The Vegan Fitness Academy

Step five to never eating boring healthy food again. Herbs and spices.

Your lentils could taste Thai on a Monday, Moroccan on a Wednesday, Mexican on a Friday. Same protein. Same calories. A completely different meal every single time.

That’s the whole point of mastering this stuff. Once you actually know your herbs and spices, you’ll never eat bland food again, and I mean never. Boring food stops being an option once you know what to reach for.

Here’s the bit people don’t think about. Herbs and spices barely register on your calories. A teaspoon here, a pinch there, it’s essentially nothing in the context of your day. So you get all that flavour transformation without it touching your calorie balance at all. It’s the closest thing to a free upgrade your cooking will ever get.

Same base ingredients. Endless different meals. Zero cost to your targets.

Part one of the herbs and spices breakdown.
Part two will be out this week 🌱

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Out of the roughly 29 essential micronutrients, saying a vegan diet is missing 26 of them. I think you'll find that's not true. 🌱

There's a real learning curve with veganism, and figuring out exactly where each nutrient comes from is part of it. Nobody's born knowing this. But not knowing it yet isn't the same as it being impossible, and that's the bit these videos always skip past.

The British Dietetic Association has said, alongside The Vegan Society, that a well-planned vegan diet supports healthy living at every age, including pregnancy and breastfeeding. The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has said the same, nutritionally adequate across the entire life cycle, infancy through to old age, athletes included. Two of the biggest dietetic bodies in the world, representing tens of thousands of qualified dietitians, and neither of them agrees with what's in that video.

So if you're vegan or thinking about it and there's a nutrient you're genuinely unsure about, where it comes from, how much you need, whether you're covering it, drop it in the comments. I'll tell you exactly where to find it. That's the actual answer to "there's a learning curve." You learn it. You don't need to eat meat to solve it.

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If you're vegan for years and then go back to eating meat, does that mean it was only ever plant-based, or were you still vegan? 🌱

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not sure what I fully think, would love to hear your opinion.

Obviously not eating animal products for 14 years is amazing, saved thousands of lives and wonderful for the planet. If I'm honest, I don't think I could go back once I'd properly crossed into it being an ethical line for me. I just know the guilt would eat me alive.

Here's the thing most people get wrong. Vegan was never meant to describe what's on your plate. It's an ethical position, opposition to animal exploitation, full stop. Not just food. Clothing, testing, entertainment, all of it. Plant-based is a diet. Vegan is a stance.

So if someone eats no meat for years and then starts again, that doesn't necessarily mean they failed at something. It might just mean it was plant-based the whole time, and calling it vegan was the wrong label from the start.

The distinction matters because it changes the question entirely. Instead of asking "were they ever truly vegan," you end up asking something much simpler: was this ever actually about ethics, or was it always about diet?

So genuinely, let me know your opinion on this? 👇

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Saturated fat raises LDL, the cholesterol that clogs arteries and drives heart disease. Not a theory. A randomised trial, real people, real blood tests, real results.

Then the fibre dismissal. Zero fibre and the bacteria protecting your gut lining starve to death, because they eat fibre, not steak. Kill them off and different bacteria move in, ones linked to raised colorectal cancer risk. Not a dietitian being dramatic. The actual mechanism, sitting in the studies on screen.

Following a carnivore diet, incredibly selfish. Animal agriculture produces up to 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. More than every car, plane, and ship combined. It uses 83% of the world's farmland to produce just 18% of the world's calories. Beef alone takes around 15,000 litres of water per kilo. A carnivore diet isn't just heavy on the arteries. It's one of the most resource-hungry ways a person can eat on this planet.

Here's the thing about "watch and see if I drop dead." That bet only covers her. It doesn't cover the land cleared to raise the cow. It doesn't cover the water it took to grow it. It doesn't cover the emissions released getting it to her plate, or the animal that had no say in any of it.

She's framing this as personal freedom. It isn't. A choice that uses this much land, this much water, and costs a life every time, was never just about her.

She didn't need to wait and see what happens to her health. Her own bloodwork already answered that. LDL 264. Over two and a half times the optimal target. 74 points past where doctors stop calculating risk and just start treatment.

Calorie deficit's real, she's right about that bit. Nothing else holds up. 🌱

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Never eat boring healthy food ever again. Volume four. Umami.

If your meal prep sometimes tastes a bit flat, and you’re always wondering how restaurant food gets to taste so much better than yours, this is usually the missing piece.

There are five tastes. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

Umami is a Japanese word meaning pleasant savoury taste. Discovered in 1908 by a scientist who isolated the compound from seaweed. That compound is called glutamate.

Glutamate is what makes certain foods deeply satisfying, not just tasty. Actually satisfying.

So what actually brings umami to your dish? One I recommend everyone gets. It’s delicious.

Part one of the umami breakdown. More coming. 🌱

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