Vegetarian Fitness

Vegetarian Fitness

Being a vegetarian requires a full understanding of the
role nutrition plays in achieving your fitness goals. 
There is a direct relationship between nutrition and physical
performance in workouts or sports. Hard physical activity
requires an increase in nutritionally dense calories and
also due to sweating a higher fluid intake. Threfore you
need to carefully plan what you eat and drink.

Your calorie intake needs to be balanced with your energy
output and goals. If you want to lose you need to cut back
on calories, if you want to gain you will need to increase
calories. If your going in the wrong direction, adjust your
calorie intake and/or activity levels, so you are moving
towards your goals.

An important point for vegetarians to realize that they digest
their foods more quickly than non vegetarians. This means
you need to eat more often to compensate for the higher
energy needs.

When engaging in fitness training workouts you do need
to increase your protein intake, but remember excess
protein that is not burned for energy will be turned into
fat.

Best Vegetarian Protein Sources

It's easier than you might imagine to get plenty of protein
from vegetarian foods. If you include dairy products and
eggs in your regimen, look no further. These are good
sources of protein. Stick to low fat dairy products to avoid
excess saturated fats.

If you want to be certain that you are getting all eight
essential amino acids, you should eat learn to combine
foods to form complete proteins, such as:

Beans on toast
Cereal/muesli with milk
Corn and beans
Granola with yogurt
Hummus and pita bread
Nut butter with milk or whole grain bread
Pasta with beans
Pasta with cheese (e.g., lasagne, macaroni and cheese)
Rice and beans, peas, or lentils
Rice with milk (rice pudding)
Split pea soup with whole grain or seeded crackers or bread
Tortillas with refried beans
Veggie burgers on bread

Note that these combinations don't necessarily have to be
eaten at the same time; you can eat one several hours after
the other and still benefit from the complete protein.

Complete protein can be gotten from eating soy based foods
like tofu tempeh or sprouted legumes, and meat substitutes
made from soy protein.