As requested by a good friend of mine. I’m going to begin sharing some ways that I keep my nutrition both plant based and protein sufficient. I know that a lot of people that have had trouble balancing the nutritional needs of an athlete with vegetarianism and have experienced some sort of burn out associated with protein deficiencies or plant based proteins. I went through this myself the first time that I attempted to make the jump to vegetarianism. This time around, I’ve found that their are actually far more ways to get the protein that you need than just beans and peanut butter. Here’s a simple way to get a jump on your daily protein requirements that is really time and money efficient.

Chocolate Banana Shake

This is down and dirty and exists in many permutations. Grab five medium sized bananas, two cups of your favorite brand of chocolate almond milk, a serving of wheat grass powder, (I use Amazing Grass) and a serving of your favorite plant based protein powder. (Plant Fusion and Sun Warrior work well for me)

Does your counter look like this? Good. Now toss it all into a blender and hit the button!

After a minute or so of blending, you should have a nice tasty smoothie that looks a bit like this.

Righto!

You’ve just created a concoction which should take a big bit out of your protein needs for the day because it breaks down as follows:

• 5 medium bananas. Each banana should contain 2g of protein for a total of 10g.
• Two cups of almond milk contains 2g of protein.
• One serving of wheat grass is another 2g of protein.
• One serving of Plant Fusion contains 21g of protein.
• All of this adds up to a whopping 35g of plant based protein!

Weighing about 69 kilos, I put down one gram of protein for every two kilos of body weight with just this shake alone! With my other meals, I’ll take in more than enough protein to maintain my weight and even have some left over to build up more lean mass. Five minutes of my time takes care of a vital part of my daily nutritional requirements.

I’ll try to add some more meals next time, but this is a great way to get started. Feel free to throw in berries, nut butters, or whatever else floats your boat!

Enjoy!