How do I get enough NUTRITION on a vegan diet?

Here is the simple truth about protein. As long as you consume enough calories in a diet of varied whole plant foods you are getting more than enough protein.

When you burn more calories (an athlete for example) your need to consume more food (to replace calories burned) will result in greater hunger. If you are eating correctly simply eating until completely satisfied is all you need to do. The correct of additional protein (and all the other nutrients) will "automagically" (nature is a miracle) be included in those calories.

A vastly bigger problem for vegans than getting enough protein is getting enough CALORIES. Most new vegans have little appreciation of the fact their calorie consumption drops dramatically when switching to a "good" vegan diet. (Bad vegan diets are just another junk food diet.) They get thinner and thinner and think "I look good" and along in there somewhere health problems begin to show up. Why is that?

They are not getting enough calories. They tend to go to the "default blames" which are in order of popularity: protein, omega 3 fats, vitamin b12.

But the problem with caloric deficiency is you're not getting enough of all the nutrients necessary for robust health. All the vitamins and minerals, and yes, protein. And not enough fat and carbohydrates too.

Why aren't these new vegans eating enough food? It's because we don't live in nature any more, and post-industrial foods deliver highly concentrated calories. This is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic, out instincts tell us to "fill our stomach" (our instincts "live" in nature), but doing so on post-industrial food creates obesity. So people who manage to stay at health body weight have trained themselves to eat less by not filling the stomach.

A person on a good vegan diet who does not fill the stomach will not get enough calories, which by default also means not enough vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, and carbs. But they are just eating the quantity of food they have always eaten.

The solution? Eat more food than you are used to eating, stretch the stomach a little at the beginning.

Nature is a miracle, when we eat enough of the foods we are primarily adapted to we automatically get the correct amount of all nutrients. This is the disease reversal formula.

What is malnutrition? Too little, but also too much nutrition. How do we know we have the correct amount of nutrition in our diet, not too much and not too little? Eat the foods we are adapted to until we are satisfied, in sufficient variety to get the variety of nutrients we need. It takes a while for the body to recalibrate. When you hit your stride with a SOS free whole food plant based diet you will feel great, have stopped thinking and worrying you have "enough" nutrition of any type, enjoy your food without worrying about gaining or losing too much weight.

Over time you gravitate toward being lean with a high strength to weight ratio without even thinking about it. This is optimal health, the disease reversal diet. If you also exercise your strength to weight ratio will increase, a good thing, and you will automatically consume more calories to make up for calories burned.

SOS free whole food plant based diet is freedom from worry about health, weight, nutrition, it just works.

There is a problem however hiding in the bushes for most vegans, even among healthier vegans. It is empty calories, which come from vegetable oils. The recipe for health is sufficient calories from "nutrient dense" foods. We don't want to get fat, so when we add the most calorically dense substance (veg oils) to our diet we are not getting enough nutrition, across the spectrum. Think about it...there are no refined vegetable oils in nature. There is also no refined sugar or flour. Whole grain flours are not empty calories, but they are not nutrient dense either, so they should be eaten in minimal qualities. Whole grains however are fine. As are root vegetables.

But again, you do not have to begin to obsess on getting the most nutrient dense foods, all you have to do is cut out the vegetable oils, or at least cut down to nearly zero. Most vegans have cut out the refined sugars, and cut down on pastas and breads sufficiently. But the refined oil message is not getting through. Empty calories displace good calories (nutrient dense calories). And fractionated (refined) nutrients in supplements do not replace whole food nutrition. 

This is a subtle but important problem because micronutrient deficiency comes on gradually. Long term vegans who develop symptoms of various sorts may be suffering because of what  might be called the "displaced nutrition syndrome" caused by vegetable oil consumption, and it goes undiagnosed for the most part, because the "oil is not a health food" message has not reached critical mass. Many doctors, naturopaths, nutritionists as yet do not understand the displaced nutrition syndrome, or that veg oils consumption is the primary cause of it.