Vegan athletes are starting to gain their edge in the competitive world of sports and in the world of competitive body building two names stand out -Dani Taylor and Giacomo Marchese, champion bodybuilders who are both full-pledged vegans.
Vegan athletes rise
Marchese and Taylor, according to Independent, are the co-founders of the vegan fitness group Plant Built, who established the team back in 2012 in an effort to start their own group and prove that there’s more to muscle-building than just meat.
The team started out with 14 vegan athletes who competed in the 2013 Naturally Fit Games held in Austin, Texas. Each one of them took home a trophy and decided to maintain the group. Plant Built a year later, reached out to powerlifting and Crossfit teams, then with kettlebells a couple of years later.
Will a vegan lifestyle work for everyone?
According to them, anyone can adapt to a vegan lifestyle, but it takes a lot of planning and attention. One of the main reasons why there are people who could not sustain it is due to the fact that not all of them eat properly.
Taylor says that people still have the notion that eating less acceptable, which is a misnomer since plat-based foods are less dense, they actually eat less than the required amount to meet up with the same dietary protein values similar to meat.
“If you’ve been eating a certain amount of food your whole life, it takes some attention to detail to be eating more. With a lot of people under-eating, sometimes for months at a time, it’s no wonder so many people complain of feeling weak, hungry, or dropping weight without trying,” says Taylor.
Transitioning properly into a vegan lifestyle is crucial and needs careful attention to detail and guidance, Taylor added.
Athletes from other countries are also going vegan
Even the diverse food culture in Asia is starting to include a vegan diet into the mix, with more and more athletes are also seeing the benefits of going vegan.
In Singapore, Kenny Lee, a 29-year- old runner and corporate manager, began to make waves when he created a group called Team V in Facebook back in 2013. He planned to hook up with practicing vegans and vegetarians to promote an alternative lifestyle among followers and eventually add more to the flock.
Turning vegan began to boost his marathon performance and made him run longer distances, as well as increasing his endurance.
There are a lot of followers and even proponents that have expressed their intentions to support the program and help campaign for a vegan lifestyle not just for health, but for ethical reasons as well.
Vegan scores weightlifting record
To raise doubts about the sustainability and effect on performance of a vegan lifestyle to an athlete, then wait till you read about vegan weightlifter Hulda Waage from Iceland.
Waage just bagged a new world record for a women’s weightlifting competition held recently, where she lifted more than 450 pounds. She completed the 205- kilo squat lift that made clinched her the weight record for the weight level.
Other vegan athletes that are world record holders are ultamarathoner Scott Jurek for the Appalachian Trail in 2015 and powerlifter Patrick Baboumian.
Image Credit: Dani Taylor and Giacomo Marchese, the founders of Plant Built Plant Built
The post Vegan Athletes Take Center Stage In The World Of Sports appeared first on NUTRITION CLUB CANADA.
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