Do you need to eat meat to get ripped?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

—By Jon Mooallem

the natural olympia is one of the pharmaceutical-free-bodybuilding circuit's premier contests, and even without steroids, its competitors look less like men than ideas of men as imagined by comic book artists—with rough-hewn backs and abdomens like stamped iron panels. As the annual event gets under way in a ballroom at an airport hotel outside San Francisco, gaggles of these impossibly beefy men strip down to Speedos and skimpy "posing trunks" backstage. They lather themselves with Dream Tan, their skin colors gradually homogenizing into a slim range of black and bronze. They line up in front of mirrors and rehearse their poses. From time to time, someone takes a pull of beef jerky.

Kenneth Williams sits in the audience, waiting for his turn to preen. The 41-year-old is irrepressibly handsome, with a mayoral smile, shaved head, and tiny triangular tattoo under his left eye. At 6 feet, 190 pounds, he's "still in the baby stage"; he hopes to gain another 25 pounds. After a four-year hiatus from bodybuilding, he's spent the last seven months resculpting his musculature—all on a diet of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, legumes, and lots of soy protein.

In a feat that he claims "shocked the world," Williams placed third in the novice division of the Natural Olympia in 2004, becoming a major figure in the exceedingly minor subculture of vegan bodybuilding. So far, just a few vegans have infiltrated the elite levels of professional sports, such as Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, the former Atlanta Hawks guard Salim Stoudamire, and Ultimate Fighting Championship bruiser Mac Danzig. Williams is on a mission to inflate his body into a bulging rejoinder to the myth that you can't build muscle on a plant-based diet. "If you think of a vegan," he says, "you think of someone who is skinny and frail, who has issues. A tree hugger. Smells funny. I'm putting the breath of life back into people. I'm out to save lives."

Williams is also out for fame—huge, ridiculous fame, and all the money and influence that come with athletic stardom. "The legend of Kenneth Williams" is not a phrase he is uncomfortable using. It's only a matter of time, Williams believes, before big companies realize what a "conscious athlete" can do for their brand. "This is what I want: $10 million with $2 million cash in hand," Williams told me a few days before the Natural Olympia. "Imagine 'Nike Natural.' When Nike gives me a deal, I'll outsell Michael Jordan." Then he pitched me his ideas for hybrid car commercials.

When the "Open Men Tall" class is announced, Williams and 11 other competitors file onto the stage, toe a yellow line, and follow a monotonous cycle of commands: "Quarter turn to the right...Abdominals with one leg extended...Lat spread...Face front." Bodybuilding is about exhibiting muscles, not using them. Thus the 20-minute series of poses that isolate parts of the anatomy while a long table of judges, like usda inspectors, silently grade the meat in front of them.

Williams, far stage right, transitions fluidly between poses, almost tai chi-like. He is impressively chiseled, but it's impossible not to notice that he's dramatically smaller and less defined than nearly everyone else. When a Briton with angel-white hair assumes the signature "pump you up" pose, called "crab most muscular," it looks like he's wearing a rubber strongman suit. Williams, like many bodybuilders, says he doesn't know his own measurements, but it looks like his chest is a good 12 inches smaller than the 50-inch ones around him. He is fit, yes. But the former arena football player and firefighter looks like a mere underwear model among titans.

There's a certain Neolithic simplicity to building muscle by devouring the muscle of another living thing. For example, Dexter "The Blade" Jackson, last year's Mr. Olympia and a three-time Arnold Classic champion, routinely bookends a day of steak and chicken eating with 10 egg whites. ("My metabolism is very special," he notes.) Meat is such an obvious delivery device for protein that bodybuilders often use the two words interchangeably. When I tell Jackson that I am writing about a vegan bodybuilder, he is incredulous: "There's no way you'd be a pro bodybuilder without meat. I've never heard of anyone who doesn't eat protein."

"I can't think of any reason why muscle can't be built on a vegan diet," says nutrition professor Marion Nestle, the author of What to Eat. Going vegan, she explains, should have no effect on the performance of normal athletes, provided they eat a balanced diet. But bodybuilders' diets are anything but balanced: When they're bulking up, they may consume between 1.5 and 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. That's a ridiculous amount, Nestle says, about twice what's recommended for strength-training athletes and enough to cause chronic kidney problems. And because plant-based sources of protein are generally far less concentrated than animal sources, a vegan muscleman must eat even more food (or protein powder) than a carnivore. Nestle says the thought of protein-pounding bodybuilders, vegan or not, "makes me want to throw up just to think about it."

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/03/veg-o-might

[Ken y Leidys 20]

Bruce Lee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee

Nutrition

According to Linda Lee, soon after he moved to the United States, Lee started to take nutrition seriously and developed an interest in health foods, high-protein drinks and vitamin and mineral supplements. He later concluded that in order to achieve a high-performance body, one could not fuel it with a diet of junk food, and with "the wrong fuel" one's body would perform sluggishly or sloppily. Lee also avoided baked goods, describing them as providing calories which did nothing for his body. Lee's diet included protein drinks; he always tried to consume one or two daily, but discontinued drinking them later on in his life.

Linda recalls Bruce's waist fluctuated between 26 and 28 inches. "He also drank his own juice concoctions made from vegetables and fruits, apples, celery, carrots and so on, prepared in an electric blender", she said.[49] He consumed green vegetables, fruits, and fresh milk everyday. Bruce always preferred to eat Chinese or other Asian food because he loved the variety that it had. Bruce also became a heavy advocate of dietary supplements, including:

Vitamin C

Lecithin granules

Bee pollen

Vitamin E

Rose hips (liquid form)

Wheat germ oil

Natural protein tablets (chocolate flavor)

Acerola — C

B-Folia

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Bruce could control every muscle in his body - except the one that kept him alive. Very sad.

Amazing martial artist though.

[britbird 4]

I don't doubt it can be done...I imagine it takes a good deal more dedication though. And tremendous digestive capacity!

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

What do vegans think about supplementing? Many of the essential amino acids, the ones that the body cannot make on it's own, come from animal proteins, including red meat. Even the other apes supplement their mostly vegetarian diets with animal protein. I suppose you could get the bulk of your protein from soy, eggs, and fish. I guess it depends how strict your vegan diet is. Do bugs count? Insects are a good source of protein!