Proper nutrition is critical for climbers and athletes of all types.  Giving your body the fuel it needs to perform and then recover from your efforts should be a central concern for all climbers trying to push their limits.  Performance nutrition is a complex topic that goes well beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say vegetarian climbers need to put extra effort into ensuring they are giving their bodies all the necessary nutrients.

To highlight the nutritional needs of vegetarian climbers, here’s an article from Climbing Magazine where vegetarian and professional climber Heather Weidner shares five tips that help her meet all her nutritional needs while maintaining a vegetarian diet.

“As with any other athlete, being a climber who’s also a vegetarian takes work. Protein deficiency can very easily become a problem if you’re not careful. However, with all the dietary resources that we have in the United States, eating vegetarian is much easier than you think and is a good way to decrease your environmental impact.” – Climbing Magazine

5 Nutrition Tips for Vegetarian Climbers

It’s important to note that this article is not advocating that all climbers switch to a vegetarian diet.  Instead, Heather’s tips are simply highlighting some of the concerns vegetarian climbers should keep in mind.  While Heather’s tips do contain suggestions for specific foods to eat, they are much broader and focus much more on general concerns vegetarians need to pay special attention to.

Knowing that what works for one person diet-wise doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, keeping these overall nutritional priorities in mind lets you customize your diet from there and figure out exactly what works for you.  Click through below to read Heather’s tips for yourself!

Full Article: Climbing Magazine – 5 Nutrition Tips for Vegetarian Climbers

(photo courtesy of climbing.com)

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• What Every Vegetarian (and Vegan) Should Know
• Rock Climbing Nutrition: Performance Day Guidelines
• Rock Climbing Nutrition: Rest Day Guidelines