 AM and 12 PM and dipped to their lowest point during normal nighttime hours between 12 AM and 6 AM (8).

These findings are supported by a 2000 study published in the Journal of Physiology and a 2018 study conducted by researchers at Harvard University that both demonstrated a similar circadian rhythm in metabolic rate (9, 10). All of these studies reported minimum average core body temperature values at approximately 5 AM.

And body temperature has been found to be a practical and effective proxy measure of circadian rhythms and metabolic rate according to a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2014 (11). In other words, your metabolism is running at full speed in the morning and tends to slow down through the afternoon and evening, dropping to its lowest levels between 12 AM and 6 AM.

The Circadian Rhythm of the Thermic Effect of Food

Now, let’s discuss how your body’s circadian rhythm affects the thermic effect of food. A team of researchers at Harvard Medical School studied the effect of meal timing on the magnitude of the thermic effect of food and found that the thermic effect of food was 44% lower at 8 PM compared to 8 AM, following an identical meal (12).

Assuming that your total daily energy expenditure is 2,000 calories (which is the case for the average adult) and the thermic effect of food is about 10% of total energy expenditure, which is largely affected by the macronutrient composition of your diet, that would mean that the thermic effect of food totals 200 calories per day (13).

As a brief though relevant aside, protein causes the highest thermic effect of food (with 20-30% of the energy content of ingested protein being burned) compared to carbohydrate (5-10%) and dietary fat (0-3%) (14).

If we take the 44% difference in the thermic effect of food found in the Harvard study and apply it to the approximate thermic effect of food for the average adult of 200 calories, we’d get a difference of 88 calories. These findings were supported by authors of a similar study published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2015 who reported a 90-calorie difference in the thermic effect of food between daytime and nighttime eating (15).

There is also evidence to suggest that some of the caloric burn benefit to eating more in the morning is because our bodies bulk up our muscles with glycogen, the primary fuel our muscles burn for energy (16).

So What Does The Circadian Rhythmicity of Your Resting Metabolic Rate and the Thermic Effect of Food Have to Do With Fat Loss?

Well again, fat loss mostly comes down to energy balance. Energy in versus energy out. You absolutely must be consuming fewer calories than you burn every day to achieve meaningful fat loss results. But the human body is incredibly complex and there are many confounding factors that can affect energy digestion or energy expenditure.

The research that we’ve covered definitively proves that a calorie is not always just a calorie. It depends on WHEN the calorie is eaten. So why do we burn more calories eating a morning meal than eating an evening meal? Because our metabolic rates and the thermic effect of food follow our body’s natural circadian rhythm.

Energy expenditure both at rest (resting metabolic rate) and after eating (thermic effect of food) is typically more efficient earlier in the day. And the scientific literature that we’ve discussed suggests that prioritizing energy intake earlier during the day may help with body weight maintenance and fat loss (17).

What are the practical implications?

Your largest meal of the day should be breakfast (ideally) or lunch, with little eaten in the evening. It’s okay to eat dinner, but try not to eat past 6 PM. If you don’t follow the typical 3-meal eating plan, then just aim to consume most of your calories earlier in the day.

Find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

The 5 Laws of Vegan Fitness

People love to complicate fitness.

• “How many minutes after my workout do I have to consume protein or risk losing all of my gains?”

• “Will I burn fat faster if I consume 57% of my calories from carbohydrates or 58%?”

• “How many grams of BCAAs should I consume during my workout for optimal gains?”

• “Is it healthier to have a 10-hour feeding window or a 12-hour feeding window?”

I could go on and on, but here’s my point...

Most people seem to want to figure out step 99 of their fitness journey before they’ve taken the first step. Fitness really isn’t that complicated. If you understand and implement these 5 Laws, you WILL accomplish your goals.

Law 1: Calories MATTER

Your body must adhere to the Law of the Conservation of Energy, which states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant. Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed.

All the caloric energy that you consume must be either converted into energy that your organs and muscles can use to function or stored for future use. Eat fewer calories than you burn to lose weight and eat slightly more calories than you burn to build muscle.

Both fat gain and fat loss are controlled by energy balance, which equates to the difference between your caloric intake from food and your caloric expenditure. This is the fundamental principle of fat loss. No “revolutionary” diet, dietary supplement, training approach, or anything else will ever replace the need to focus on energy balance for fat-shredding purposes.

In fact, your energy balance, which is essentially calories consumed versus calories burned, is vital to the achievement of all fitness goals - whether you are working to shred fat, build muscle, or maintain your physique. Anyone who tells you that calories do not matter when it comes to fat loss or muscle growth has absolutely no idea what they are talking about and you shouldn’t listen to anything they say.

The First Law of Body Composition: A Caloric Deficit is Necessary for Shredding Fat

You must burn more energy than you consume to achieve meaningful fat loss (1). This is called a caloric deficit. Over the course of a period of time (usually measured on a daily basis), a caloric deficit is achieved when the sum of calories burned is greater than the sum of calories consumed.

However, it is crucial that you avoid starvation dieting. It is possible to be too aggressive with your caloric deficit, which will slow your metabolism and result in lost muscle mass (2). While reducing fat, our aim is to avoid reducing muscle mass as much as possible.

Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! In just 2 minutes, we’ll break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

The Second Law of Body Composition: A Caloric Surplus is Necessary for Muscle Growth

Contrary to shredding fat, you must consume more energy than you burn to achieve meaningful muscle growth. This is called a caloric surplus. Over the course of a day, a caloric surplus is achieved when the sum of calories consumed is greater than the sum of calories burned.

If you don’t consume enough calories, you will struggle to gain muscle. In simple terms, this is because your body is physiologically wired to prioritize survival over all else. It will allocate energy resources towards maintaining basic bodily function first.

Since building larger muscles ranks very low on your body’s priority list, you must ensure that it has enough resources remaining once all other physiological requirements are met. This is achieved by maintaining a consistent caloric surplus.

In more technical terms, a caloric surplus increases your body’s ability to synthesize skeletal muscle proteins, increases anabolic hormone levels while decreasing catabolic hormone levels, and improves workout performance which in turn fuels strength progression and muscle growth (3).

The best way to maintain a lean physique is actually to increase your muscle mass. Muscle is very energy-hungry, so the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body will burn. In other words, it gets easier and easier to stay lean and fit!

Law 2: Protein MATTERS

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight (0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight) for healthy adults (4). This amount is defined as “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.”

This means that as a bare minimum, a 180-pound person only needs 65 grams of plant protein per day. But recent research has shown that even that number might be high. But whatever the bare minimum target actually is, you will surpass it as long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet.

How Much Protein Should You Eat to Shred Fat?

To ensure that your body burns fat and not your lean muscle mass as you’re following a caloric deficit, you must consume a high-protein intake. A large body of evidence suggests that a low-fat, high-protein diet increases fat loss, preserves lean body mass, and maintains your metabolism (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). Maintaining your metabolism is especially important to long-term fat-shredding success because your metabolism tends to decrease as you shred fat.

Your exact protein target depends on the intensity, duration, and frequency of your training program. Here are my general guidelines for target protein intake:

How Much Protein Should You Eat to Build Lean Muscle?

Many decades of research and anecdotal evidence prove active people, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

Studies from the University of Western Ontario, the Exercise Metabolism Research Group, and McMaster University all agree that the ideal range to aim for is 0.7 to 0.9 grams of high-quality protein per pound of body weight (1.5 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight) to maximize muscle growth (13, 14, 15).

Here are my recommendations for protein targets:

These numbers might sound high but trust me. When you are working your butt off in the gym to gain muscle, you want to be sure you are getting all of the protein you need so you aren’t leaving any gains on the table.

Law 3: Micronutrients MATTER

Macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat) have the most direct impact on your body composition. But it doesn’t really matter if you are lean and ripped if you’re unhealthy on the inside. That’s why micronutrients matter just as much as macronutrients.

Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. Vitamins are necessary for energy production, immune function, blood clotting, and other functions. Minerals play an important role in growth, bone health, fluid balance, and several other processes.

It’s not all about macronutrients (protein, carbs, and dietary fat). You must eat a wide variety of wholesome plant foods. Supplements do have their place, but you shouldn’t be relying on them to get your micronutrients.

I have been working with a vegan nutritionist and she prescribed a vegan multivitamin to help me boost up a few vitamins that were a bit low in recent blood work. But she said that I just need to add a bit more variety into my diet with the fruits and vegetables that I’m consuming. She said that the multivitamin would probably only boost my levels by around 4% after 6 months of consistent use.

Supplements can help, but they are NOT the answer. The simplest advice that I can give you is to eat the rainbow. Also, check out Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen:

Learn more about Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen.

However, given our modern lifestyles, some important micronutrient shortfalls need to be corrected. For example, vitamin B12 is not made by plants; it’s made by microbes in the soil.

The three supplements that most vegans would benefit from taking are:

1. Vitamin B12

2. The omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA (from algae)

3. Vitamin D

But the only way to know for sure what your body needs is to get blood work done.

Law 4: Focus on resistance training

When it comes to your exercise program, you need to focus on resistance training. It doesn’t matter if you’re using resistance bands, barbells, dumbbells, sandbags, bodyweight… you just need to focus on progressively overloading your muscles with resistance training over time.

Most people understand why resistance training is necessary for muscle growth, but it’s also necessary for preserving lean muscle if your goal is fat loss. And here’s a study that really proves this point...

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University designed a study to examine the physiological effects of a weight-loss dietary regimen with or without exercise (16). The researchers randomly placed 35 healthy men into one of four groups: 1) a control group, 2) a diet-only group, 3) a diet plus cardio group, and 4) a diet plus cardio and heavy resistance training group.

Their findings were remarkably close to findings published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The Pennsylvania State University researchers observed an average lean body mass loss of 31% in the diet-only group and an average lean body mass loss of 22% in the diet plus cardio group. While adding cardio on top of a diet may reduce lean body mass loss, 22% is simply unacceptable.

But have no fear, the Pennsylvania State University researchers found that the inclusion of heavy resistance training three times per week resulted in nearly complete preservation of lean body mass. Through the 12-week study, the diet plus cardio and heavy resistance training group shredded 9.57 kilograms (21.1 pounds) of body fat while only losing 0.33 kilograms (0.73 pounds) of lean body mass.

In other words, 97% of the total weight loss for the resistance training group was pure body fat, while a mere 3% can be attributed to losses in lean body mass. And despite maintaining a caloric deficit, the resistance training group also significantly increased their maximum strength in the bench press (+19.6%) and squat (+32.6%) in just 12 weeks.

Numerous other studies have proven that resistance training helps preserve - or in some cases increase - lean body mass during periods of moderate caloric restriction (17, 18, 19, 20, 21). And this holds true regardless of age or gender (22).

So what about cardio?

Numerous studies have proven that cardio alone does not have any fat shredding benefits (23, 24). This is because dieters who engage in regular cardio tend to eat back the calories they burn. Doing cardio can certainly help you burn fat when combined with a proper diet, but if you eat too much, your body will simply replace the burned fat with the excess calories you’re feeding it.

This is exactly what happened in a study conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas (25). Women who engaged in regular cardio (four sessions per week that burned an average of 440 calories per session) saw no changes in body weight or body fat percentage after 16 months!

Before we completely shun cardio, let’s consider what the word “cardio” actually means. Cardio is short for cardiovascular training, and it functions as exercise for your heart and lungs. So obviously, improving cardiovascular fitness will lead to substantial health benefits.

I recommend that you do at least a little cardio (i.e. cardiovascular) to maintain optimal health, but the focus should be on resistance training. The only exception to this rule is if your main fitness goal is cardiovascular endurance because you are training for a marathon, triathlon, or a similar endurance event.

Law 5: Allow your body adequate rest and recovery

When you lift weights, you cause tiny tears in the muscle fibers, known as microtears, which the body then repairs. One of the things you want to achieve with your workouts is an optimal amount of micro-tearing in the muscles. Not so much that your body falls behind with repair, as this stunts muscle growth, but not so little that you miss out on potential gains.

While many people under train and thus under damage their muscles, many people also over train and over damage them. If you over damage your muscles by working out too much, then your body will fall behind in repairing your muscles and you will struggle to build muscle and strength.

So, how much should you lift?

I lift five, sometimes six, days a week. Each workout takes around 75 minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less. But the amount of time you spend in the gym isn’t a great metric to follow because it doesn’t really correlate with results.

For example, you could spend 60 minutes in the gym on the flat bench press hitting 5 lightweight sets with 10-minute rest periods between sets spent scrolling Instagram. Obviously, your results would suck.

Instead, VOLUME is the most important metric. Volume, or the number of total reps performed, is the main determining factor in your muscle and strength gains. If your volume per week is too low, you will struggle to gain muscle and strength. If your volume per week is too high, you’ll face problems related to overtraining (more on this later). Get the volume right and you’ll make gains faster than ever.

According to the latest research, the optimal volume appears to be in the range of 60 to 180 reps per major muscle group per week. The heavier the training, the fewer reps you should do every week.

Sleep is KING

Getting enough sleep is crucial for muscle recovery/growth and fat loss, not to mention general health. Research has shown that sleep deprivation can cause muscle loss, and it has also been linked to muscular atrophy (26, 27).

One study conducted by the University of Chicago found that when 10 healthy men reduced sleep for a week from about 9 hours per night to 5, their testosterone levels dropped by up to 14% during the day (28).

It’s also known that insufficient sleep decreases growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-1) levels, which play important roles in maintaining muscle mass (29). When you sleep, your body releases high amounts of anabolic hormones such as testosterone and IGF-1. When you have short or interrupted periods of sleep, the release of these crucial hormones takes much longer, which disrupts the body’s ability to repair and build muscle during sleep.

Sleep also diminishes the level of catabolic hormones, namely, cortisol. Levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – remain elevated whenever you don’t get a good night of sleep. This is bad news for your gains. Sleep deprivation has quite a few other negative effects as well, including decreased fat loss, increased risk of chronic disease, reduced physical performance, and more (30, 31, 32).

That last point is important. When you don’t sleep enough, it negatively affects your performance in the gym. If you ever go to the gym feeling tired and sleepy, chances are you won’t be doing half as much work as you normally would.

If you are busting your butt to nail your nutrition and training, then getting less than 6 hours of sleep per night, you are fighting an uphill battle.

Use our Free Vegan Nutrition Calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating to meet your health and fitness goals! In just 2 minutes, we’ll break down exactly how much protein, carbs, and dietary fat you should include in your daily meal planning.

Summary:

Law 1: Calories MATTER

Both muscle gain and fat loss are controlled by energy balance, which equates to the difference between your caloric intake from food and your caloric expenditure.

Law 2: Protein MATTERS

A large body of evidence suggests that a low-fat, high-protein diet increases fat loss, preserves lean body mass, and maintains your metabolism.

Law 3: Micronutrients MATTER

Micronutrients matter just as much as macronutrients. You should aim to look and feel both great on the inside and the outside. Check out Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen.

Law 4: Focus on resistance training

It doesn’t matter if you’re using resistance bands, barbells, dumbbells, sandbags, bodyweight… you just need to focus on progressively overloading your muscles with resistance training over time.

Law 5: Allow your body adequate rest and recovery

If you don’t recover properly, which mainly means dialing in your weekly training volume for all of your major muscle groups and sleeping 8+ hours per night, then you’re going to get really frustrated with slow progress.