My Vegan Diet | Stefanie Moir
Health

My Vegan Diet | Stefanie Moir

clock-circular-outlinePosted 6 Oct 2017

Hi Gymshark Central! 

My name is Stefanie Moir, better known as Naturally Stefanie on Social Media! 

This is my second year with Gymshark as one of their sponsored athletes and I am excited to get this chance to introduce myself to you all. 

I have been bodybuilding/weight training in the gym for around 3 years now, and before this, I was a swimmer for a solid decade! 

I have always loved fitness, training, and getting into some kind of sport routine. I am here today to give you an insight into my lifestyle as I am vegan, and wanted to shed some light on how my diet fits into the fitness world lifestyle! As you know, it isn’t something that goes hand in hand up, due to plenty of myths about the perfect fitness diet. 

I grew up mostly vegetarian throughout my teenage years. I haven't consumed meat in over 10 years now, and have been fully vegan for just short of 5 years - thus all my gym training has been carried out whilst being on a solely plant based diet! 

I remember starting in the gym and everyone telling me I was not going to build any muscle, I would never be lean, and never achieve that fitness shape I was after. 

Granted, I am not a professional or in any kind of competition shape, I just love fitness and eating healthy to maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle. 

It took me a while to figure out how to eat a proper healthy, well balanced plant based diet, that facilitated my goals, and to figure out just how much you must eat to build some muscle! 

Coming from a swimming background of training 12-15 hours per-week to weight lifting in the gym, whilst changing from a vegetarian to all vegan diet, was something else! 

I started blogging and Instagram-ing everything I was doing, and slowly my accounts grew into fitness accounts. I am now sponsored by one of the largest fitness clothing brands in the industry! I am grateful to Gymshark for the opportunity to share my story with you, and hope you can take something from it. 

I think vegan fitness always had a stigma attached to it; meat was perceived as a must-have in your diet 5 x per day, in order to build an amazing physique! 

Slowly, this is reducing - more and more people are adopting a plant based diet. I think the idea of it seems harder than it is, as people are simply not used to, or familiar with it. 

I can honestly say that eating this way has 100% helped me to have a healthy relationship with food, I don’t overly stress about macros, I am more of an intuitive eater, I have learnt to listen to my body and know what it wants, weirdly I am addicted to veg… It is strange how your body gets so used to the good stuff, so much so, it begins to crave it!  

Don't get me wrong, I am a bigger sweet addict and chocolate lover than most people, so I need to have a well-rounded and balanced diet around my fitness lifestyle! 

For me, the key is to experiment a lot - find what kind of food you like, and what food likes you back. Simply, find what works for you! 

I am not a Matcha-chia-oatmeal sprinkled with nibs, fairy dust and topped with magic stars’ kind of girl, personally, I am quite a plain eater (I think).  

I Vlog a lot of ‘What I Eat In A Day’ videos over on my YouTube channel to show how to support a fitness lifestyle but you will be surprised at how simple and easy it is. For me, I have never looked at it as a challenge, or that I am missing out (which some people think they will be doing if they eliminate animal products), there is so much variety out there, and so many alternatives. It is so normal and easy to eat a plant based diet, especially whilst trying to build some muscle.

A typical day of eating for me would be a bowl of cacao oats topped with peanut butter and syrup, or chocolate protein pancakes and syrup. 

Simple, easy, hella tasty and a great set of macros if you are counting them. Like I said, I am a big sweet lover, so I tend to have sweet breakfast and lunch meals, so my post workout lunch is always a protein smoothie consisting of banana, protein powder, cacao powder, almond or non- dairy milk, lots of ice, and creatine. 

I basically just bulk up a boring protein shake and make a meal out of it with the bananas! For dinner, I keep it relatively simple and, as some may call it, “fitness focused”, with lots of veggies, rice, beans, and lentils or tofu - teriyaki tofu is to die for, I eat it at least 4 days a week! 

If any of you have been looking at trying a more plant based diet, then I hope this mini blog post has given you some idea into how easy it is, and gives you motivation to experiment! 

Please check out my social medias under NaturallyStefanie if you want to see any more of my meal ideas, or my fitness lifestyle in general!Follow Stefanie on-

Instagram

YouTube 

If you're in need of a little more vegan inspo, check out Amberlft's explanation of how turning vegan changed her life, and her fitness journey, here.

GymsharkBy Gymshark

Editors Picks