Have you ever been intrigued by the vegetarian way of life? Many people I speak to in gyms are, and so am I.

However, the resounding fear among many athletes and fitness enthusiasts when it comes to kicking protein-rich meat is the risk of decreased performance and muscle-building capacity. We tend to assume that a vegetarian diet simply cannot deliver the required nutrients for peak physical performance, and that meats like chicken and beef are quick and easy ways of ingesting high quality protein.

Abstaining from meat-eating is one of those issues we all tend to have an opinion about. So without delving too deeply into its merits, let’s have a closer look at how vegetarianism affects us specifically in the sports and fitness worlds.

All proteins are made up of amino acids. Complete proteins are those with all the essential amino acids we need to build and repair body tissue, including muscle. While meat helps us get more protein, it is not necessarily the best source.

Indeed, most protein shakes and weight gainers we ingest in the form of sports supplements come from milk and egg sources, not meat. Dairy protein is rich in all the essential amino acids we need, and the right combinations of nuts, beans and other popular vegetarian protein sources are a perfectly adequate replacement to meat.

The bottom line is that a properly constructed vegetarian diet does not have to negatively affect you as a competitive athlete, bodybuilder, or fitness enthusiast. Indeed, if weight loss is your goal, athletes on vegetarian diets actually tend to find it easier to achieve and maintain target body weights.

So if you are tempted to give a meatless diet a try, today I will give you something to chew on. Here’s at least three reasons to make the switch.

Firstly, science. A celebrated study published by the American College of Sports Medicine investigated two groups dieting over a six-week period – vegetarians and meat eaters.

While the vegetarians had slightly lower testosterone levels, the two groups showed absolutely no difference in performance by the end of the study. Other studies have since confirmed these same results.

Secondly, if you’d rather believe real-world experiences then let’s look at some vegetarian athletes who have paved the way. Throughout the years many professional endurance athletes such as runners and triathletes, have been vegetarians.

Traditional wisdom tells us carbohydrate-rich vegetarian diets and endurance sports go hand-in-hand, but what about bodybuilding and power sports? Well, there are plenty of vegetarian champions there too.

Some of the classic natural pioneering bodybuilders like Bill Pearl and Roy Hilligen were lifelong vegetarians, and built most of their muscle mass without a gram of meat in their diets. They also did it during an era before anabolic steroids were even available.

Hilligen in particular was not only a physique champion, but he was also incredibly strong. In 1952, he won the world bodybuilding and weightlifting championships in the same year.

Albert Beckles, the famous bodybuilder who was dominant throughout the 1980s also competed as a vegetarian, as did Cory Everson, a female bodybuilder and winner of six Ms Olympia titles. Other well-known vegetarian athletes include Carl Lewis, a sprints and long-jump specialist and winner of 10 Olympic medals, and former world number one tennis player Martina Navratilova.

Most recently, a surge of martial arts champions in the US have become the latest ambassadors for vegetarian living, including Mac Danzig, Jake Shields and Jon Fitch. These fighters also spearhead campaigns against animal cruelty.

Perhaps the most surprising of all converts is the meanest man of boxing, former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. He became a vegan after ending his professional career, which means he now neither uses nor consumes any animal products whatsoever.

Tyson has kept and bred pigeons since his childhood; indeed, his first ever fight as a child famously occurred in defence of his birds.

This brings us to the third reason why you might want to give vegetarianism a try – animal cruelty. We sometimes look down on other cultures both past and present for their brutality, and pride ourselves with virtues such as peace and compassion.

So in this day and age, do we still really need to slaughter fellow living creatures to maintain our quality of life?

An Aikido master once told me during an interview: if a cow can give us milk day after day, do we really need to kill it for its meat? And if a chicken can lay eggs time and again, do we really need to kill it merely for a day’s worth of sustenance?

Milk and eggs are both among the best sources of protein available to us.

Many of us will happily eat meat, oblivious to exactly where it came from, but I challenge you to sit through an animal cruelty video without feeling an ounce of compassion for our fellow creatures.

So if you feel you’re ready to take the pledge and go veg, start reading up on vegetarianism today, and you’ll find it’s easier than you thought to get your essential nutrients without eating meat.

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