All raw vegans are so used to getting that question from everyone.

As you all know, I am primarily raw vegan in my diet, although I don’t like labels!  I just try to make sure that everything I eat has live enzymes in it.  Usually this is whole foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, but there are also many very good products on the market now that are living foods.

I am also training to compete in Figure Competitions next year.  I need to put on a good bit of muscle, especially in my legs, back and shoulders, so for all intents and purposes I am a bodybuilder.  Many people completely dismiss the idea that the human body can get enough protein from plant-based sources to feed the nutritional demands of a bodybuilder. This shows just how pervasive the protein myth is throughout our society, and most of it is fed by the meat industry trying to sell more product!

The human body cannot use whole proteins.  It uses amino acids in their basic form, and each person has a unique combination of amino acids that their body will use.  Your body will not put together the same ‘cocktail’ of amino acids that mine will, as your needs are different than mine.  Maybe your body is fighting off an infection, or rebuilding a weakened organ.  Hopefully mine is building bigger quads & lats!

When you eat a ‘complete’ protein like animal meat, yes, it absolutely is a complete protein like it says.  To the surprise of most people, however, eating a complete protein may not be the best way to get your protein.  Your body must break the protein down into individual amino acids before it can put those amino acids back together in the customized manner that satisfies your particular needs.  So there is the extra step of digesting the protein, and our digestive tracts aren’t designed to digest meats to begin with, so this is a very difficult step for the body that creates a lot of waste products and feeds candidas yeast unnecessarily.

So it makes sense that eating the amino acids in raw form is the most effective means of assimilating protein for our bodily needs.  There is a surprising amount of amino acids in plant-based foods, especially in greens and vegetables.  Broccoli & kale are particularly high in protein.  None of them are a complete and perfect protein by themselves, however, except for a select group of superfoods like acai, raw cacao, maca, etc.  The key is to eat a wide variety of vegetables and especially greens, and your infinitely intelligent body will do the rest by creating its own perfect proteins.

I agree that bodybuilders do have higher protein needs than the average person.  Lets look at what weight training does.  When you stress a muscle by heavy resistance training, you create tiny tears in that muscle and the body responds quickly to repair those tears and rebuild the muscle.  Since the muscle was stressed, the body figures it better get that muscle ready to be stressed again, so it tends to build it back bigger and stronger.  When does it do this, by the way?  When you are at REST.  Especially when you are asleep.  Goji berries are shown to trigger the pituitary gland to release growth hormone, so they are an excellent choice for a post-workout recovery smoothie or a great addition to your last meal of the day.  (Don’t eat right before you go to bed!)

So muscle building is a result of stressing the muscle and pushing it to new levels of resistance.  That’s why you need to lift heavier and heavier weights over time to push through plateaus.  Yes, you need protein to do this, but you don’t need truckloads of it!  One reason the mainstream thought is that you need so much protein is that your body is so inefficient at breaking down animal proteins that it needs much more to digest the amount of amino acids you need.  If you are assimilating amino acids at a very high absorption rate, then you don’t need 300 grams a day to meet your needs.

Case in point, one of the most perfect proteins on earth is whole brown rice–including the bran and endosperm.  A new company, Sun Warrior, has found a way to deliver a raw vegan brown rice protein with full 98.2% digestibility, with a perfect amino acid profile.  They sprout the whole rice grain, so it is a true living food, and then use enzymes to digest the carbohydrates, leaving the protein behind while never raising the temperature above 100 degrees, preserving the precious enzymes while bio-fermenting the protein, making it even more usable by the body.  It correlates to mother’s milk in highly bio-available protein.   Did you know that soy protein is processed using hexane, a flammable chemical?  NOT what I want to be drinking in my shakes!

I found out about Sun Warrior and began using it with great results, after seeing Mike Adams’ enthusiastic review, which is rare for him.  And even more amazingly, it tastes great!  I had tried rice and other vegan proteins before, and they were unpalatable, even for me.  I usually don’t care how nasty something tastes, if it works for me.  I was so impressed I contacted the company with a testimonial and ended up being invited to be on their Team Warrior!  Look for me at SunWarrior.com under Team Warrior Vegan Bodybuilders!

The results speak for themselves.  These pics were taken just a couple of weeks ago, and I am about to turn 40 for crying out loud!  When I first went raw vegan, I did lose some muscle, but the addition of Sun Warrior to my diet has made my muscle-building explode and my bodyfat drop like a rock.  I am much leaner, but my scale weight stayed almost the same, which tells me I am losing fat and gaining muscle.  Whoo-hoo!  Follow me through the next few months and I will share my results with you.

You can order Sun Warrior through the link at your right, or by clicking here.  Yes, I do get a small commission if you order through me, since I am on the Team.  I really appreciate your helping me out!   So if you order two or more bottles and enter ‘Christy’ in the box at checkout you will get free shipping!  And I have written a recipe book using Sun Warrior Protein and Activated Barley, which includes smoothies, awesome home-made superfood protein bars, and even pies!  It’s yours FREE if you just email me and let me know you got your protein!  I’ll send it right over to you!

I do want to stress that you can get ALL the protein you need just from your raw diet.  I only mention supplementation for those who really feel they need it to reach their fitness goals.  It’s not necessary.  You can get all you need just with organic living foods from the grocery store!

Defy all the know-it-all muscleheads who think you have to eat a whole cow every day to get ‘enough’ protein!  Stand out, think for yourself and be a black sheep.  You will be much healthier in the long run.  Think about it, how many ‘elderly’ bodybuilders can you think of?  One or two?  Joe Weider & Jack LaLanne are a couple I can bring to mind.  Exercise is already heavily oxidizing and aging to the body.  The extra stress of a really bad diet accelerates aging to warp speed.  Defy aging!  Get your antioxidants, phytonutrients, live enzymes, etc through living foods, and the protein will take care of itself. 

 

Be Defiant, Misbehave, and Change History today!

Hugs,

Christy

November 16th, 2008
Categories: Main. Author: Christy

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