A Plant-Based Diet for Athletes – Possible or Idealistic?

Last updated on March 26, 2021 at 03:16 am

If you asked someone to think of what a vegan looks like, most people wouldn’t imagine a competitive weightlifter or a hulking NFL linebacker. But this is increasingly the reality within all levels of athletics.

The benefits of plant-based diets for athletes are numerous. There are many high-protein foods available to those following plant-based diets that can help athletes build and maintain muscle mass if not better as animal proteins.

Plant-based diets can also be one of the best options for athletes looking to lose weight and gain a healthy, lean body composition.

Plant-based diets also have more general health benefits that are useful for the athlete too. For example, these diets can help with reduced inflammation, which aids recovery time.

How else could a plant-based diet be beneficial for an athlete? Keep reading to learn more.

Are Plant-Based Diets Bad for Athletes?

The fact that people even ask if athletes can follow a plant-based diet while maintaining their levels of performance goes to show how societal perceptions of plant-based foods have suffered.

Some athletes may believe that eating meat makes them stronger, while those following a plant-based diet have a harder time building muscle and maintaining high energy levels.

This is likely due to the perceived difficulty of getting enough protein, vitamin B12, iron, and other essential nutrients within a plant-based diet. 

Back in the 19th-century, the public perception was markedly different. Sylvester Graham, a wildly popular preacher and the inventor of the Graham Cracker, traveled the nation proselytizing about the strength and health that could be gained by avoiding meat and alcohol. 

This shows how the perception of plant-based diets for strength and fitness is just that, a perception. 

Scientific research has shown that animal-based products are not necessary for high-performance athletes to maintain fitness, strength, or endurance.

In fact, the benefits of plant-based diets for athletes may make it the best choice for an athlete’s performance and long-term health.

Inflammation and Recovery

The world’s most successful athletes spend as many hours a day training as they possibly can. Someone like Kobe Bryant, the five-time NBA champion, famously practiced for hours and hours a day in addition to his regular schedule. 

Unfortunately for these athletes, there is a physical limit on how many hours a day one can train. Exercising can cause injuries to your soft tissue, resulting in inflammation which is a bodily response to repair the injured tissue.

While most people are familiar with the common symptoms of inflammation like redness, swelling, heat, and pain, many scientists lack a comprehensive understanding of the physiology of the process, according to an extensive review in 2006 (1).

While a lot of responses to inflammation focus on reducing the symptoms, including compression and icing, this may be an ill-conceived approach.

The point of inflammation is to heal the damage to your body, so it is best to let the inflammatory response run its course before returning to training. That’s why some studies show that icing after exercise can even delay recovery times (2).

A Plant-Based Diet Supports Recovery

Sports scientists now believe that the best way to help athletes return to training faster is to manage athletes’ diets to reduce the severity of the inflammatory response, making it quicker and more effective. This is one of the biggest benefits of a plant-based diet for athletes.

A 2018 study in the Journal of Clinical Cardiology gave one group of participants a plant-based diet for four weeks and measured biomarkers in the blood that are associated with inflammation (3).

The group that ate the plant-based diet experienced significant reductions in these markers, showing a reduction in the inflammatory response.

The reason for this is a group of anti-inflammatory nutrients found in fruits, vegetables, and grains like wheat. 

An article in the International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research compiled data from a range of studies to conclude that carotenoids, flavonoids, and other nutrients common in a plant-based diet reduce inflammation (4).

This was true when looking at a variety of plant-based diets, including vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian, which includes fish.

One study published in the journal Nutrition Research found that all three of these dietary interventions reduced inflammation when compared with diets containing meat and dairy (5).

Which Plant-Based Foods Help You Recover Faster?

Faster recovery time is one of the greatest benefits of a plant-based diet for athletes.

Naturally reducing inflammation through a diet that supports the inflammatory response leads to better and faster recovery, instead of just managing the symptoms.

So what should you eat after a workout to promote the fastest recovery? 

According to DC Nieman in a paper published in the Journal of Proteome Research, blueberries, pears, and bananas are all great choices for a post-exercise snack (6).

In another study from 2018, cyclists who competed in 75km (46.6mi) time trial races were given bananas after the completion of their race (7). Inflammation was lower in subjects who ate bananas compared to those who just had water. 

Making the right plant-based food choices post-exercise and following a plant-based diet, in general, can have a positive effect on inflammation, helping athletes recover and get back to training faster.

Plant-Based Diets and Weight Loss

Many athletic disciplines, including gymnastics, swimming, and running require athletes to maintain a lean body.

And in many sports, the fat to muscle ratio of the athlete is important. Athletes must maintain their strength while shedding excess pounds.

With combat sports and weightlifting, competitors are divided into weight classes for competition. In these sports, per-pound strength is the ultimate driver of success.

For athletes aiming to control their body composition to compete in these sports, following a plant-based diet for weight loss can be the best way to maintain health and strength, while getting down to ideal body compositions.

In 2016, a joint position statement was released by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine (8). In it, they outlined the current state of knowledge in the field of sports nutrition.

They discussed the best way for athletes to lose body mass without inviting adverse health effects. The idea was to avoid gaining or losing weight too quickly as weight loss goals are best met by starting the weight loss diet 3-6 weeks before the goal date.

Reducing daily energy intake by 250-500 kcal per day and slightly increasing exercise creates a negative energy balance, resulting in a loss of body mass.

Meanwhile, a high-protein diet must be maintained to prevent the loss of any muscle mass.

What’s the Best Way to Lose Weight?

A plant-based diet can be very effective for athletes to meet this goal. But, to do so, they must follow the correct kind of plant-based diet.

They need to include plenty of fruits and vegetables, high amounts of plant protein, and the majority of carbohydrates should come from complex sources like whole grains. 

An ideal plant-based diet for weight loss includes:

• Whole grains
• Nuts
• Fresh fruits and vegetables
• Soy products
• Legumes and pulses

This kind of diet can have multiple benefits for athletes aiming to lose weight. Foremost, it is a low-fat diet. Fats are the most energy-dense of the main dietary macronutrients.

Replacing them with complex carbohydrates gram-for-gram reduces total caloric intake while helping the athlete to feel full for longer and supports aerobic exercise throughout the day. 

Secondly, this kind of diet contains plenty of valuable micronutrients, such as antioxidants and vitamins that support healing while under mechanical stress. This aids in fast recovery times and allows athletes to return to exercise sooner.

Strong scientific evidence also supports using a plant-based diet to lose weight healthily.

In a randomized, controlled trial published in the journal Nature, study subjects who were assigned to eat a plant-based diet experienced dramatic reductions in their Body Mass Index (BMI) when compared to the control groups (9).

Plant-based diet subjects lost 3.9kg per meter more when compared to their peers over 12 months.

A Plant-Based Diet to Build Muscle

It can be tough to sell certain athletes on plant-based diets. This includes weightlifters, football players, and anyone who relies on building a lot of body mass and muscle to compete in their discipline.

But this perception is changing, and it’s not just marathon runners and cyclists who have embraced plant-based diets anymore.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has embraced a vegan diet, and superstar Tom Brady has encouraged a trend of plant-based diets for athletes within the NFL. These kinds of diets have been taken up by linebackers like Brian Orakpo and Derrick Morgan.

Plant protein can build and sustain large muscle growth just as well as animal proteins, like meat or whey.

In a study led by Kelsey Mangano and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers found that all types of protein supported muscle growth as well as each other.

Animal vs. Plant-Based Protein Sources

It’s time for a little biology lesson, courtesy of the textbook Recommended Dietary Allowances (10).

All protein is made up of chains of amino acids folded into more complex shapes like muscle fibers. The differences between different kinds of proteins are due to different combinations of the 20 amino acids used to make them.

Nine of these are unable to be created by the body, and there are no biochemical pathways available to synthesize them from other amino acids.

That means they must be brought into the body by eating foods that include them to prevent a nutritional deficiency that can affect muscle building and maintenance.

Proteins that contain all nine essential amino acids are called complete, while incomplete proteins are missing at least one.

Animal-based proteins are typically complete. With plant-based proteins, you need to make sure you’re consuming sufficient quantities of all nine essential amino acids, since individual plant-based foods often are incomplete proteins. 

Complete Proteins in Plant-Based Diets

This isn’t as tricky as it sounds. There are plenty of easy food combinations of plant-based foods that provide all the essential amino acids. 

One study investigating plant-based proteins found that between rice, which only lacks the essential amino acid lysine, and legumes which are full of lysine, any dish with rice and beans met the mark for being a complete protein source (11).

The researchers also reported that while 71% of the world’s protein intake overall came from plant-based proteins, that figure was only 33% of the typical American’s protein intake. Cultural attitudes towards plant-based foods undoubtedly play a role in this. 

As more athletes experience success on plant-based diets, this is expected to change. Just ask the Tennessee Titans. 15 team members now adhere to a vegan diet after linebacker Derrick Morgan’s wife, the vegan chef Charity Morgan, was hired by the team.

And if you’re worried about missing an essential amino acid when you’re mixing and matching plant-based protein sources here are some plant-based sources of complete proteins:

• Edamame and soybeans
• Tofu and tempeh
• Quinoa
• Amaranth
• Buckwheat
• Chia and hemp seeds

Or try the humble peanut butter sandwich. Between the wheat bread and the peanut butter, you have a complete source of protein.

The Bottom Line

It’s no secret that plant-based proteins aren’t typically associated with athletic performance,  at least in the United States. But that has more to do with cultural perceptions than it does with the reality of a plant-based diet.

Plant-based proteins can help athletes achieve the goals they desire, from building muscle mass to achieving the ideal body composition for competition. That’s why so many professional athletes are switching to plant-based diets.

The benefits they’re seeing include a better sense of overall health. Plant-based diets reduce inflammation naturally, helping athletes recover more quickly and get back to training and competing.

All things considered, there’s no doubt that the trend of plant-based diets for athletes will take off in the future.