There are a few options here. The biggest challenge with this, of course, is getting the protein servings in without too many carbs. That’s the big deal with the protein on this diet. Since the calories are so low, it’s much harder to get sufficient protein when vegan for muscle sparing, vs. when you are eating a normal amount of calories in daily life.
PLANT-BASED PROTEIN POWDERS
For 100% vegans, there some great plant-based protein powders –
One of my absolute favorite vegan protein powders is Genuine Health’s Vegan Proteins Natural Vanilla flavor– it has a very creamy texture and flavor to it and only 2 grams net carbs per serving of 20 grams protein- so that might work for you as well. There’s also a fermented version of the same brand but I haven’t tried it.
You can utilize these in our P2 protein smoothie recipes over hcgchicarecipes.com
TOFU
Tofu is also a great choice of protein source vegetarians use on hCG as it will have fewer carbs than other typical vegan protein sources used. I found an article that lists the macros of Tofu – calories, carbs, and protein of the various softness/firmness levels of tofu to compare and make choices.
One thing I noticed with the tofus are that their 100g servings are not enough calories or protein to replace a 100g serving of protein – probably because it contains more water by weight or something. So if you replace this, you will want to use enough tofu to equal between 100-140 calories- this is the typical range of calories that you would get from meat (depending on if you are seafood or beef) in a 100g serving for each meal. This will ensure you are getting enough calories and protein on the 500 calorie diet.
I read that the firmer tofus are great for marinating and soaking up flavors,
I also saw there are recipes out there for Vegan Cottage Cheese (NOTE! those are not P2- you will need to adapt them yourself) – using tofu – so you can adapt those ideas for P2.
VEGAN MEAT REPLACEMENTS
There’s quite a few “meat replacement” patties/sausages and things like that out there now of various brands. When looking at ingredient labels your goal would be to choose something as high protein and low carb as possible (and of course minimal fat).
EGG WHITE IDEAS:
Since you do eat egg-whites, you could probably easily adapt all the P2 egg recipes we have on the hcgchica recipes site!
And JUST to make sure you know you should totally click on those recipes, look at some of the mouthwatering recipes you’ll find there!
egg
QUINOA:
I have seen ladies utilize quinoa – while it is a higher carb food, it has been used with success. If it were me, I’d still probably intersperse something like this with something containing higher protein grams per serving, just to be sure I don’t lose to much muscle on the diet.
If you’ll notice here 1/2 cup cooked quinoa has only 6 grams of protein and 29g of carbs and 160 calories. So this is not the ideal ratio. Whereas say raw chicken breast has 120 calories for the 100g portion, with no carbs, 120 calories, and 23 grams of protein. I’m just showing you the comparison so that you can try to match as closely as possible with your choices.
IDEAS FROM OTHERS:
You might benefit from some tips from my interview with Mary from Episode 69 as she is vegetarian so some of her suggestions and swaps can apply for you.
There is also an Instagram gal who has since changed her IG handle name but she did hCG as a vegan and some of her older posts will share what she did:
And the hashtags with the most posts you can try following as well is:
