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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Side topic, but can anyone suggest a diet (vegetarian, ideally) for putting on muscle?

I've been hitting the gym regularly (2-4x/week) for the past year, lifting weights consistently each time, and haven't made any major gains.

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To gain muscle mass, you need lots of calories, and at least 35% of it to be protein. For a vegetarian, major natural sources of protein are beans (including soy) and dairy. Ofcourse, those also happen to be full of calories, so instead, I would recommend whey protein powder to support your usual diet. I personally find protein shakes gross, so here's a breakfast that works for me:

1) 1 part 0% fat greek yogurt, 1 part water (stir)

2) 1 scoop of whey protein powder

3) some sunflower seeds, oats and raisins

For a protein fix after a work-out, replace step 3 with some fresh fruit like strawberries or blueberries.

Also, switching from 3 meals a day to 6 or 7 smaller meals a day works miracles, but it might take some effort to accommodate such a switch. Preparing meals in advance goes a long way.

You just need to eat a lot more calories. You might be doing the wrong weightlifting routine. If you can do egg whites, those work pretty well. I went from 150 to 180 in college on a "hard gainer" program. My diet back then was: egg whites, brown rice, vegetables. Now I'm trying to get back down to about 165, so be careful what you wish for...

You can also eat complete eggs.

Why would you take the yolks out if you wanted moar calories? Dietary cholesterol is no longer thought to be linked to blood cholesterol levels.

Lift heavy and eat more.

Lifting: What are you doing now? Squat every workout, and then switch back and forth between a benchpress/upper body and deadlift/lower body routine.

Eating: Eat more, especially protein. You probably will have to have shakes to get enough. Eat two more small meals during the day.

It took me a while to realize why I had my best gains in 1st year university. It was because I was on a meal plan, eating twice as much as I normally would.

And now, I am losing weight doing the same workout routine as usual. Why? Because my diet has drastically changed from living abroad.

A lot depends on your body and its preferences, so I wouldn't recommend anything specific yet. Nail down "what's healthy for you" before you aim to gain weight. If you can find the right diet, you can just eat more of it and add protein shakes[1], and you'll probably gain. But if it's the wrong diet, you can ignore its problems at a low level of consumption and function in daily life, but eating more will just make you feel ill, sleep poorly, etc. and amplify whatever was wrong with it in the first place. So figure out what you can eat a lot of easily, and what makes you sick. I did not gain until I did this.

[1] Again, a lot depends on what blend you're working with. Some are really bare-bones and use only one type of protein, others are heavily fortified meal replacements with a mix of different protein sources.

I lurk on a weightlifting forum, and this flow chart is the most concise description of bulking that I've seen:

http://images.t-nation.com/forum_images/auto/r/350x0/c/9/c98...

taken from here: http://tnation.t-nation.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_tr...

edit: also, try searching the fitness subreddit, which is pretty active, for vegetarian info: http://reddit.com/r/fitness

4 litres of whole milk a day (plus some normal meals) will make you put on muscles if you follow a program like the one advocated in the book "Starting Strength" (http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/The_Starting_Strength...).

You will also put on some fat, so you may want to cut back later.

Of course other sources of protein (and fat, carbohydrates etc) besides milk are also possible. Milk is just easily available.

Up your calories. Since you're a vegetarian keep eating tons of veggies (snack on them all day if you can), actually everyone should take this advice. Eat nuts, great source of cals, good fat and healthy. Personally I like something better than peanuts.

Find a whey protein powder that you like. This will require some trial and error. Drink a serving post workout. In a pinch, chocolate milk will work fine.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/an-objective-co...

I have found Muscle Milk to taste the best, but it's not cheap. Take a look at www.trueprotein.com for a good deal on protein, but you have build your own mix. If you get unflavored whey you can mix it with all sorts of things to simply up the protein content. Something to think about.

Finally, if you're still not gaining weight drink milk. The classic bulk was to drink 1/2 gallon or more/day in addition to your regular meals. I promise you'll start putting on weight then :)

One more thing, check your workout. Get a book like New Rules of Lifting or Huge in a Hurry to get a set of great professionally made workouts that will last nearly a year.

Vegetarian will be tough - although I don't have all the specifics, I remember hearing about how Tony Gonzales (NFL tight-end) went on a vegan diet and he seemed to be managing OK. Granted he was probably more in maintenance mode, but diet looked like it would provide enough protein for significant gains as well.

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB12012211618291529...

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I'm probably not eating at a 500 calorie surplus, though I definitely eat all the food items you suggest.

I try to vary things, but I generally do pullups, squats, deadlifts, military press, inclined row, and bench press. Should I be doing something different?

I can recommend the book "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe. (I learned about it after following some links in discussions here on HN.)

It has lots of information about the basic lifts: squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, and power cleans.

Your list seems pretty good already.

Without knowing anything, I bet 10 Pounds that your are probably doing the squat wrong. The first 60 pages in "Starting Strength" are about the squat, and they are necessary.

(There are also lots of videos at Youtube of Mark Rippetoe coaching. See e.g. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rippetoe+squat&#...)

Rippetoe suggest three sets of five repetitions at your working weight for most lifts. Of course you should do some warm up sets at lower weights for each lift to avoid injury and work on form.

The advise from the book has worked pretty well for me. I started as a complete novice in April, and I am now lifting around 1.5 times bodyweight on the squat and the deadlift. (The other lifts have also progress nicely.)

I should do more pullups. Try learning the power clean (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rippetoe+power+c...) It's fun, if exhausting.

Do few repeats (around 9-15, do them until you can't do it anymore) but with more weight. Add more weight everyday you go to the gym. Worked for me.

you won't build muscle on a vegetarian diet. You need protein to build muscle, so you'll want eggs and meat. Alternatively you can try some of those protein shakes...but they aren't as fulfilling

http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/ enough said.

Probably the only possible way to put on muscle mass as a vegan is with loads of soy protein. Which is pretty much toxic. Have fun with cancer and endocrine problems.

loads of soy protein

Or watercress, spinach, sprouts, seeds, nuts, brown rice, protein powders made with the above, and many other foods.

or beans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein

None of which are nearly as good as eggs for building tissue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCAAS

Interesting. Cheese is better than beef.

There's whey protein as well. That's what's in Muscle Milk and Pure Protein products. I'm not sure if whey protein is any better for your endocrine system, FWIW.

@rubashov: OP was talking about a vegetarian diet, not a vegan one. Whey protein should be fine. Whey is a by-product of cheese.

Whey's not vegan.

When I was in gain/build mode I was using brown rice and pea protein.

Have you tried taking protein powder along with your diet? Depending on how much you want to gain and the type of shake you get, you'd probably want to drink one within 20 mins of a weightlifting session and one a day in the morning.

A cup or two of lowfat plain yogurt will provide as much protein as a typical shake, and is a much more healthful option.

1 scoop of many whey proteins provide 20+ grams of protein. If you throw 2 scoops thats 40 grams. Most yogurts don't even approach this. Then add milk, peanut butter, etc.

Some people also mix their whey with other things, such as in their oatmeal.

You can just eat more yogurt, but a lot of people go the shake route because its a lot easier to drink large amounts of protein than eat it.

Quark is a pretty decent source of protein (casein). I often put quark, milk and fruits (and oat meal) in a blender to make my own shakes. At least when I am too lazy to prepare a proper meal.

I will try this - I've already tried eating more eggs/beans, and my diet is primarily rice and veggies right now.

Can you recommend any particular brand/kind of protein powder/shake? Google gives me a bunch of spammy looking sites that I don't really trust.

If you don't care to drink lots and lots of fluids, then you can just as well drink a few (say, 4) litres of milk a day. If you do the maths, you will find that there's a sizeable amount of proteins to be had this way.

A cup or two of lowfat plain yogurt will provide as much protein as a typical shake, and is a much more healthful option. Especially try Greek-style yogurt for higher protein concentrations.

"glycogen supercompensation" dieting definitely works. You eat zero carbs for about four days, going ketogenic. (Eat plenty of saturated fat instead; lots of butter.) Then you lift extra hard. Then for the rest of the day you eat a ton of carbs: loads of potatoes, whatever.

I don't think it's possible to put on a lot of muscle mass without either eggs or whey protein. If your vegetarian rules keep you away from even those protein sources, you may have to rethink your priorities.

It's vegans who avoid all animal products, vegetarians only avoid animal flesh.

And then there are the fishitarians. Because fish have no soul.

And there are oystrovegans. Who eat vegan food and oysters. Because oysters have the mental capacities of venus flytraps. Incidentally I think this would be a good, mostly sustainable and cruelty-free diet, weren't it for the price of oysters.

I have a good moral argument that you should only eat animals and fungi, not plants:

Plants are autotrophs and don't eat other things. Animals are heterotrophs and do it other things. Applying the Golden Rule in reverse, it's fine to do to lifeforms what they do to others.

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