- Welcome my friends, check it out.
You are live with two of the vegan bodybuilders.
On my left I have...
- Jon Venus.
- Jon Venus from Norway.
(band music)
The most common question I ever get
being a vegan bodybuilder is what do you eat
to get your protein, how do you gain muscle?
Is it even possible?
It's like an unfathomable thing for a lot of people
and I remember when that was me too.
- [Jon] Yep, same here man.
- [Brian] Right, like before I transitioned
about a year ago.
You went like 13 months ago, 14 months ago.
- [Jon] Yeah something like that yeah.
- [Brian] Both of us were like there's no way.
It doesn't make sense.
So basically this video is just gonna kinda
cancel out that view, because we're going to give you 10
amazing foods that have plenty of protein
to help you gain muscle, right.
I think it's way easier than it might seem at first.
Especially after you hear some of these things.
You're going to be like "Oh wow I didn't realize
that was a lot of stuff that I could do."
So the first thing, number one on the list.
This one's a little bit, it's a little bit weird.
Like something you might not have heard of before.
First thing is spirulina.
So spirulina is actually
like a bacteria
that's cultured from algae I believe, something like that.
Not only is it extremely good for you in terms
of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, things like that.
But, for the weight,
the protein is so high.
- It's over 50% guys so I think it's the most
protein dense food on the planet.
I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere so that's insane.
- I really only put that one because it's crazy
how much protein comes from that for the weight.
I don't personally use that it's kinda gross.
- Yeah me neither.
- Let's get on to the ones that actually taste good.
(laughing)
- It's more relevant.
Lentils and beans.
You might have heard this before when you're
seeing about like what vegans eat and stuff.
But actually they both have huge amounts of protein.
I know you go hard with the beans.
- Oh yeah yeah yeah, beans and lentils are the staple
of my diet and especially for me because I don't
have access to a lot of the meat replacements or a lot of
tofu and seitan depending on where I am at the time.
Beans and lentils are something you can get
wherever you are in the world pretty much
and the protein contents are amazing.
You can get all your protein requirements
just from eating beans and lentils if you chose to.
- [Brian] Yeah and it's mad cheap, that's another thing.
- [Jon] It is cheap, yeah.
- [Brian] A lot of people think that it's so expensive
to be vegan, but that's only if you decide
to make it expensive.
Beans and whatnot you can buy in huge containers.
I think it's relatively cheap.
- You want me to tell you number three?
- I want you to tell me number three.
I want you to go
- Okay okay okay.
You know we put down edamame bean,
Edamame? Is that how you say it?
- Edamame beans?
But we kind of talked about beans already,
just all beans in general.
But edamame beans and edamame pasta,
so pasta made from those beans
and in general just pasta made from beans.
They're all super high in protein
and I've never really tried too many of them.
I don't remember what I've tried.
I think I've only tried quinoa pasta,
which has a little bit higher protein than normal pasta.
But I can see this being a really big help
in your diet if you're trying to boost up the protein level.
Just having the black bean pasta or whatever.
It seems like it's a nice cheat.
- It's phenomenal bro, let me tell you, man.
And I know you're saying they're kinda the same thing
beans, and then black bean pasta.
They're two completely different things.
Yeah they're sourced from the same thing,
but black bean pasta, it takes out pretty much
all of the extra carbs and fat and stuff.
Number four on the list is seitan and it's not the devil.
- Yeah a lot of people say "Satan".
- It's Satan. Team satan. (laughs)
Sorry, no, but seitan is
wheat gluten protein, I believe.
- Yeah that's right.
- And so it's kinda funky at first
if you've never seen it before, you'll look at it,
and you'll be like, "What the hell is that?"
It just kinda looks like a big block of texture
or something like that.
- [Jon] Yeah.
Yeah, it kinda looks like a...
I don't know, boiled meat or something.
I'm not really sure. - [Brian] Yeah. A meatloaf.
- [Jon] Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
It's a bit weird.
- [Brian] How do you make it?
- [Jon] I personally just...you can either put it
on an oven, you can fry it, whatever you want,
or put it in the microwave.
It's up to you, but I prefer dicing it up
into small pieces and putting it in different dishes,
mixing it with rice or something.
Tofu scramble even, I'll mix it in there.
There's is a lot of ways to eat it,
sometimes I'll even put it on a sandwich.
- Yeah.
- It has kinda like a...it depends, there's a lot
of ways to prepare this, but if you buy just seitan
without anything, just 100% seitan, it kinda tastes
a bit smoky, - Yeah.
Kinda like a meaty taste and texture is very similar to meat
so if you kind of miss the texture and you want high amounts
of protein, that's a pretty good thing to go for.
- Yeah, it's great for marinating it
for awhile, - Oh, yeah.
- And then, like you're saying, cubing it up really small
and fry panning it or whatever.
You can throw it into a burrito, instead of a meat.
It acts very well as a meat replacement.
- I love it with barbeque sauce.
- Whoa.
Number five on the list is tempeh.
This is relatively new to me, I knew about it,
but I never really went in and bought it and tried it
and stuff, 'cause it kinda looks like brains.
- [Jon] (laughs) Yeah, that's right.
- [Brian] It's weird, man.
So what it is...tofu is like a block
of white, textured weird stuff, right.
Tempeh is slightly higher in protein levels,
lower in fat, and stuff.
And I suppose it's just smashed together soy beans.
- [Jon] Yeah, it's a little less processed than tofu,
'cause tofu is almost like they process the beans extremely,
extremely much. - [Brian] Yeah. (laughs)
- [Jon] And then they turn it into a block.
While tempeh you can actually see the pieces of the beans
and stuff like that.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- [Jon] You can see it's a little less processed,
so if you're worried about processed foods,
this is a better choice than tofu in that point.
I really enjoy the taste.
It's a bit weird at first.
- It's so good.
- Your taste buds change when you go vegan
and stuff like that,
so this ends up being really, really tasty.
Plus, you can marinate just like everything else,
and make it awesome.
- The reason I think this is such a good food,
is because the texture isn't like tofu
where it's all just kind of texture-less.
It has this crunch, because each one is kind of a bean shell
there's not only crunch on the outside of the block,
but within the block too there's little pieces
of some sort of texture.
Now the reason I point the texture out is the way the way
that I prepare this is so good.
You just slice it up into little pieces,
put it into a frying pan and you saute it with some sort
of oil, if you want to do that, and then what you do
is throw sauce on it.
And it sounds like the simplest recipe or whatever,
but if you put orange sauce from Panda Express,
it literally taste pretty damn exact to how orange chicken
tastes from Panda Express.
The sixth. - The sixth one we put down
dense veggies like broccoli, green beans,
spinach,
kale.
Dark leafy greens, - Yep.
- Especially have a lot of protein.
And I didn't realize that before.
I thought, "Yeah, I'll just have some broccoli
or whatever, some spinach",
but I wouldn't even count it as protein.
I didn't have no idea there was protein in there.
Even though I watched Popeye when I was a kid.
I still didn't realize that and make the connection,
but there's a lot of protein. - [Brian] Tons.
- [Jon] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The percentage-wise per calorie is very, very high.
The problem is that it's very hard to consume enough of it,
because it's very, very filling.
But the percentage of protein in these dark leafy greens
and broccoli and that kind of stuff is super high.
A lot of people don't expect it, but it's awesome.
You can always get an extra 20-30 grams of protein
just by adding that stuff.
- [Brian] It's so dope.
And you know that you should be
eating more vegetables, whether or not you're vegan already.
- [Jon] It's a good excuse, right? (laughs)
- [Brian] You know you should, and when you add
in those four servings of vegetables that you should,
then you're getting that extra 20-30 grams of protein.
I didn't really notice that, like you're saying,
until I turned around a broccoli bag and was like
'Oh, wow! That's a lot.'
- [Jon] Yeah.
- And then also as you eat more vegetables,
you get used to eating more vegetables,
and now I'll just throw extra broccoli on everything
and that's getting me so much more protein.
- Plus it's really fuckin' healthy.
- Yeah, exactly man.
I feel a hundred times better,
energy's a hundred times better,
acne is a billion time better when I overdose on vegetables,
so that's a powerful thing right there.
Seven is tofu.
Now you were expecting this one.
I put it down the list, so you didn't be like,
'I told you what this video was going to be.'
But I always thought tofu was gross,
I thought it was just stupid and texture-less,
and what the hell, how do you eat that?
And of course the first time I tried tofu,
I just a took a bite of tofu after no preparation.
- [Jon] Raw tofu, right?
- [Brian] Yeah. - [Jon] I tried that as well.
- [Brian] If you try a plain piece of ground beef,
you're gonna be like "This is disgusting."
- [Jon] Raw beef.
- [Brian] Yeah you gotta season it and cook it right.
The way that I'll set it up is I'll cut it down the middle
then I'll cut it into squares
that you can saute those squares on both sides
so each side is golden brown, then you can throw some sort
of sauce in it.
Boom, and it's delicious.
There's also a billion other ways to prepare it.
You can do scrambled tofu.
- [Jon] Oh that's become the staple of my diet right now.
- [Brian] Oh, that's so good.
- [Jon] Scrambled tofu.
There's a lot of different tofus I eat.
You can buy tofu with some sort of spices inside:
curry tofu, mango tofu, whatever.
I prefer just having the plain one, because it's easier
when you're counting macros and everything like that
and just season it yourself.
But guys, the scrambled tofu is amazing.
It's pretty much just tofu
that you make a scramble out of it.
You just put a fork and you press down on the tofu,
spread it out, and then you season it with, I prefer doing
with turmeric and salt and pepper, and that's pretty much it
It's awesome, because it has
a similar texture
to scrambled eggs and it looks the same because it becomes
yellow when you put the turmeric, so you can trick a lot
of people to try it, and most of them will love it.
- And if you're like me, and you're on team ketchup,
- Oh yeah. - [Brian] Tofu works so well
with ketchup, especially that scrambled.
This one probably a little harder
for people who aren't living in America,
specifically the more advanced places like California
or New York and stuff,
Gardein or just general meat replacement products.
And I go hard, if you ever watch my videos, you ever see
my full day eatings, you know that I like to eat Gardein.
I probably have one of those every single day.
But there are so many brands, especially here
in California, because we're always
on the cutting edge of things.
There's Gardein, there's Sweet Earth, there's Boca,
there's all these different product that either
make their own thing that's a completely different
new product, or they just emulate something
that you don't wanna cut out of your diet
because that's the reason you don't go vegan,
you're like, "I don't wanna miss our on my orange chicken."
And then, bam, you got to try that orange chicken.
- Oh my god, guys.
I recommend every single person watching this
to try this stuff out. It is
phenomenal.
- [Brian] It's so good, man!
- [Jon] Couldn't believe it.
- In my opinion, I've had people who are
regular meat eaters, they haven't done anything
with the vegan thing yet, but they try the product
just because, "Oh, I saw it in your vlog."
And then they'll text me, snap me and they'll be like,
"This is better than the stuff I usually eat every night."
It's good, it's good.
- [Jon] And we're not just saying this
because we're vegan or anything like that.
I would dig that stuff back when I was eating meat as well.
- [Jon] Yeah.
- [Brian] I would give it to my sister, and she's not
a vegan and she'll be like, "Wow, can we get more of this?"
If you are in a place where they do have
some of those more advanced replacement products
and interesting pre-made and things like that,
you should try them.
- [Jon] Yeah, they're very high in protein.
- Yeah, especially in the beginning
when you're transitioning over, before you start getting
into, "Oh I'm gonna make a lot of my food myself,"
because a lot of people don't like to make their own food,
Don't even know how to cook.
It's a great way to be like, "For dinner, instead of me
having to chop up all these vegetables
and make my own salsa and make my own sauce
and make my..."
You're like, "I'm just gonna throw all those frozen
little pieces into a frying pan, add the sauce.
I'm a chef.
(laughing)
I just made sizzling Beijing Beef."
And it's super good, so that one's pretty helpful.
- It's a pretty obvious one, but protein powders.
Basically, if you're into fitness and bodybuilding,
you're consuming some sort of protein,
like most people anyways.
You don't need to, you really don't need to,
but it can be convenient and stuff like that.
And if you're vegan, that's obviously...
The highest concentration of protein comes
from protein powders because it's protein.
So, obviously, there are loads of different variations
for vegan protein.
There is hemp protein there is
- [Brian] Brown rice, pea.
- [Jon] Brown rice, protein, pea.
- [Brian] Soy.
- [Jon] Yeah, and different blends as well,
like everything blended together.
There is a lot to choose from.
I gotta admit that a lot of companies are not doing
as well as they should with taste,
but there are some amazing tasting companies out there,
protein powder that you have to just experiment
to find the one that works best for you.
Obviously it has all the amino acid profiles.
There is no difference, it's not superior.
Whey protein is not better than this, in terms of
the reward you get from it.
It's the same.
- [Brian] I feel like a lot of people
will not make the change to veganism simply because
they won't have that cushion pad, that insurance pad
of having a protein powder at the end of the day
if they f-ed up their macros,
'cause a lot of people would just be like, "Oops,
I only got 78 grams of protein or whatever,"
and then they'll put two scoops of whey protein
and shake it up and drink it and be like,
"Ah, now I'm all insured."
Go to bed all feelin' like games are coming and stuff.
But you can do the exact same thing.
Literally, a scoop of brown rice protein is the exact same
as whey.
It has 24 grams of protein.
The one I personally use is brown rice protein.
Buy my protein.
I just say that because if you guys do want something that's
super cheap, and you want a discount on it,
there is a link and a code and everything
in the description below.
But I've been using that forever,
and I think it's really good, although it has
a different texture, it's a little bit more gritty,
'cause you kinda have to play with it.
So, that bring us to our last
listing item, which is hemp and other seeds,
like chia seeds and things like that.
You'll hear a lot about this if you ever start going vegan,
people will be like, "Try this seed, try that seed."
You don't eat the seeds straight in your face.
What you'll do is you'll mix them into a soup,
you'll mix them into your shakes or something like that,
and chia seeds and hemp seeds have so much protein,
it's ridiculous
- [Jon] Yeah.
- [Brian] I think six tablespoons has something like
25 grams of protein.
- [Jon] Yeah it's crazy.
- [Brian] It's crazy.
If you're one of those guys who wants to go crazy
on the protein, which you don't need to do,
but say you still wanna have the crazy amount of protein,
you can make a smoothie or a shake in the morning
and throw in six tablespoons of chia seeds
and then throw in one scoop of brown rice protein
and you just put in 50 grams of protein
before you even left the house.
- Of course it comes along with fat
because nuts and seeds are awesome,
have really, really big...
A lot of
protein, but they come with a lot of fat as well.
But it's really good if you're trying to taper down
on carb and having high fat, high protein
and lower carbs.
Nuts and seeds are awesome for that.
As you said, there's a lot of ways to prepare
this kind of stuff, put it in smoothies and everything.
I personally...
I'm not a person who consumes a lot of seeds and nuts.
I really enjoy it, I take more almond butter
and stuff like that,
and VP2, which is awesome.
But apart from that, I don't really consume too much
because I prefer keeping my fats low.
But if you're a person who doesn't mind,
if you're bulking, for example,
go hard on those thing, because
especially if you're a hard gainer,
go hard on this because that is gonna help you a lot.
- If you're someone like me, I don't generally
get a lot of fat in my other meals,
so I usually have to add something.
I have to add some oil to this sauté or something,
just to make sure that I do get my fats in.
So if you're one of those people who's already pretty low
on fat, this is a great way to be like,
'Oh, I'm gonna add this fat.'
Also, you get the benefits of all this extra protein.
So that's the list of 10 things
but this is only 10 things that we just decided
to throw out there.
There are so many sources, and this is not the best 10.
This is just 10 that we sat going back and forth...
- Yeah, just like, random 10.
- Yeah, put a list together.
If you are ever worried
about how you're gonna get your protein in
on a vegan diet, transitioning to a vegan diet,
I hope that this video is something that you can
go back to and reference.
Also, you can kinda experiment and figure it out.
Just because I want you guys to know that it's not
a difficult thing.
I've literally never had an issue
all of my journey this far,
like 12 months into it, 11 months into it.
Never have I been at the end of the day like,
'Oh no, man, I had a really tough time getting protein.
This was impossible.'
- Mm-hm
- It's easy, bro. It's just you gotta trust yourself
and make that transitionary period and start doing
a little bit of studying and experimentation.
- It's everyone's worst worry,
not getting enough protein.
But it's not gonna happen.
Seriously guys, don't worry about it.
- Yeah.
And hopefully this video can kinda dispel that myth
and that kind of fear for you
and prove to you that there is some good protein eats
out there, boys and girls.
So, that's the end of the video.
I hope you guys enjoyed this.
I implore you,
I really want you to check out Jon Venus's channel
because I have all this food and stuff on my channel
and it's a really great source,
but if you go watch him too, he eats in a completely
different style than me, so you get
two whole sources of different types of food
that you can pull from.
And also tons of great workout videos, production videos,
traveling vlogs, all sorts of good stuff,
so check him out.
His link's gonna be like...
Right there, right under the video.
Right there!
Make sure you give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video.
Let us know what you thought in the comments below.
If you do have other foods that you think are high
in protein that you like to eat,
that is a great place to put them, you will help
so many people, so please take the time,
the cuff pain and write a little bit.
Let us know what you think in the comment's below,
give us your suggestions and ideas
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Team Beyond the Weak
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