What I Eat In a Day: Training Vegan
Originally posted July 2022
“What I eat in a day” videos are all the rage on TikTok right now and they really are lacking so much substance and reality. So many of these videos show people eating too little food and trying to glamorize it. Also they seem to have no intended audience or purpose they are just videos for videos sake.
I love food and I love the idea of people sharing what they eat in a day but what I look for is substance and real life situations. My real life situation is that I love to eat, I love eating vegan and I’m an endurance athlete. I share my journey so that hopefully someone out there learns something new and can engage with what I share in a way that helps them or brings a new perspective.
This round of training is the first time I’ve eaten fully plant based and I am loosely tracking what I eat to see how it affects my training and recovery. Food once controlled my life which is why I say loosely, I like to eat whole healthy foods and don’t find the need to track every singe thing I put in my mouth. With that said, there are a few days that I very closely track my food intake for the purposes of analyzing how I am doing with my nutrition. I do this as a check-in to make sure that I am getting all the nutrients I need and to know where things could be adjusted. Full disclosure I could be better about the quantity of food that I am eating in a day and will continue to share how I find ways to sneak in extra calories throughout my day.
You can read my previous post on how I structure my training in any given week. Based on this training load my BMR is about 1,200 calories and am burning about 900 calories on average from my specific workouts. I walk about 12 miles a day which lets say conservatively is 400 calories. These are just same baseline numbers that differ everyday but gives me an idea of what my calorie burn per day looks like. When we take into account BMR, specific training, and walking that is about 2,500 calories burned a day.
In order to stay my same weight I should ideally be eating about 2,500 calories a day. Weight loss is of zero concern to me with performance outcomes, energy and recovery being all that really matters when it comes to what I eat. So how do I, a vegan endurance athlete, ensure that I am meeting all the needs of my body while training.
Below is a detailed breakdown of what a typical day of training and eating looks like for me including nutrient breakdowns. My hopes is that this gives you some insight into how a vegan endurance athlete balances training and nutrition.
TIP
One of the ways I have found to easily get in more calories and more crucial micronutrients is smoothies. Adding protein powder (this has a lot of debate behind it in the plant based world but as an athlete I need the extra boost), greens, veggies, berries, etc. into one glass makes it so simple to get all your nutrients into your day.
