Eating Like a No Meat Athlete

As anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile probably knows, I'm a little obsessed with No Meat Athlete (the blog, the podcast, the brand, all of it). No Meat Athlete founder and podcast host Matt Frazier has a new book, co-authored with vegan bodybuilder Robert Cheeke, coming out June 15, and I cannot wait! It's called The Plant-Based Athlete, and they've interviewed tons of amazing athletes about their performance and their diets. In the lead-up to the book coming out, Matt has been blogging a bit more about nutrition for plant-based athletes, and a recent post caught my attention.

In this post, titled A Healthy, Practical Plant-based Diet: A Typical Day, Matt talks about his ideal day of eating. He outlines breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks (and even his nightly booze). I decided to follow his plan for a day (by the way, Matt talks about this simple way of eating a lot, and I'm pretty sure I've done this before. But I did it again last Thursday!).

Matt only has coffee until 9 am, but I run in the mornings, so I had some medjool dates before a 3-mile run. At 9 am, he has a smoothie, and that's what I always have after my runs. So I made this smoothie with bananas, strawberries, blueberries, Complement protein powder (made by NMA!), walnuts, and flax seeds.

For his morning snack, Matt often has whole wheat bagels or English muffins with hummus. I didn't have either, but I had some whole wheat bread, so I had that with kalamata olive hummus around 11 am.

Lunch for Matt is a giant salad! And that's what I had. I filled this mixing bowl with every veggie in my fridge, plus chickpeas, black beans, sesame seeds, and walnuts. I made some Goddess Dressing from the No Meat Athlete book as a topper. You can't tell in this pic, but this salad was bigger than my head. When eating a salad as a meal, it should be BIG!

In the afternoon, Matt snacks on fruit or veggies with hummus. I had some strawberries that I'd gotten in my CSA.

And finally, for dinner, Matt makes sure he has a grain, a green, and a bean. This can come in many forms — a bowl, a plate of pasta with sauce/beans/broccoli, tacos with beans/greens, etc. For me last Thursday, it was a Tofu Stir-fry with broccoli, mushrooms, and brown rice. 

Matt allows himself one beer or glass of wine each night, so I made sure to have a glass of red pinot noir after dinner! I love this way of eating. It made me feel super healthy without too much restriction. I probably wouldn't want to eat salad for lunch every day, but having a giant salad mid-day means I get lots of veggies in so that dinner can be a little indulgent. For example, today, I followed a similar plan — smoothie breakfast, salad for lunch. But my dinner is spaghetti with vegan ground beef! You can really eat whatever you want for dinner because you know you've gotten your nutrition in for the day with the smoothie and salad!

I'll be doing a book review of The Plant-Based Athlete soon! But you can learn more about the book (including how to get rad pre-order bonuses!) here.