You’re disciplined. You grind. You do the extra reps.
But your performance? Flat. Recovery? Slow. Strength? Meh.

Let me tell you:
If you’re relying on a plant-only diet to fuel elite performance, you’re setting yourself up for underperformance.

Your output is only as strong as your input.
And right now, your input is weak.

What’s Coming

1. The Protein Problem No One Talks About

2. Hormonal Collapse

3. Collagen & Injury

4. Real Athletes, Real Failures

5. Supplements can’t save you

6. What Happens After a Year or Two on Plants?

7. TL;DR — Vegan Diets vs. Athlete Reality

8. Your Move

The Protein Problem No One Talks About

You’ve probably heard this one:
“Bro, you can get enough protein from plants!”

Technically? Yeah.
But performance isn’t about “enough.” It’s about optimal.

Let me break it down.

Muscle growth and recovery hinge on leucine, the most anabolic amino acid.
Animal proteins give you more of it — and they hit faster.

But here’s the real deal: bioavailability.

Plant proteins don’t just have less leucine. Your body absorbs less of them overall.

Let’s look at the numbers:

Key Points:

• PDCAAS caps at 1.0 and may overestimate plant proteins because it ignores digestibility past the small intestine.

• DIAAS is more accurate and shows that animal proteins dominate in real absorption and utilization.

If you’re training hard and eating soft protein, you’re wasting effort.

Plant proteins aren’t just lower in leucine, they’re also missing essential amino acids (EAAs).
You have to combine multiple sources to even match the profile of one egg.
That’s a recipe for gut overload and poor absorption.

Hormonal Collapse

Vegan diets are linked to lower testosterone and reduced IGF-1.
Why should you care?

Because these hormones build you.
They decide if your workout gives you size and power — or just sweat and soreness.

A 2021 study in Nutrients found male vegans had significantly lower total and free testosterone levels than omnivores.
That means:

• Lower drive

• Lower recovery

• Lower muscle retention

• More fat gain

And IGF-1? This hormone is crucial for muscle hypertrophy and repair.
Animal proteins (especially dairy) spike IGF-1 production.
Plant diets? Not even close.

Collagen & Injury

Ligaments. Tendons. Cartilage.
Your body is held together by collagen.

Animal foods (especially bone broth, chicken skin, beef, and eggs) supply collagen and gelatin — the raw material for rebuilding joints.

Plant-based diets? No collagen.
None. Zero.

Yeah, you can take a vegan collagen supplement. But it’s synthetic, incomplete, and wildly overpriced.

And athletes who’ve gone plant-based often report more:

• Joint pain

• Chronic soft-tissue injuries

• Tendonitis

No surprise.
You’re doing high-impact work without repair materials.

Real Athletes, Real Failures

Let’s talk examples.

• Kendrick Farris, Olympic weightlifter, went vegan. His totals dropped. Never PR’d again on the big stage.

• Cam Newton switched to vegan. Lost muscle. Performance crashed. Later admitted, “I didn’t feel the same.”

• Venus Williams went raw vegan… and then added eggs and fish back to survive training.

Look: these aren’t casual lifters. These are top-tier athletes. And the moment they cut animal foods, things broke.

You don’t want that to be you.

Supplements Can’t Save You

Vegan athletes end up chasing their tails with pills and powders:

• B12 (only found in animal products)

• Heme iron

• Vitamin D3

• Omega-3s (EPA/DHA — not ALA from chia seeds)

• Zinc

• Creatine

• Taurine

• Carnosine

That’s eight+ pills a day just to plug the leaks.
And most of them aren’t absorbed well unless taken with fats or animal-based enhancers.

You’re now playing chemist just to stay afloat.
Is that peak performance?
Or survival mode?

What Happens After a Year or Two on Plants?

At first? You feel fine. Lighter even.
But then it hits:

• Strength plateaus

• Recovery slows

• Sleep tanks

• Libido drops

• You’re tired by noon

• Workouts feel like a chore

Your body's depleted.
You don’t just need calories — you need nutrient density.

Over time, the deficits compound.
Tendons wear out. Bones get soft. Mood crashes.
And the only people clapping are your Instagram followers — not your coach, not your scoreboard.

The Other Path

Now imagine this:

You train hard. You eat harder.
Steak, eggs, whey, bone broth.
No deficiencies. No recovery gaps.

You sleep deep.
You bounce back faster.

Your hormone levels? Optimized.

And it’s repeatable.
No crash. No patchwork supplement stack. Just food doing what it’s supposed to do.

TL;DR — Vegan Diets vs. Athlete Reality

Your Move

You already train like a pro.
Now fuel like one.

Stop playing with half the deck.
Your body needs full-spectrum protein, real recovery tools, and complete nutrition to perform at the highest level.

Vegan diets might be fine for average people.
You’re not average.

Fix this now, or get left behind.

Your window for greatness doesn’t stay open forever.
Dial in your nutrition — or settle for mediocrity.

Let’s be real:
You didn’t train this hard just to lose because your food couldn’t keep up.

Want help reworking your diet for real athletic performance?
Reach out to a coach who understands real food — not just ideology.

Train hard. Eat smart.
Win.

Cheers,

Jonas