VeganAthleteGuide

Tag: Vitamin B12

Vegan Meal Plan for Beginners – The Healthy way

Starting to be vegan without knowing the basics that keep you healthy or a wrong mindset can be reasons to quit a vegan diet. To keep that from happening you need a vegan meal plan for beginners that helps you to stay on track.
I won’t focus on giving you meal examples but guidelines you can use to create your own meals with some inspiration from some other sources if you need.

Basics ingredients and guidelines to create a Vegan Meal
You can see the most important foods as well as things to look for in the infographic below.

Have all of the 6 food groups daily in your diet and keep your food variating to make sure to get your nutrients.
At the beginning of your (healthy) vegan journey you should use cronometer.com to keep track of the nutrients you get from your food. Using it a couple of times you will start to know for yourself what to eat to get your nutrient levels.
Dry legumes need to be always soaked before you cook them. This will get rid of the phytic acid that prevents the release of nutrients and also your body from absorbing nutrients.
But phytic acid has some positive effects as well. It acts as an antioxidant and prevents cancer. You can find out more on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
And about the whole grains. The options you see on the infographic are without gluten. In case you have a gluten intolerance, they are your preferred source. If you don’t have any, I would recommend to use whole spelt over whole wheat. Whole Oats are good too.

Thoughts that make you doubt a Vegan Diet
I won’t get enough Protein. Actually you not only can get enough protein throughout the day but even enough if you exercise and don’t supplement with protein shakes. Legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains are all good sources of protein.
Iron? Not only it will be enough for men but as well for women who need a bit more. If you use my recommended food groups well, you won’t have any mineral deficiency except if you already have some health issues you might not be aware of. That is one reason to not just believe that everything is fine but to make regularly check ups.
There is nothing I can eat. The limitation is only in your head. There are millions of combinations you can have to create a vegan dish. And it is very likely that you can find at least hundred dishes you like, of which you will probably use not more than 20 regularly.
There are no restaurants. There are more and more options for vegans to go out to eat. And this will increase because veganism is growing. And you can be a part of the growth and not only improve your health but also reduce animal abuse and environmental damage caused by factory farming.
Veganism might be unhealthy for long term. Not sure what Dr. Ellsworth Wareham would say to that. This vegan retired as a plastic surgeon at 95. His mind and body stayed sharp like the scalpel he used.
A vegan lifestyle is unhealthy when you don’t know what you do. And depending what drugs you take that you shouldn’t (like birth control pills), or doing other lifestyle mistakes, you set yourself a ground for being unhealthy you might blame your diet for where it is not the diets fault.
Beware that cosmetics with questionable ingredients can cause harm too, like decreasing your thyroid function.

Is Supplementation necessary when having only Vegan Meals?
Using the RDA guideline in cronometer, you will usually have difficulties reaching your recommended calcium needs. But you won’t need as much as shown. 9.4mg per kg will do (~60%). Here is the study for that claim.
Your vitamin D levels can only be sufficient from sunlight no matter what diet (or supplementation in winter when the sun won’t be enough for you).
Vitamin B12 is the only “modern” vegan problem. You can read about my experience testing to go without vitamin B12 supplements.
If you variate and have a sufficient amount of the foods shown in the infographic, you shouldn’t face any malnutrition. Neither in macronutrients like protein nor in micronutrients like iron.

Conclusion

No matter how your individual vegan meal plan will look like, make sure to enjoy what you eat. You can give yourself some treats from time to time. Just keep yourself from being stressed about your diet. Stress can cause more harm than an unhealthy diet.
To stick to a vegan diet as a beginner, you will need a good reason to do so. I will soon link a post about how to stick with a vegan diet.

You probably have some questions. Don’t hesitate to leaf some in the comments section.

See ya
Alex

January 19, 2017
Best Vitamin B12 Supplement for Vegans and the rest of the World
If you are looking to supplement your vitamin B12, you will find many products to choose from. To make the choice easier I will explain how these supplements differ so you can get the best vitamin B12 supplement for yourself.

What Supplements you can choose from
You can get vitamin B12 in different forms. Not only in shape and structure like in pill- melting tablet- or liquid form but different in chemical forms too.
The shape form is the less important to focus on. But if I would choose one, I would take a liquid one, because digestion starts already in the mouth and it doesn’t have so many other ingredients like the melting tablet.
The main focus should be on the chemical form of B12 and there are mainly 4 to choose from. We have cyanocobalamin, hydroxocobalamin, methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin.
Three of those are occurring naturally in the body and in food. Cyanocobalamin compared to the other three is synthetic.
Hydroxocobalamin and adenosylcobalamin are higher available in meat products. Methylcobalamin is higher available in milk products. There are more forms of B12 (Cobalamin) that are usually not present in food but are produced through conversion in the body.

What are the differences in these Vitamin B12 Forms
The major difference between these four B12 forms is that only two of them are bioactive and can be used by your body. That doesn’t mean that the other two are useless but need to be converted by the body into active forms first.
To give you an understanding of the converting process look at the infographic below.
As you can see the cyanocobalamin needs up to four conversion processes and the hydroxocobalamin up to three to produce the bioactive coenzymes methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin.
Methylcobalamin can be converted to adenosylcobalamin but not the other way around.

What is the best Vitamin B 12 Supplement
The synthetic cyanocobalamin has the negative effect of leaving cyanide during the conversion in the body. Cyanide is a toxic substance that has damaging effects in the body. It was used during world war 1 and 2 because of that.
So it is already clear which vitamin B12 form you better avoid.
The only positive thing about it is, that it is very cheap to produce and thus cheaper to buy.
Hydroxocobalamin has the positive effect to stay the longest in your bloodstream as a deposit. Another positive effect is its ability to detox the mentioned cyanide as well as nitric oxide. Cyanide is usually accumulated in the body through smoking. Too much nitric oxide can cause migraines.
The downside is that during conversion from Cob(II)alamin, S-Adenosyl methionine (in short SAM or AdoMet) is used to produce methylcobalamin.
S-Adenosyl methionine is a cosubstrate that has shown in studies to have:
the same positive effects on depression like regular anti depressions
similar positive effects on colon cancer like chemotherapy
pain relief in osteoarthritis patients due to probably anti-inflammatory effects
benefits for liver health, where it is produced and used in the body.
You can read more about it on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
To avoid SAM being used up in your body, a reduced intake of hydroxocobalamin would be beneficial.
The best vitamin B12 supplement suitable for vegans I would recommend you to take, would be a mixture of methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin. This helps your body to get the two important coenzymes it needs without converting them and using up your body’s resources.
Hydroxocobalamin can be considered as well for detox reasons. Because of its long durability in the body, compared with the two coenzyme forms, it won’t be necessary to take it on a regular basis.

Some people have a missing gene to convert the cob(I)alamin into methylcobalamin what seems to cause side effects. In case you realize side effects you should focus on getting your B12 from hydroxocobalamin, if you already know that you have a problem with methylcobalamin.
Don’t hesitate to share your experience or questions about the mysterious vitamin B12. You might help someone or can get new insights. You can read about my experience here.
See ya
Alex
January 5, 2017
Vitamin B12 deficiency in Vegans – What you should know

Vitamin B12 for vegans is one of the nutrients people think won’t be sufficiently obtained on a vegan diet. Instead of the other things like protein, iron, calcium and what else some tend to see as problematic, vitamin B12 deficiency in vegans is the only thing that is truly being a problem that you can’t overcome with a vegan diet. At least with a tasty diet.. (more below)
So that you not face any problems, I will give you the things you need to know and my experience about the experiment I made with not supplementing with vitamin B12.

Experiment on a Vegan diet without Vitamin B12 Supplementation
Going vegan I made tons of research on this diet form and stumbled across one major issue in a vegan diet. As you already know it was vitamin B12. So having the “paleo way” in my mind I wasn’t really into considering supplementation but a way to get the B12 on a natural way.
What I have found about getting the B12 natural (back then) was that if you have a healthy gut flora, your body will absorb a sufficient amount of B12 from your gut. Important to know is that B12 is actually produced in your colon, the only problem is that the colon is not absorbing a sufficient amount into your bloodstream and the B12 is ending up wasted in the toilet.
Other ways I read of getting vitamin B12 are eating dirty vegetables, meaning not washed after harvest, what meant to me the only healthy way doing this is to grow your own food (what I couldn’t do). And another would be to drink water from a natural spring. I have a spring near my place and gave that approach a try.
So assuming to have a healthy gut flora, eating organic foods (but cleaned) and drinking my water from a spring I put it to the test. After 2 years I had obvious symptoms I couldn’t neglect and did a regular blood test to check my B12 status. It is not the best approach for a B12 test but good enough, if you are really deficient and it turned out that I was deficient.

Vitamin B12 is recycled in your Body
The reason why I could go for two years without having symptoms of a vitamin B12 deficiency is mainly because vitamin B12 can be reused and therefore your body won’t get rid of it so fast.
But after I started to be sleepy throughout the day as well as more forgetful, I did the blood test to check what it could be. Already being very sure it can only be the B12 the tests showed exactly that. The doctor added that he is surprised that my hemoglobin (red blood cell) size is normal as it should usually get bigger. I’m not sure if that has something to do with unknown super powers (probably not).
So my test failed and I can tell everybody not to repeat this experiment because it can end in damaged nerves in your body that can cause an inability for a lifetime, if you don’t react quick enough. Another thing I learned is to invest into blood tests instead of just thinking everything is fine.
After taking vitamin B12 supplements for some weeks and recheck myself again on the B12 issue, the results have been alright. But soon after I realized that I could have prevented this from happening. There was another way I could have obtained the vitamin B12 naturally, if I only had thought about it more simple.

Vitamin B 12 can be obtained on a Vegan diet but…
… that’s for the hardcore vegans. Like I mentioned before B12 is produced in the colon and then wasted in the toilet. Well, thinking simple would be: “Why waste it?”
If you would eat your poo, you would get a sufficient amount of B12. And that was actually already known in the late 50s when Dr. Sheila Callender treated vegans with low B12 with water extracts from their poo. That is documented on onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
Vitamin B12 isn’t hard to get naturally. Just hard to eat.
Looking at the animal kingdom you will find animals like our beloved dogs eating poo. The reason behind it is that they are lacking in nutrients (like B12) they can get by reusing their “brownies”. This a legitimate and natural way to get B12 even if you are on a vegan diet. You can argue that poo is not vegan but vegetarian and I would’t participate in that debate, because I think that time could be better used like in trying to sell one’s poo.
Luckily we have science that can produce vitamin B12 in capsule form so you don’t need to live a poopy live.

Vitamin B12 should be taken seriously
No matter if you want to take supplements or tend more to poo, which I wouldn’t recommend, watch out to keep your vitamin B12 up. Too low levels can also cause depression what can result in obesity as well.
A Vitamin B12 deficiency isn’t only a vegan or vegetarian problem. The average Joe can have it too and people with a higher age tend to be deficient as well. Therefore, you should always do yearly check ups on any deficiency to prevent age related diseases.
You can find out about what vitamin B12 supplement you should take here.

Did you have a similar experience like I did or did you even have found a better way nobody knows about getting your vitamin B12? Let me know in the comments.
See ya
Alex

December 13, 2016