How To Build Lean Muscle On A Plant-based Diet

Legend!

One of the biggest misconceptions about the plant-based diet is that it is not designed to support muscle development. Every time the Epic Table team published a plant-based recipe I would consistently receive responses about how “it does not support muscle growth”. Naturally, This frustrated me and I decided to challenge myself to put on 10lbs of lean muscle in 10 weeks. The 10lbs had to be lean muscle, not fat, and long story short… we did it! If you want to watch the final episode of the series on YouTube you can view it HERE. If you want to support the channel and our goal of overpowering McDonald's, hit the subscribe button. We want our channel to have a more positive impact on how you eat like a legend! If you missed it we also released our latest free ebook! How To Build Muscle on a Plant-based Diet. So if you are a legend who subscribed to this newsletter before it came out, you can download it here! If you are a legend that already downloaded it, you will know the book includes:

• My 5 Key takeaways

• How to make Tofu Sexy

• The protein formula to live by to put on lean muscle

• 20 exclusive and delicious recipes!

• A table full of the plants highest in protein!

Here are a couple of things that were NOT outlined in the free ebook

• I drank a lot of water.. in fact, I aimed for 1/3 my body weight in liquid oz

• I lost weight when we traveled to Hawaii. I was out of my routine and it was hard to get the daily protein hit that I was aiming for when only eating from restaurants

• I ordered 2 servings of Tofu each with Simon hill when I was in Byron (as if that is not bro culture for plant-based legends)

What is sizzling this week?

• Are you a fan of tacos and pasta? Well if so, click HERE as you do not want to miss out on Prime Day! For today and tomorrow you can order my Charley St. Chorizo and Bolognese at a huge discount and have it delivered straight to your door! Not only will the Chorizo and Bolognese level up your taco and pasta game, but you will also be getting more plants in your diet!

• We have been told snacking is not good for us. Well, Cliff Bar has $2.9 billion reasons why that is not true. The bootstrapped company (love the work- one of the best manifesto stories ever) just sold to Me… Personally, on my endurance events, cliff bars have been epic, I don't have them otherwise, but love seeing a positive culture company doing epic things.

• What do plants and Wimbledon have in common? Novak Djokovic crushes both of them! Over the weekend, the legend Djokovic won Wimbledon for the fourth time in a row! The man is getting to Tom Brady status. A feat like this requires so much preparation, training, and of course excellent nutrition. Djokovic is fully plant-based, adding his name to the ranks of epic athletes who are fueling their bodies for success with baller plant goodness.

• Sprouts just got even cooler (not just the little cruciferous legends)… This week Sprouts the healthy grocer launched its support behind 50 collegiate women athletes. Under the latest NIL program where athletes can get paid for their name, image, and likeness, Sprouts, the market, is sponsoring athletes in the Big 12 and Pac 12. This just made shopping for fresh food a little more convenient

Performance Chat

When do I need to eat? Meal timing is constantly a topic of conversation. Have a look at this article which initially states that meal timing has a more significant impact even on nutritional value when looking to improve body composition. We will discuss this in more detail on the podcast, but just note that if you are fasting before a workout you should eat soon after you finish. If you eat before your workout you have around 2 hours before your stores of amino acids diminish.

Questions from the community

• @Russellwindsor88 “I'm allergic to oats, as they are In a lot of the breakfasts can I swap them out for something?” Mate love this.. you can 100% swap to quinoa flakes, and make granola out of rice. If it is the flour you are looking to substitute you can use rice, quinoa, all-purpose, and even besan (chickpea flour)

• @abhinavdazz “is this purely 10lb of muscle or does it involve a significant proportion of body fat as well?” Great question! So we did a before and after scan, looking at body fat with muscle. We put on 10lb of muscle, we actually put on about 12lb overall including fat!

• @michelatorczon “why are rest days important and how often should we incorporate them” Michela this is an epic question and because there is so much to spill I am going to make a podcast out of this

Recipe of the week

Already have dinner plans? It might be time to reconsider as the recipe of the week is this creamy and delicious broccoli rigatoni from Gas Oakley.

Ingredients:

• 1 Head Broccoli

• 2 tbs Olive Oil

• 1 Onion, peeled, chopped roughly

• 4 Cloves Garlic, peeled, chopped roughly

• 1 tsp Sea Salt

• 1 tsp Cracked Black Pepper

• Handful Fresh Basil

• 3/4 cup/180ml Non Dairy Milk

• Juice Half Lemon

• 250g Cooked Rigatoni Pasta

• Garnish

• Toasted Pine Nuts

• Lemon Zest