Alan Murchison’s top tips for (not) going vegan

The cycling chef and nutritionist (performancechef.com) attempted a month of veganism but cracked halfway through! Here’s what he learnt…

1 Don’t preach. No one likes being preached at about what they should and shouldn’t eat.

2 Plan ahead. Reactive eating of any type is not optimal for performance. I made sure I had meal plans in place for two to three days at a time to make sure I was hitting daily calorie and macro-nutrient requirements.

3 Employ a phased approach if you are serious about this as a long-term project. Take meat out of your diet, then fish, i.e. go veggie, then gradually reduce dairy intake until you go full vegan — it takes time to adapt.

4 Use good-quality vegan protein supplements to ensure you get enough protein without unnecessary calories and can recover properly between workouts.

5 Stock up your kitchen. This is key to getting the most out of the vegan cooking experience: most pulses and grains are really cheap and widely available. Pre-cooked pulses are great and easy to use. Make sure you have a good range of spices to add depth of flavour: BBQ, Jerk, Tikka, Thai curry are all great. Fresh herbs in abundance also work well.

6 Be really careful you don’t just remove meat and add junk. Shop-bought falafel, vegan burgers, vegan sausages, Quorn are highly processed and contain lots of questionable artificial ingredients and additives. You probably wouldn’t buy a highly processed meat product, so why would you make allowances for veggiebased products? If it’s deep-fried, it’s best avoided except as a rare treat. Fact.