On Lent and Lifting

 

Thoughts on Fasting, Training, Self-Sacrifice, and the Intersection of Religious Practice and Lifting

    I am an Orthodox Christian.  I was baptized and chrismated in a “Slavic” Orthodox Church before Easter 2011.  I write that at the outset so that you will understand the next part, which is the fact that usually the date of Pascha (Easter) in the Christian East—Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, along with, I suppose, whatever remnants of Nestorian Christianity still remain—and Easter in the Christian West (Catholicism and Protestantism) fall on different dates.  (This is not the place to discuss why they are on different dates, but if you want to read more, here is an article last year from The Greek Reporter: “Why Orthodox and Catholic Easterare on Different Dates.”)  But this year they fall on the same date later this month (April 20^th), which means that all Christians worldwide are in the middle of Lent as I write these words.  So, with that in mind, I thought I would offer some reflections on Lent—and, more specifically, the ascetical dimension of it—and lifting.

     If you’re not Christian or even religious—perhaps agnostic or even atheist—then I hope you will still give this essay a read.  The insights offered (I hope) will be applicable to all lifters, as there are more similarities than you (probably) realize between religious “practice” and training.  Both can learn, and benefit, from the other.

     These thoughts may be a bit random, but hopefully they will make for somewhat of a cohesive whole.

 

     During Lent—and other fasting seasons, such as the Nativity Fast before Christmas, the Apostle’s Fast, the Dormition Fast, and believe it or not, almost every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year—Orthodox Christians fast from dairy products and all meat.  Which means that we eat vegan for at least one-third of the year.  But we are also expected to eat less food than usual.  The fast should be hard.  That’s the point.  However, it must be said, the point is (and this is probably quite obvious) also not to get in shape, to look better, or to even feel better, though it’s likely that you will feel better after a few weeks from simply eating lighter—assuming you still try to eat reasonably healthy during the season.  I knew a guy who basically subsisted on Lay’s potato chips, Twizzlers, and Coca-Cola during the entirety of Great Lent; let’s just say that “good” is not how he felt by the time Easter rolled around.

     Even though I don’t focus on building muscle during Lent, it’s certainly possible to still do so, as there are plenty of vegan athletes—and, yes, even bodybuilders, powerlifters, and strongman competitors—who accomplish the feat.  So, with some of that in mind, here are some of my thoughts on “vegan muscle-building”:[1]

     First off, let me dispel a common myth: that you can’t get bigger and stronger on a vegan diet.  I can say, without a doubt, that’s a load of bollocks (as the Brits might say).  The truth is simply that it’s often harder to get big and strong on a vegan diet because you have to make better choices; primarily you have to ensure that you are getting an adequate amount of protein from your diet, as well as enough fat.

     The most common problem with eating vegan—even for those who aren’t hard-training athletes—is the lack of protein, and protein that has a full array of amino acids.  When you are eating meat and dairy, it’s incredibly easy to get adequate protein with a good amino acid profile, but when eating vegan you have to make the right choices.

     One of the common pitfalls—probably the pitfall—with vegan bodybuilding is to simply get all of your protein from protein shakes; there are numerous vegan protein powders and meal replacements on the market that allow for the ease of doing this.  You will always build more muscle and strength (not to mention be healthier) when eating whole foods than when using supplements.  This is the same whether you choose to go vegan or not.

     The following foods are some of my favorite whole food protein sources when eating vegan:

• Beans: I prefer black, pinto, and kidney beans.  One cup of any of these beans packs approximately 15 grams of protein.
• Hemp seeds
• Nut butter: This doesn’t have to just be peanut butter.  Almond butter and cashew butter are also particularly good—I could eat cashew butter by the jar.
• Veggies: Yes, you read that correctly—a lot of vegetables have more protein than you realize.  Spinach, kale, and peas are some of my usual choices.  (Maybe Popeye—one of my childhood idols—wasn’t that wrong after all!)
• Tofu: Tofu is popular among most vegans because not only does it have a good deal of protein but it’s also quite cheap.  It does help, however, if you know how to cook with it.  Luckily for me, I’m capable of whipping up some tasty tofu dishes, which means this will always be high on my list.
• Lentils:  You can do a lot with lentils (including make some kick-ass veggie burgers).  And the great thing about lentils is that they are higher in protein than the rest of the stuff on this list.  One cup packs about 18 grams of protein.

     If you still need additional protein after eating several whole-food meals each day—I think the “old” standby of 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight each day is still a good rule to start with—then, by all means, supplement your diet with a protein shake.

     When attempting to build muscle on a vegan diet, be sure that you are consuming enough calories on a daily basis.  If you are trying to build muscle and burn fat (or at least burn fat and retain muscle), consume approximately 10 times your bodyweight in calories each day.  If you want to gain muscle while still keeping your bodyfat relatively low, then 12 times your bodyweight in calories daily should be adequate.  And if you’re trying to gain as much muscle as possible (while still not gaining much fat), then consume about 15 times your bodyweight each day.

     Before I get too much further into this discussion, let me say this right from the start: When I eat vegan for extended periods of time, I feel good, however I often lose weight—a combination of muscle, fat, and water.  Before Christmas and before Easter, for instance, I spend these 40 days by training less and by eating very little some days.  However, as soon as I get off the fast, I typically gain quite a bit of muscle.  It’s nothing for me to gain 10 pounds the two weeks after Christmas or Easter.  The combination of doubling—maybe even tripling—my caloric intake and training on an almost daily basis does wonders for my hypertrophy and strength gains.  It can do the same for yours.  Which brings up the point that perhaps this kind of eating is beneficial even for those of you who have no interest in fasting for religious reasons but would like to do it in order to see “quick” gains afterward.  Perhaps even “micro-cycles” of such vegan fasting would be highly productive for building muscle during the course of a week—3 days of vegan fasting followed by 4 days of high-caloric intake.  Of course, you wouldn’t have to resort to eating meat or dairy during the 4 high-calorie days, either.  You could simply increase the amount of protein and total calories consumed during the 4-day intervals.

     The other times when I eat vegan apart from Advent and Lent, I don’t lose muscle and I’m not adversely affected by the lack of animal proteins.  During these days—Wednesday and Friday of each week, and the other, shorter, fasts throughout the year—I always maintain my muscle mass and my strength by applying some of the above principles.

 

     Lent is not just about fasting, however.  That is, rather, it’s “starting point.”  It’s about self-sacrifice and “spiritual” training.  You start with what you put in your stomach because if you can’t control your stomach, then you often can’t control your thoughts and your other actions.  This might seem like an odd statement to many these days, as gluttony no longer seems to be considered a sin—especially where I live in the American south, where folks, sad to say, often miss neither church nor a meal.  But consider these words of Saint John Cassian on the “eight vices”:

     “These eight vices, then, have different origins and varying operations, the first six— namely, gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, and acedia (anxiety, or weariness of the heart)— are connected among themselves by a certain affinity and, so to speak, interlinking, such that the overflow of the previous one serves as the start of the next one. For from an excess of gluttony there inevitably springs fornication; from fornication, avarice; from avarice, anger; from anger, sadness; and from sadness, acedia. Therefore these must be fought against in a similar way and by the same method, and we must always attack the ones that follow by beginning with those that come before. For a tree whose width and height are harmful will more easily wither up if the roots which support it are exposed and cut beforehand, and pestilential waters will dry up when their rising source and rushing streams have been stopped up with skillful labor. In order to conquer acedia, sadness must first be overcome; in order to drive out sadness, anger must be cast out beforehand; in order to extinguish anger, avarice must be trampled on; in order to eradicate avarice, fornication must be repressed; in order to overthrow fornication, the vice of gluttony must be disciplined.”[2]

     Although those words of the great saint might go against the grain of our current culture, they should make sense to lifters.  If you don’t get your diet “right,” nothing else will really work.  I mean, think about a couple of the more popular sayings in bodybuilding when it comes to nutrition: “Bodybuilding is 80% diet and 20% training,” or the one I like, “You can’t out-train a bad diet!”  Both are oh so true.  Because when your diet is “on point” everything else just seems to fall in place.

     Another thing that I always try to do—and believe you me, this can be quite hard at times—is to not think about the fact that I’m fasting from meat and dairy.  I simply “do” the fast by eating the foods I’m allowed to eat and not worry or think about being “deprived.”  Because sometimes the best thing you can do is to simply and plainly “not think.”

     Same thing often goes for lifting.  I’ve gotten some of the best results in my life—whether the goal was hypertrophy or strength—by simply “showing up” and doing the workout.  In my competitive powerlifting days, I would select a workout that I was going to follow—whether it was Bill Starr’s H/L/M system, a Sheiko-style “Russian” program, or my own Power Volume Training—and simply do it.

     Long before Nike had it as a slogan, I had a karate sensei who would say “just do it.”  He sometimes would intersperse that with “just go straight.”  Or “no thinking, just do!”  The point was to train, to follow the system, to get out of your head, and by doing so you achieved your goal(s).

     Lent is kind of like that, too.  Especially, and I must clarify this, Orthodox Lent.  And, please, don’t take offense to what I am about to write if you’re a “Western” Christian, either Catholic or Protestant.  But in the West, Christians will often decide what they are going to “give up” for Lent.  Perhaps they are going to stop watching television, or stop drinking soda, or eating candy, or smoking cigarettes—sorry, I must admit that I’m not entirely sure what it is they decide to give up; the list is much likely more extensive than that.  But it is an individual decision, made by their own egos.  Anyway, Orthodox simply do what it is that the Church prescribes: they don’t eat meat or dairy; they eat very little; they go to a lot of long, arduous services where they stand the entire time if they’re not prostrating.  (This might comes as a surprise, but there are no pews in most Orthodox churches.)  It’s tough.  But you don’t think about it.  You just do it.  And then it begins to do its “work” on you.

 

     Transformation requires sacrifice, be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual transformation.  Without sacrifice, transformation simply doesn’t happen.

     We live in a culture—at least here in the West—that doesn’t believe in sacrifice.  We prefer comfort.  And this leads to a culture that no longer wants to hear that there might be another way, another path that is indubitably more fulfilling and enriching.

     It also leads to a culture that tells you that “you are fine just the way you are.”  Or, if it’s put in a religious context, that “God loves you and accepts you just the way you are.”  But such thinking leads to a person who never changes and is at risk of becoming continually mired in a myriad of personal problems, including deep depression and a host of addictions that risk damning the person to a life of hell-on-earth.  (You see this most clearly in our ever-increasing obesity crisis here in America.)

     But there is another way, a path that can transform you.  And if you’re going to walk this path, you must be willing to deny yourself the comforts that others so readily enjoy.

 

     Compared to the rest of society, lifters are a different breed.  Orthodox Christians are, too.  You can go with the herd and follow the “wide, easy path.”  Or you can take the narrow road, the path less traveled, yet the one that can make all the difference.

     I’ll choose the lifters and the ascetics.  I never cared much for the herd anyway.

 

    

     I know that this essay was a little “off topic,” but it was pretty much just the things floating around the recesses of my mind, so I thought it best to put pen to paper and get it out of my head.

     For the remainder of the month, I hope to have several different essays, including ones continuing my “real bodybuilding” series, and the last of my Bill Starr-inspired series.

     If there are any topics that you would like to see covered, please leave them in the comments section below or shoot me an email.

 

 

    

---

[1] Some of the initial information below comes from an article I wrote over a decade ago on building muscle while eating vegan.

[2] This quote is from the Philokalia, a collection of writings primarily from the desert fathers and early Saints of the Church.  In the Christian East, it is the most read work after Holy Scripture (the Bible).