Table Of Content“No Meat Athlete will not only power your strength and endurance, it will give
you an extra edge in every aspect of your life.”
—Neal Barnard, M.D.,
author of Power Foods for the Brain
“As a runner who began competing in the days of the traditional steak training
meal, I welcome this book’s enlightening confirmation of my own experience:
Athletes who pass on the meat can perform at the highest level and still enjoy
their meals to the max.”
—Ed Ayres,
founder, Running Times magazine, and author of The Longest Race: A
Lifelong Runner, an Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human
Endurance
“Matt Frazier is a rising star in the world of vegan athletes. Covering the
mechanics of diet and training as well as the transformative nature of a whole-
foods, plant-based diet, he demonstrates that a body running on plants is
probably the one ahead of you at the finish line!”
—Colleen Patrick-Goudreau,
author of The Vegan Table and The Joy of Vegan Baking
“Anyone can become a no meat athlete, and Matt Frazier provides the roadmap
to wellness and performance no matter where the journey takes you.”
—Scott Jurek,
world-renowned ultramarathon champion and author of Eat and Run
“In this fantastic book, Matt clearly lays out a simple but powerful plan for
changing your eating habits. In small steps, you can create a healthier, stronger,
more compassionate diet that will fuel the best version of you.”
—Leo Babauta,
simplicity blogger at zenhabits.net
“Matt Frazier takes all the guesswork out of maximizing your health the plant-
based way with his bulletproof primer No Meat Athlete. Whether you are an elite
marathoner or a weekend warrior, this clear, concise, and no-nonsense book is
your one-stop roadmap to creating and maintaining a sustainable plant-based
lifestyle. All hail the running carrot!”
—Rich Roll,
plant-based ultra-distance athlete and author of Finding Ultra: Rejecting
Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering
Myself
“ … an inspiring and empowering book for people interested in being healthy,
happy, and active. I highly recommend this accessible, life-changing book.”
—Gene Baur,
founder, Farm Sanctuary
“If you’ve been waiting for the inspiration to turn your life around (by changing
what you eat), here it is. It might not make the industrial food complex happy,
but you’ll be glad you did.”
—Seth Godin,
author of The Icarus Deception
“Well-organized, very accessible, and a joy to read. This book gives you the real
how and why of healthy living with real-life applications, actual training plans,
and easy recipes—Frazier nailed it with this book.”
—Sid Garza-Hillman,
author of Approaching the Natural: A Health Manifesto
“… an excellent resource for the new or experienced athlete. If you are looking
for an outstanding guide to improving your health and fitness, No Meat Athlete is
the book for you.”
—Robert Cheeke,
author of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness: The Complete Guide to Building
Your Body on a Plant-Based Diet
“Considering No Meat Athlete is about eating a plant-based diet and running
distances most people don’t even like to drive, Matt Frazier presents the tools
and information he shares in a way that is downright approachable, leaving his
readers energized with a sense of possibility.”
—Brendan Brazier,
ultramarathon runner and author of Thrive
“Inspiring, encouraging, and packed with practical information, this is a book
that will help anyone at any fitness level learn to eat and train for optimal plant-
powered health.”
—Virginia Messina,
M.P.H., R.D., author of Vegan for Life and Vegan for Her
“This book is a fantastic, no-fuss, no-judgment approach to plant-based eating
and fitness. Whether you’re curious, brand-new to this, or just keeping the blade
sharp—get educated, get fed, get fit—read this book.”
—Osher Günsberg,
TV host, Australian Idol
“… filled with practical advice, solid nutrition information, running tips, training
plans, and recipes to fuel athletes of all abilities … a comprehensive guide to
what you need to be healthy and fit while eating a whole-foods, plant-based
diet.”
—Reed Mangels, Ph.D., R.D.,
coauthor of Simply Vegan and The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetarian Diets
“If you were not feeling inspired or empowered before reading this book, you
certainly will after. No Meat Athlete is the plant-based fuel that will keep you
running strong!”
—Terry Walters,
author of Clean Food and Clean Start
CONTENTS
Foreword by Brendan Brazier
Introduction
How I qualified for the Boston Marathon six months after becoming a
vegetarian, how adopting a plant-based diet might just make you a better
athlete, and how to use this book
SECTION I: PLANT-BASED NUTRITION FOR ATHLETES
Chapter 1: Food and Nutrition Philosophy (When Did Eating Become so
Complicated?)
What’s wrong with our modern attitude toward food and what we can do to
fix it
Chapter 2: Getting Started: Creating a Healthy, Plant-Based Eating Habit
How to use the tools of habit change to make a healthy diet last; a simple
approach to eating right without counting calories or following complicated
rules
Chapter 3: Plant-Based Nutrition for Sports: An In-Depth Guide
Guidelines for getting everything you need to fuel your active lifestyle
Chapter 4: In the Kitchen: Basic Cooking Skills to Save You Time, Energy, and
Embarrassment
Healthy, plant-based eating starts with getting into the kitchen; a quick-start
guide to cooking fast, delicious meals
Chapter 5: Recipes to Fuel Plant-Based Athletes (and their Families, too!)
55 recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, and sports
SECTION II: RUNNING ON PLANTS
Chapter 6: How You Can Learn to Love Running
Why running is one of the best ways to get in shape and stay that way for
life; how to set a goal that will keep you motivated
Chapter 7: How to Make Running a Habit
Using habit change principles to make running automatic; three simple keys
for running efficiently and injury-free
Chapter 8: Taking It to the Next Level: Advanced Training Techniques
Workouts for serious training and workout-specific nutrition guidelines
Chapter 9: The No Meat Athlete 12-Week Strength Plan
Increase your overall athletic fitness with this 12-week strength program,
created by vegan bodybuilder Robert Cheeke
Chapter 10: Training for Your First (or Your Fastest) Race
Running gets fun when you sign up for your first race—specific training
plans for 5K, 10K, and half marathon
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Authors
FOREWORD
E
ven as interest in plant-based diets grows and this healthy lifestyle becomes a
more common part of mainstream culture, people are often still surprised to hear
that such a diet, free of animal products, is more than adequate to fuel active
lifestyles—from basic recreation for fitness to serious athletic endeavors.
They’re even more shocked when I tell them, in my books and in talks
throughout North America, that I chose this diet precisely because of what it
could do for me as an athlete. When I made the decision in high school to try to
become a professional endurance athlete, I experimented with all kinds of diets
to find the one that would best support my dream. In the process of
experimentation, I discovered that a plant-based diet stood alone as the one
which most effectively allowed me to recover quickly from workouts, despite
what coaches and others around me believed. The decreased recovery time
between workouts that resulted from my new diet allowed me to train harder and
more often than the competition, and ultimately, I see this advantage as the
reason I succeeded in becoming a professional Ironman triathlete and have twice
won the Canadian 50K ultramarathon championship.
The benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, though, go far beyond athletic
performance. It’s no secret that the standard American diet of processed and
nutrient-devoid food has wreaked havoc on our health as a society, with obesity
levels even among children soaring to all-time highs as a result. But what’s not
nearly as often talked about is that there exists a simple solution that can be
implemented on the level of the individual—adopting a nutrient-rich, whole-
food, plant-based diet. Almost immediately, such a diet can lead to lower levels
of stress, better sleep, and a better mood. And longer-term, it has been shown to
dramatically lower the incidence of heart disease and certain cancers, the leading
killers in our society.
Environmentally speaking, eating plants over meat makes sense. Less land,
water, and fossil fuels go in the production of plants, and fewer CO2 emissions
are produced. It’s simply a matter of efficiency; more nutrition (micronutrients)
can be gained while spending less of each natural resource to get it.
And regardless of what you may believe about the right or wrong of raising
animals for food, the way our current food system treats these animals—with its
emphasis on factory farming and profit above all else—is hard to stomach.
It’s incredible that a solution so simple as adopting a plant-based, whole-food
focused diet can have such a large impact on all of the above areas. And yet,
focused diet can have such a large impact on all of the above areas. And yet,
even when presented with the clear benefits of a plant-based diet, the vast
majority of people still consider this lifestyle to be far more extreme than could
ever work in their lives. And so they do little, and as a result, not much changes.
That’s where No Meat Athlete comes in. If there’s a single reason such a huge
community of active, passionate people has sprouted up around No Meat Athlete
—you’ve probably seen them in their running carrot shirts—it’s this:
Considering the website is about eating a plant-based diet and running distances
most people don’t even like to drive (a lifestyle many would consider
“extreme”), Matt Frazier presents the tools and information he shares in a way
that is downright approachable, leaving his readers energized with a sense of
possibility and thinking, “Hey, I could actually do this.” Matt’s approach to
health and fitness is informed, welcoming, and completely nonjudgmental, with
a constant emphasis on simplicity and practicality (rather than absolute
perfection) when it comes to diet and fitness choices.
The food and philosophy in the book you’re holding represent a drastic
improvement over the way most people—even many active and health-
conscious people—fuel their daily lives. But the approach here isn’t about being
rigid or mechanical in your diet and exercise habits or making big sacrifices in
your day-to-day life in return for incremental improvements at the highest levels
of athletic performance.
Instead, it’s about the bigger picture—that of making broad changes to your
diet and exercise habits, changes that will have a lasting impact on your quality
of life and the lives of those you share the planet with. It’s about making this
lifestyle work, even within the framework of the busy career and family lives
most of us lead. And most importantly, it’s about approaching these changes
intelligently and deliberately, in a manner that’s intended—above all else—to
make sure that this time, they last.
Congratulations on deciding to make a difference. Get started now, and it
won’t be long before your body is thanking you.
—Brendan Brazier, best-selling author of the Thrive book series
INTRODUCTION
A
s I passed the twenty-two-mile marker, I felt everything slipping away. I had
been here before: the point in a race where you realize that your goal is too big,
that today is not your day.
You hang on for a while longer, give it everything you’ve got for a few
minutes, and wonder why the pace you’ve held for five or ten or twenty-two
miles suddenly feels so hard. Then at some point, either because your body shuts
down or you decide that failing will hurt less than your legs currently do, you
give up. That’s where I was. Hanging on, staving off the inevitable for just a few
more minutes.
Maybe I had no business being here. As I looked around me and saw all these
serious marathoners, athletes truly deserving of the label “runner,” I felt like I
didn’t belong. I was a normal guy who somehow fell into running, not a runner.
My Journey to the Greatest Marathon in the World
Seven years prior, I ran my first marathon after two college buddies and I
decided we’d do one, even though none of us knew much about running. But we
were all in decent shape, so we aimed high.
And we didn’t just set out to run a marathon. We were going to do better. We
were going to run it fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon, the most
famous and prestigious race in the world and one steeped in history as the
world’s oldest annual marathon. Every year, about 20,000 people run the race,
with the support of half a million cheering, partying spectators on Patriots’ Day,
a state holiday known affectionately in Boston as “Marathon Monday.”
The problem is, everyone wants to run Boston, but the course can only
accommodate so many runners. To limit entrants and position the race as one
meant for serious runners, the Boston Athletic Association imposed strict
qualifying requirements in 1970. (“This is not a jogging race,” stated the
application to the 1970 marathon.) This restriction, of course, only added to the
prestige of the race, igniting the desire of marathoners everywhere to earn the
right to call themselves “Boston qualifiers.” For us, as males under thirty-five
years old, that meant running our marathon in 3 hours, 10 minutes, and 59
seconds or faster—a 7:17 minute per-mile pace, for 26.2 miles.
We trained hard and put the miles in—at first. Then the aches, pains,
midterms, and college parties happened.
