Life as a vegan competitive athlete

Last season, we finished 3rd in the Handball Bundesliga, made it to the HBF Final4 and qualified for the international competition.
The start of my dietary change was pretty radical from one day to the next. In the evening, I was sitting with friends at a

dinner with friends and the tenor was "vegan nutrition - we can also do something FOR the environment". With this "motto", I decided to go vegan from the next day onwards.

In the first few weeks I felt much fitter, slept better and I had the feeling that my digestion had become more regular. However, a little more planning was required for shopping and meals, especially in the early days. It is important, no different from other nutritional concepts, to eat enough protein, sufficient carbohydrates and healthy fats. I researched in advance which foods contain a lot of protein and which contain less, in order to get an overview of the composition of the meals.

Not only the composition of the dishes, but also the integration into my daily and weekly routine took me more time at the beginning than before.

As a competitive athlete, we have up to nine training sessions a week. These sessions have a different focus, as they are divided into strength, endurance and team training sessions. The individual team sessions also vary in intensity. In the first few weeks, it was important to make sure that I had enough to eat in a training week. Gradually, I got a feel for the food and the dishes and was able to integrate my meals better into my daily routine. Today, planning no longer takes so long and I have developed a routine.

In the beginning, I found it very useful and important to check my blood at certain intervals. I have to perform every day on the pitch, in the gym and in the hall, so a deficiency of any kind would be counterproductive. I wanted to be able to counteract this by regularly checking my blood levels and be able to react quickly if a deficiency occurs.

I currently supplement B12 regularly and vitamin D in the "darker" months. I now have my blood checked twice a year and over the last 3 ½ years I have increasingly noticed the change in society with regard to vegan nutrition. There is now at least one vegan alternative in (almost) every restaurant (not just pasta with tomato sauce). There are also more and more substitute products that help you prepare your favourite vegan dish from the past. In the supermarket alone, I no longer find a small shelf with vegan products, but usually several shelves or fridges full of products that make it much easier for me to cook vegan meals and hopefully also help other people who want to change their diet.