I have a column up today on Inverse.com about veganism and lifting:
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/vegan-diet-powerlifting
where I mostly use Clarence Kennedy(1):
to argue that veganism (he is vegan) is a seamless diet for lifters and that there’s no disconnect between lifting/getting yoked/gaining, etc. and staying on it. Vegans have lifted forever but it’s been easy(ish) for five years or so, which is when grocery stores filled up with more protein-heavy vegan foods (gardein, and beyond later) and non-soy vegan protein powders (vega, etc) overtook or equaled whey. Thank you to my anonymous vegan source for this information. If you are reading this, I hope you get back in the gym.
It obviously didn’t used to be this way… it was far from it. I was vegan for a long time, a good chunk of which coincided with the most active gym-going period of my life… I was trying to get big… I was pretty young… so without dating myself I’ll mention it was forever ago and that the only protein at the grocery store then was soy, floor to ceiling… Yves soy burgers and soy protein powders and soy nuggets… I wasn’t educated on macros and protein requirements, and I ate poorly, but the options were nonetheless very limited. I also had a soy allergy which made things that much more difficult. In 2004 my friend who I hadn’t seen in a year came back from Vancouver very big. I asked him, he was vegan, what he ate and he said peanut butter. That was almost the only way. It is night and day now.
It seems to go without saying that veganism (which I no longer practice) is the only morally justifiable diet… that’s like, basic level understanding and the objective fact of the universe. Hardline is so, so important and cool… it’s also very funny… Sea Shepherd too but it’s less funny… all those people… one of the only non-accidental aesthetic high points of the 1990s if you ask me… wrenches are sexy… we were all out on an island back then… not that I, you know… Vegan-leaning diets are at the very least superior because they avoid cheese… though they also avoid sardines and fried eggs which is a strike against them... But the nice thing about higher protein vegan foods becoming more available is that… in a sense they transcend the politicization of the diet and open up its aesthetic profile. Which is itself political… For all the talk about veganism having in the last decade evolved into an expensive, impassable diet, there’s something very edifying about its plain athletic utility, and the fact that it can indeed just be followed for those purposes. You can just pick it. (It also feels like a nice aesthetic correction to see powerlifters silently adopting the same diet that, I don’t know, Bill Clinton follows.) One wonders how much better(2) first-wave hardline bands like RAID could have been if they were able to supplement their diets with macros-rich protein foods.
About inflammation… veganism obviously doesn’t have a 1:1 correlation with low inflammatory eating; most news stories about veganism and lifting that mention the diet correlate a vegan diet and a healthy one. That’s not reality and those stories should be taken critically since they deal with ideals. Veganism itself isn’t a foolproof way to cut down on inflammation. But the natural arc of a lifter tends to (1) age (2) knowledge which means that people will, no matter the diet, eventually go towards a more lo-inflamo (the diet should be called this) diet. My back of the envelope math says even if you’re not vegan it’s great to base your diet around low-inflamos, esp. if you’re a lifter, esp. if you have a strenuous exercise program or are working your knees hard… Low inflamo foods are basically unrefined grains, greens, reverse nightshades… in a sense sticking to them paints you into a corner — the “whole foods” diet. Which is also upsold. But perfection is the enemy of the good here, and since we’re all going to be eating every day until we die, we have time to try for better, and then improve… Diets certainly don’t need to be organic or 100% healthy, they don’t need to be expensive. Feels like a vegan before 6 type of protocol. My thinking is if you eat healthy when there’s no friction (say, solo meals) you buy opportunities for bad behavior later. Like for example when quarantine is over I will be at The Wicked Monk — inside — eating a burger because I don’t really eat those the rest of the week. I haven’t in months. It’s called common sense.
I also have to mention that the successful vegan athletes are outliers to begin with. At the risk of playing pure probability theory, they were going to be successful at their chosen athletic professions because of a combination of genetics, training and skill level. Veganism is helpful for combating inflammation since vegetables do that (actually they don’t so much combat it but cut it off at the pass…) but honestly, it’s really a value free diet, athletically speaking—it can be healthy or not. If it is practiced at the ultimate high levels (expensive shit, personal chef etc) then it is probably the best diet there is (athletically). And this is with the caveat that people’s individual digestive preferences, abilities, allergies, spooky shit, disease history etc, need to be taken into account. Maybe you can’t go vegan because of health reasons and have to support the cause by wearing Vegan Reich shirts every day. It is just crazy that 15 years ago you could not put on muscle to save your life unless you ingested serious dairy or meat or spent all your time crafting a very narrow and difficult vegan diet. It’s incredible progress. It’s really just amazing and one of the objectively best things to have happened in the past 20 years.
As well….
All my Inverse.com Leg Day Observer columns are available here at this link:
https://www.inverse.com/leg-day-observer
Which is the Leg Day Observer homepage. I haven’t been sharing every article here . I will begin sharing them more again and giving context in these newsletters. The columns come out every week. The following topics have been covered since the last one:
Peaking programs and why they’re BS (all programs are peaking programs really, but not everyone can master form in the time necessary to follow a proper peak)
Lyle McDonald’s Diet Break (effectively you should take off a week or so every few months if you are dieting to give your metabolism a chance to reset itself and to make life not miserable; McDonald lives in Austin)
Meditation and weightlifting (one might think that they have nothing in common. In so many words they are exactly the same thing)
Air Force Pilots Take Pills (basically the more nutrients you take the better your brain are, even if your in the air force)
Pre-workout supplements (why they are cool, also this guy who was being investigated by the FBI made one)
And they are all available on that link. Check out this design:
Thanks for reading. If anyone has questions about the specifics of any of my lifting columns, or wants further reading, etc., on any of them, message me and I’m happy to discuss. Tell a friend if you like the columns. Or better yet post them on your gym bulletin board.
Snake
Other work: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JLRt0Ec6gZBm50hATYCYmLctnF9GhVijoEbam50JSw/edit
(1) Kennedy is really cool. He was an early (2016) video star for his consistent and like, weird feats of strength in lifting. Specifically, and jerking international-competition level weights in his neighborhood gym… him doing a kip up after he fell on his ass in international competition at a much lower weight class… wearing frameless glasses… doing backflips while walking around…. clean and jerking a Sears barbell in his room at 15 years old… other insane feats of gym strength…. for a long time he didn’t do interviews or talk to anyone… I haven’t kept up in a while and so it was disorienting to hear him talk, do interviews, etc. on other YouTube channels, where he’s pretty active. He’s so cool. He’s also Irish (like me)
(2) trick question: it is impossible for RAID to have been any better (or worse) than they were.