Vegan Bodybuilding Meal Plan Guide
3 Simple Steps on How to Create One

A meal plan is essential to building muscle, especially when bulking and cutting as a vegan bodybuilder. We talk more about this in this Vegan Bodybuilding guide.

Here's what you need to get right in order to design a highly effective vegan bodybuilding diet plan:

1. Figure out your calories.
2. Figure out your macros.
3. Figure out what to eat.

This doesn't seem to be too hard if there are only three steps involved, right? Well, yes and no.

People usually fall prey to various vegan diet misconceptions, such as:

• Underestimating calorie intake needs
• You're eating way too little fat (which can be detrimental to your health)
• Not enough vegan protein (plant based protein)  sources to optimize muscle growth and repair
• Not nourishing their body with all the vital micronutrients, and staple foods.

Especially number three on the list above seem to trip people up, especially vegan diet beginners.

Without enough protein (which you would otherwise get from traditional bodybuilding staples such as chicken breast and ground beef), it can be a bit challenging to find adequate plant protein sources to balance your macronutrient and calorie intake. Vegan diets, especially Vegan bodybuilding diets need the essential amino acids from adequate protein in order to start gaining muscle.

The three macronutrients; proteins, fats and carbohydrates form the big nutrient groups that contribute to the calories we eat. While the calories we consume have a profound effect on the way your body looks, the macronutrient split is  equally important in your vegan bodybuilding quest to create an attractive body.

'A calorie is a calorie' may be true for mere weight gain and weight loss. But the way these calories break down into each of the macronutrients will dictate how well your body builds and repairs muscle tissue, as well as how much muscle you retain during weight loss. Key nutrients, frequent meals, whole foods all play a role in the vegan bodybuilders playbook.

For anyone interested in more in-depth information about optimal vegan macros I urge you to check out this article later. 

For now the short and sweet version will do. To maximize improvements in body composition here's the optimal vegan diet macro split:

The nutrient density refers to the amount of nutrients it contains per calorie of energy.

For instance, if a banana has 50 nutrients per calorie and a french fry has 3 nutrients per calorie, we can obviously say that the banana is more nutrient-dense.
Let's look at an example of how not to do things: the standard American diet.

Highly processed and refined foods such as ice cream, candy, cakes, cookies, pizza, burgers and junk food provide tons of energy throughout the day, yet have poor nutritional density.

On the opposite side of the spectrum we're looking at whole and unprocessed plant foods:

Starches, root vegetables, whole grains, legumes i.e beans and lentils, soy protein, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds - all the plant foods as close to 'as grown in nature'.

Dr. Greger’s daily dozen is a brilliant way to visualize the food you should be trying to eat as part of a healthy meat-free diet.

My recommendation is to include a minimum of 80% whole plant foods in your vegan diet, allowing the remaining 20% to come in the form of less nutrient-dense and refined/processed foods - they may not be the healthiest foods, but we all need a little treat sometimes.

Of course, if you so desire it's perfectly fine to stick to 100% unprocessed plant foods. This is what I personally tend to lean towards as I feel fantastic when fueling myself with whole plant foods.

If you eat a diet consisting of nothing but lentils, oatmeal, and peanuts, you may indeed hit all of your macro goals - there's a good amount of high-quality vegan protein sources from lentils, complex carbs in the oatmeal and healthy fats from the peanuts.

The solution is to make sure you're eating an assortment of many different whole plant foods - this'll ensure that your body is getting the entire spectrum of nutrients, aka 'eating the rainbow.'

We can break down a plant-based diet into 4 major food groups, each contributing in a unique way towards your macro and nutrient goals (with some overlap):

• Legumes for your protein
• Whole grains & tubers for your carbohydrate
• Nuts & seeds for your fats
• Fruits & vegetables for a ton of micronutrients

You should ideally try to consume vegan foods from each and every one of these categories. And why not start with addressing the question that has haunted every vegan since the dawn of mankind:

Bulking on a vegan diet is pretty easy. With many calories to play with, getting in the right amount of protein is a breeze, and you don't have to carefully consider food choices.

Cutting, however, that's an entirely different dragon to slay (shoutout to Jordan!). During a weight loss phase where calories creep down lower and lower, you need to make sure that these few calories are used efficiently to hit your protein and micronutrient needs. We go more in-depth on this in our 7-Day Vegan Diet Plan For Weight Loss.

For this reason, when cutting, you often have to devote most of your calories to high-protein foods such as lentils, tofu, chia seeds, and vegan protein powders.

If you're looking to pack on a few pounds of solid muscle and increase your body weight, you might also like Organic Protein & Greens from Vega.

Also, it's certainly not a bad idea to throw in some high-protein vegan salads with dark leafy greens to get your vitamin K, vitamin A, calcium and so on.

Pro Tip: Struggling to get enough calories into your vegan diet? You can supplement with vegan mass gainers.

Or if you are looking for more meal plans and ideas, check out this video by Brian Turner:

Turns out, it doesn’t matter how frequently you eat, whether it’s 1 meal a day or 7 - the difference is negligible. As a result, you should eat at a frequency that suits you and your habits.

Can’t get enough calories in when you’re bulking up? 

Consider starting the day with a large breakfast and then eating 4 or 5 smaller meals throughout the day. Or, incorporate vegan mass gainers into your diet.

Can’t keep the calories down when you’re shredding? 

Perhaps try out intermittent fasting - this is when you eat solely during a 6-8 hour window, leaving you with about 2 or 3 meals each day if you plan carefully.