if you can eat the egg,
can you eat the chicken ?
(serious question)
I am a lifelong vegetarian and a little over 6 months into Starting Strength (now on a Wednesday light day begintermediate program). While everyone can complain about how I should just get over it and eat cows, it's not really that simple to add an entire food group you've never eaten before, and my efforts to change my vegetarianism have resulted in weeks and weeks of food poisoning like symptoms before I decide it isn't really worth it.
Anyway. My personal experience is that it takes a 100% all out effort to get 130g protein per day as a female (which ends up as ~2.5g protein per kg lean body mass, which the 'studies' seem to feel is the minimum end of the optimal range). That's still not the "more ideal" 150g I "should" be eating, but it's the compromise level for me where I don't detect any recovery slowdown, and my gut isn't a mess from too many protein shakes. I forced 150g for 4 weeks just to test it and the only difference in performance I felt was nausea related.
I have to literally track everything I eat every single day and plan all of my meals around high protein foods with very little "free space" for empty calories like, I dunno, white bread. I have become friends with nut flours because you get more protein for the calories from them.
I should note that I don't touch soy or fake meat with a 10 foot pole, so I'm increasing the difficulty level on myself.
I do drink 2 protein shakes a day that are a whey/casein mix. I pair them with a digestive enzyme. The rest of my diet is lots of eggs, greek yogurt, cheese, nuts and seeds, etc. I also notice a huge benefit from supplementing creatine.
So, in my experience, it's possible but an enormous pain in the butt and I wouldn't exactly wish it on anyone. I just think it's unfair to say that it can't be done, especially when vegetarianism is a religion for so many people and if you force them to choose between religion and strength training, guess what they'll choose...
if you can eat the egg,
can you eat the chicken ?
(serious question)
Unless they're local, chicken eggs aren't fertilized. No roosters running around the Perdue farms knocking up hens.
But practically speaking, it isn't done. Exceptions, rules. You know the drill. That's the entire point of the statement and of stating it that way.
The thing is, most modern omnivores also fall short since most modern omnivores have this bizarre insistence on eating piles of industrial nast instead of food that takes a couple minutes to prepare and many still listen to advice from the "health" industry promoting only small amounts of protein in food.
Sure, but the root cause of this problem is "average people aren't willing to do the hard work," not "vegetarianism prohibits strength."
The more restrictive a diet is, the more work it requires. Most vegetarians aren't willing to put in that extra work, and then they suffer the consequences. Their choices become: 1) stay weak and sick 2) eat meat to reduce the effort required or 3) put in more effort.
But then, most non-vegetarians aren't willing to put effort into their food choices either. How many meat eating women do we all know who barely get 50g of protein a day because they just don't 'like' meat, or don't 'have the time' to cook it for themselves? And look, this bar has 12 whole grams of protein!
The normal human diet has for hundreds of thousands of years been composed of both animal and plant materials, and our digestive systems have evolved accordingly. "Doing the hard work" of eating in a physiologically abnormal way cannot be an indictment of people who eat normally, because eating normally is not particularly hard work. If you want to eat abnormally, that's fine, but please don't do the standard Twelve-Stepper thing, where those of us who have not "overcome addiction" assume a lower status than the 12-Step Royalty. That irritates the rest of us.
I never implied that vegetarianism is somehow superior (it's not, meat is good for you).
Someone asked if it's possible to get strong and be a vegetarian, and I shared my personal experience with trying to do just that. I wasn't waxing poetic about how hard it is to be a vegetarian to impress you(???), I was doing it to paint a brutally honest picture for other vegetarians who may be looking for information on how plausible their strength goals are.
And that's also why I'm insisting on splitting this particular hair:
"Vegetarianism makes it way harder to get strong" is absolutely a true statement. But "you can't possibly squat more than 135lbs if you're a vegetarian" isn't.
If we were debating whether meat eating was 'optimal' for the average human, this distinction wouldn't matter. But that isn't today's debate. We all agree meat consumption is optimal for health and strength.
It becomes a relevant distinction when the question is whether or not it's *possible* for someone who, for whatever 'dumb' and/or 'religious' reason, would rather be weak for the rest of their lives than eat steak, but is hoping they don't have to choose.