[throwaway4PP]

Seeing this response so high up makes me a bit sad.

There's a lot of ways to eat vegetarian, and all the ones that I can think of that require supplementing protein and vitamins are unhealthy.

It should be obvious that eating a way that "had immediate negative impacts on recovery" indicates that what you're eating is not healthy.

You see this with a lot of omnivores, they try cutting meat out of their diet and complain. But, the thing is, an omnivore diet without meat is a deficient diet. It sounds a bit intimidating but you really have to rebuild the way you eat if you've been eating meat.

Cultures that have a vegetarian tradition (even if not described as such) provide a rich tapestry of foods to make a healthy diet rich in protein and vitamins. Ethiopian, Persian, Indian, Sri Lankian; these are just some of the cultures a successful and healthy vegetarian will take inspiration from. Eat like a world traveler and you can forgo meat without being unhealthy.

Quick list of good protein-rich ingredients across cultures:

Mushroom

Quinoa

Eggs

Halloumi

Chickpeas

Green/brown/red lentils

Peas

Paneer

Yoghurt

Walnuts/almonds/sunflower seeds/pistachios

And forget stews. Roast, broil, saute, crisp, brown! There are flavors unlocked by the family of Maillard reactions - the technical name for the chemical reactions that give rise to browning - that we associate with meat but are common to the process of roasting. Savory vegetarian food is a thing.

[maxerickson]

Mushrooms straight up are not protein-rich.

Like sure, there aren't a lot of other calories either, so you can eat lots of them and get protein, but they are basically flavoring, not nutrition.

Eggs, paneer and yogurt aren't vegetarian.

[KptMarchewa]

Aren't vegan - but they are vegetarian. Veganism has consumed much of the vegetarian movement.

[ericmcer]

protein !== protein. Besides eggs those are all terrible sources of protein from an amino acid perspective.

I never said it was unhealthy to forego meat, just that I have never found a non-meat source that can compete. I was vegetarian for 6 months, have done tons of 3-6 week vegan stints, keto, carnivore and others all while doing rock climbing training and tracking my performance. I am noticeably weaker and more injury prone on a vegan/vegetarian diet. I do 3-6 weeks of veganism to intentionally lose muscle mass and lower my overall weight.

People and the internet can say whatever they want about nutrition but it will be hard to convince me when I can accurately predict how much strength I will lose when removing meat from my diet.

[throwaway4PP]

no, they are not "terrible", they're not complex proteins - excepting eggs. you have to mix two sources of simple protein to equal complex. good, bad; whatever your characterization of them may be, that's the foundation.

you again seem to be conflating your ability to measure something with the method itself being good. I think it's impossible for us to say your vegetarian diet is healthy when you say it makes you weaker, yet you point to being predictably weaker as a sign of knowing what you're doing? I'm not following.

[hombre_fatal]

Plug garbanzos into cronometer.com and tell me which amino acid it lacks. Do it again for broccoli.

There's a weird amount of "vegetable denialism" in these comments from people who presumably never even looked up the nutrition info a vegetable.

[stametseater]

Forget stew? I understand the motivations for being anti-meat, even if I don't agree with them, but anti-stew? Stew is great, even vegetables stews. How can you be anti-stew?

[throwaway4PP]

Hah, I'm not anti-stew. It's a conception you run into a lot, that healthy vegetarian food is a brown stew of chickpeas. I threw that in there for the skeptical.