Plant-based diets?

[OakLeaf]

It's been estimated that everyone eats far too much protein as it is.

Not "everyone."

The "average American diet" that includes meat every day - for a lot of people, meat at more than one meal every day - has way more protein than anyone needs. Eliminate or even reduce the meat, and you've automatically eliminated the excess protein.

Endurance athletes need more protein than the "average" sedentary American, and I'm not sure a vegan could get the amount of protein the "average American diet" includes even if you ate nothing but protein powder.

Personally, at 120#, I need at least 100g protein a day when I'm training for an endurance event with body weight training only. More than that if I'm doing heavy gym work. I hate counting grams of anything, but I've done it, and I can't get near that without either animal products, or a highly processed protein supplement.

I'm not telling the OP not to do it (just suggesting ). There are a lot of professional athletes who do it very successfully (although I still can't come up with anyone other than Scott Jurek - help me out here ). I am asking her to be very conscious of why she's doing it, and very aware of the effort it will take to get proper nutrition.