Gaining weight on a vegan diet

[nino3]

ok i am so disapointed. I went on a vegan diet because i wanted to be healthier etc. I have gained weight and my clothes are so snug im about to have to buy a size bigger. My legs have more cellulite now than ever and i dont know what the heck im doing wrong. I have a green smoothie for breakfast with a piece of fruit. Then some oats with fruit for snack and some low fat hgh carb veggie lunch, High carb as in either potatoes, rice quinoa etc. No fat at all. I barely eat any bread. For dinner i also make myself something simple. Why am i gaining weight? I barely eat nuts, sauces, and never add any type of sugar to anything. Whats going on.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

This is not an easy one to answer at all. Are you doing things like no snacks unless hungry, eat until hungry not stuffed full, watching your portion sizes, and so on. You seem to be pretty unlucky. I hope you can fix this. How much exercise do you do?

 

[Jamie in Chile]

You could try one of those calorie counting websites where you input everything you eat and check how many calories yo are eating compared to what you should be getting and if it's too much you can look if any foods have too much.

Also, I wonder is it possible your body is adjusting during the first weeks? Or have you being doing this for many months or years?

 

[amberfunk]

Do you just drink water or do you also drink soda, juice, etc? Do you eat processed food? You might not be getting enough exercise and eating more calories than you are expending.

 

[callador]

I agree with Jamie. You need to track exactly what you eat for a week, even the little snacks here and there, and see what your total calories are at. Can you detail here exactly what you eat? This would also include the serving size and total calories for each portion of food. You may be eating more calories than you think with juices or processed foods. Exercise, like cardio, may help a little bit, but really the key to weight loss is figuring out what your baseline calorie needs are right now. Then you can cut some calories off that (the amount you cut is based on how fast you want to lose weight).

For a lot of folks, a whole foods plant based diet allows them to not track calories because the foods they happen to like have lower calories. But another person could easily gain weight if they drank a lot of juices (really high in sugar) or had a lot of avocados, nuts, pasta, etc. Anything with a high caloric density should be tracked if weight loss in an issue. In the end, it still comes down to calories in/out, and the best way to manage that is to track what you eat.

Best of luck on the journey!

 

[nino3]

I have only started the vegan diet in July. I am very bloated from my stomach also. I do a bottle of water first thing in the am. I also put lemon in the water. Then i do a green smoothie. I add: Kale, spinack, celery, cucumber and some fruit like berries or pineapple. I quit eating the oatmeal as i think i can make it with only the smoothie till lunch. Lunch i take to work and today i had lentil curry with white rice and a side of spinach. If i feel huingry i do eat fruit like grapes, nectarines, plums or oranges. Then last night i ate half a papaya for dinner. Its rare i eat nuts or sauces etc. Sometimes i do get some cashews and eat a hadful of them as a snack but as a snack only. I was drinking diet coke but quit cold turkey last week. Someone help me. Ive always been thin but ive been starving myself my whole life. I dont exercise as my days are extremely busy with work and small kids. I dont think ive ever looked this big. I used to avoid carbs at all costs. It was always a small piece of some meat and veggies. Never rice, potatoes etc. Or id eat a small piece of meat and thats it. Im 41 years old and im tired of starving, im tired of people not caring for environment and im tired of being unhealthy. Can anyone recoomend the websites so i can count caloreis please.

 

[callador]

Can you break down exactly what you ate during that day? Not just some lentils, grapes, etc. Instead list 4oz of lentils with the total calories (or even better, the total carbs, protein, and fat in grams). What is your height/weight? What was your weight before the diet, and where are you now? These are all things we sort of need to help.

Check the myfitnesspal app on your phone or PC. You can log stuff there. I am sure there are better options, but that one is free.

For right now, you could eat how you did before, but do it with fake meats. The vegan Boca crumbles actually taste pretty good. You could mix that with veggies and make soups, etc. They also have no fat and the calories are pretty low. This would assure you are getting less calories. But if you say I do a handful of nuts, etc. it really doesn't help us see the big picture. And if you are a smaller person (100-120lbs) you won't get as many calories either.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

I have seen https://cronometer.com/ mentioned and reccomended on forums like this one although I've never used it myself, or any such website, but that was the kind of thing I was talking about. You need to measure the amounts of each food fairly accurately or it will be a waste of time.

If you are drinkings juices and sodas, cut them out and replace with water.

Try filling up on veg and fruit as much as possible rather than other foods (although it sounds you already do a bit!)

Your diet does not look like the kind of thing that would case weight gain but these things are hard to tell.

If you don't see any success after trying cronometer and considering the other tips in this forum, you may need to see a professional nutrionist or some other professional to go through your diet with you. I bet that's not what you want to hear as you probably don't want to spend any money on this but if you look honestly about what amount of money you spend on other things that are less important than your health, you might be able to figure out a way to afford it?

But before you get to that stage, keep in mind you have only been doing this for about 2 months. I would try and fix things yourself for 1-2 months more first (rather abitrary suggested amount of time). You may find as your body adjusts to the changes you stop putting on weight naturally. No particular reason to think this is likely, but you never know.

I kind of feel for you because it seems like you are doing all the right things already but sometimes life isn't fair! I hope you figure it out.

 

[amberfunk]

The soda will keep weight on you. When I stopped drinking soda I lost a lot of the bloat and at least five pounds. It's not good to starve yourself. Eat when you are hungry. Eating more in the morning is better for your metabolism than just having juice. Also as women age it's harder to loose weight without eating properly and getting exercise.

 

[nino3]

Thank you all so much. I just found my fitnesspal and might do the calorie thing there although i really dont want this to be complicated. I was seeing some youtube videos of this girls doing a raw vegan diet or a fruit diet and gaining a ton of weight,.I undestand not eating 20 bananas in one sitting but i eat maybe 2 or 3 a day and as far as i see this is the most calorie dense fruit i eat. I used to eat rice for dinner and lunch but this week have stopped that. Last night i had 2 small potatoes and cut them to fries and baked them till crispy. I added some spices to it and ate some steamed broccoli and a tablespoon of hummus. That was my dinner. Is this ok? I still havnt put it in my fitness pal. I kind of am scared to be obsessed with counting calories etc and i had problems before where i took it too far. I saw the vegan communuity as a way for me to help my community and to eat healthy without ever worrying about getting anorexia again and eating. Just dont want to gain weight. I am 5'1 and am usually 115 lb. I am now 125 and gaining.

 

[callador]

Nino,

You really wouldn't have to use myfitnesspal forever, it would just be to see what your ballpark daily calories are right now. For instance, I flushed out my diet in a spreadsheet and figured out where my macros were at. I eat the same types of things every day, or if there is a small difference, it isn't a big deal to me. But I have a ballpark idea of what I need to eat every day.

At 115# you may only get 1200 calories a day if you metabolism is on the slower side. So you could easily overshoot that on any kind of diet if you aren't paying attention to what you are eating. Just based of what you mentioned in this thread you have:

3 bananas- 315 cals
1 large potato (you said two smaller ones, so that might be the size of one larger one)- 250 cals
1 serving of humus- 25 cals
1 serving broccoli- 50 cals

So that is 640 cals of the 1200 you may get for the day. We don't know what your baseline is right now. You could do the same thing for your other meals as well. Again, just do it once to see kind of where you are at. After that you can start to tweak things (change a banana for a lower calorie fruit), etc.

Earlier in the thread you mentioned nuts, oats, fruit for breakfast and lunch (in a smoothie sometimes), quinoa, rice, etc. I am sure that is getting your calories too high. If you want, I can put a three meal plan together here for you to hit 1200 cals. You might need more than that, and we can then bump it up. I may be able to get a veggie snack in there as well. Just let me know what kinds of foods you like, and I can throw something together in a couple of minutes. How are you with some soy products? We could get your protein up more using that.

 

[nino3]

Callador yes please that would really help me if you could give me ideas on how to hit my calories. A 3 day meal plan could really help me. Id really appreciate it. I am fine with soy products. I used tofu once and dint really like it but ill eat it if i have to. I love fruits and all veggies so no worries there. I eat beans, lemntils, garbanzos, etc. I will really eat just about anything as long as its healthy. Thank you id appreciate a meal plan till i get used to it all.

 

[callador]

Here would be an example for a day: (all macros listed as F, C, P - Total Calories

Breakfast-
1/2 cup dry oatmeal- 3.5/29/6 - 170
1 cup soy milk- 4.3/15/8- 130
1 banana- .4/27/1.3- 105
Total- 8.2/71/15.3- 405

Lunch-
1/2 cup cooked black beans- .5/23/7- 105
1/2 cup cooked rice- .2/22/2- 102
1/2 green pepper- .1/3/.5- 12
3 mushrooms- .3/1.8/1.8- 12
1/4 onion- 0/2.5/.5- 11
1 tomato- .2/4.8/1.1- 22
Total- 1.3/57.1/12.9- 264

Snack-
Broccoli (1 cup)- .3/6/2.6- 31
Carrot (whole)- .1/6/.6- 25
1 oz almonds- 14/6/6- 163
Total- 14.4/18/7.2- 219

Dinner- (same as lunch plus...)
Boca Crumbles (1/2 cup)- 0/6/13-70
Total- 1.3/63.1/25.9

Grand Total- 25.2 fat/ 209.2 carbs/ 61.3 protein- 1,222 calories

 

[callador]

Just remember to cook all your foods with no oil. I like to cook my lunch and dinner in a pot and have it like a thick soup or rice meal. Just use water or vegetable broth. You can pretty much interchange all your veggies. So if you want to try something new, you can. Just check the calories online and stay away from starchy veggies for a direct swap. If 1 cup of beans is too much, you could swap one of them out for another banana for instance. The calories are about the same. You could also get more boca crumbles in your meals if you reduce the beans as well. It really depends how well you tolerate them.

Be careful making food swaps. Use things that are about the same amount of calories. Once you look them up one or two times (just google whatever you want to see plus the word nutrition), you will be able to ball park everything. Swapping the veggies is pretty safe though. But if you add more rice, etc. you can see how the calories can add up. This diet is also closer to how you probably used to eat with meat and veggies. Now you are doing faux meat, veggies and beans.

Try a diet like this for a couple of days and see how you respond. Let me know and we can tweak things up or down. Stick with it!

 

[nino3]

Thank you so much callador ill start doing it this weekend.

 

[Nekodaiden]

Eh.

You're putting on weight drinking green smoothies, eating salads and fruits, not eating any or very little fat in the way of avocados, nuts/seeds or their butters and not using oil?

You must be very unlucky indeed. I came to Veganism as a beer drinker and regular user of oil. I lost weight just cutting out the animal products. When I cut oil, I lost more. I still eat some fat in the way of Tahini, Flax, avocados and other nuts and seeds. I've actually lost weight when I cut down on these too and still drink beer.

You're fat gain story is truly amazing.

 

[Limuray]

This is an old thread, but I would like to know how this all ended with OP.
I previously wrote a topic about weight loss on vegan diet..and I am also gaining weight after transitioning. Slowly, but still gaining.