Trying to Gain Weigbt

I do very little exercise (relative to many other people), and I was trying to lose weight. I'm right around six foot and and 169-171 lbs. A 31 year old man. I was about 200 lbs months ago. I walk about 10,000 steps (like an old person), and I normally do basic "planks" for between 1 and 2 minutes a day. Outside of that, occasionally I'll pick up a weight a few times because I keep one near where I make my tempeh, but it's not really a planned thing.

A while ago, I stumbled on this youtube channel "vegan fit". I don't watch it, but the guy looks like some personal trainer type who is also vegan. I sort of hate gym culture. When I was in college and around 20 years old, I had a bit of a fitness phase, and even then I always walked rather than run. I would walk miles every day, but I never really liked running.

I have seen people on this sub mention making sure they eat a fair amount of carbs to maintain weight, and I've seen someone else mention that they eat ice cream regularly. I don't know how you want to look, but I've been slender for most of my life aside from the past few years where I gained a bunch of weight in part because of feeling a bit depressed and eating to escape.

If your intention is to "bulk up" in a healthy way, I assume what you mean is that you want to put on muscle. If you want to bulk up in that way, it's not going to be an immediate thing, and shaping and changing your body for the better is something that is possible, but it requires commitment. In most cases, you will learn to like the things you're doing to improve your physique, but in the beginning it will probably be unpleasant.

You should spend a bit of time researching what you eat from a nutritional standpoint. I'm a tempeh zealot, and generally tempeh is the highest protein source for many vegan and vegetarian diets. Learning to make it is very easy, and you can use numerous types of beans. You want to eat a "red meat" diet, but you don't want to be eating actual red meat. What that means is you should probably look into making the things you know have high protein.

It's a little embarassing how few leafy greens I eat considering I'm a vegetarian. Of course, I'm sure its much much more than some people, but I eat an assload of protein. A typical meal for me is something like a sandwich on whole wheat bread with tahini, nutritional yeast, and a few big slices of tempeh.

I understand that since I'm not a weight lifter, that's probably not the best advice, but that you want to make sure you're getting protein is very good advice, and I'm sure of that. Aside from that, focus on small gains and goals, or you will probably get discouraged. Try to make some measurable goal that you will record once a week or once every two weeks. You can check your weight or whatever you're checking more often than that, but you really have to put it out of your mind and just focus on recording something once every chunk of time.

If you're looking for healthy fats, check out flax, chia seeds, and hemp hearts. I'm pretty sure all three are also complete proteins.

/r/vegetarian Thread