The plan was to train for one month eating completely vegan to see if I could make a significant strength gain in the absence of meat based protein.

I stuck to this plan for the most part only having some egg in a birthday cake I had and an insignificant amount of soy.  The training cycle had to be cut a week short not giving me much time to make an increase but I did the most I could with a 23 day cycle.

I went with a dead lift regimen designed by Zach at CFWS: 5×5 deficit lifts, single rep rack pulls, these terrible things called front squat 1 1/2’s, and some Crossfit Football WODs on off days. The plan was to grind me into a fine powder and see if my body could recover from these beatings while eating like a hippie.

I tried to do this without supplementing any processed protein: no hemp powder, no soy, nothing weird. I went at it like this:

I ate a lot of vegetables.
I ate a whole lot of quinoa.
I drank olive oil like it was my job.

Here is my first attempt at #455 after 23 days training vegan:

It is a little known fact that olive oil has a whopping 120 calories per tablespoon. That is nearly the same number of calories that you’ll find in an entire cup of 2% milk (130 cals.) Whole milk gives you 160/cup and causes spikes in insulin which may cause long-term health problems. I kept my caloric intake high by adding one to two salads per day with 1/2 cup one each = 1000-2000 salad cals per day.

I realize that this isn’t the typical vegan diet but it worked for me. I failed to wither away. I gained 1.5 lbs.

I came off of the Paleo Diet heading into this vegan experiment and the stark contrast of meat intake is not the biggest difference between the two diets. The biggest difference is the wide amount of options that you have as a vegan. When you eat Paleo you would have to go a long way out of your way to eat poorly.
Example: Eat nothing but celery and ham for 30 days.

You have to go a long way out of your way to be a healthy vegan. You can follow STRICT vegan and have a destructive lifestyle with crappy nutrition.

Example:
First tie-up your pleather shoes and walk to your favorite brunch spot.

Pancakes, mimosa, and bagels with soy spread for breakfast-

Red Vines and two American Spirit cigarettes, and a liter of diet Coke for a snack-

Engage in domestic violence then have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and malt liquor for lunch-

Chips and salsa with a salad for dinner- Then kick an old man down some stairs.
You see- Destructive right?

The way I did vegan worked. The predetermined marker of success for this program was to pull #455 (a #15 gain) in a 23 day training cycle. I took on a ridiculous amount of volume training from Coach Z, recovered from each training session well and pulled a much bigger weight off the ground than I had hoped.

Here is the #475 pull:  I changed my form a little and it turned out ugly.

I’d like to thank my friend Eric for inadvertently editing this cut.  His shirt is better looking then that pull but it doesn’t have to be pretty to count.  At the end of the day I went from #440 to #475 bringing me just over a 2.5 body weight DL after 23 days intensive pulling training.  I gained 1.5 pounds but my body fat went up 3%! 

Conclusions:

1) The body fat increase may have been due to the relatively high sugar intake.
2)  Don’t believe the hype.  Vegans can get strong.
3)  Gandhi probably had a sick dead lift.