Can you lose muscle mass on a vegan diet?

My girlfriend talked me in to it, and I have lost a good amount of weight in a short time. I want to stay on the diet, but I don't want to lose muscle either.

Just like any other dietary lifestyle, it depends on what you're eating. The point of veganism isn't simply to cut out all animal-derived foods, but to replace them with healthier, plant-based alternatives. If you haven't been doing this, you probably are losing muscle mass. I was raised vegan, as were my two siblings and we were all star athletes in high school, and had far more energy than our meat-eating teammates. :) Check out the vegan food pyramid, it helps me meet my daily requirements. Good luck!

I've heard that vegan diets don't provide all of the amino acids necessary to build muscle tissue. Which means that you CAN build muscle on a vegan diet, but only if you didn't have much to start with.

Fact: You'll likely never see any award-winning competitive strongman on a vegan diet.

YES! A very dangerous diet.

You will certainly loose muscle mass if you aren't doing weight bearing exercise. Increase protein and water intake to support the muscles and indulge in some weight bearing exercise so the muscles don't atrophy.

The vegan diet will have nothing to do with it.

Eating less calories each day than you need will cause you to lose weight - weight as in fat and muscle. If you only want to lose fat, you need to lift weights to keep the muscle you currently have. Lifting will also help with the fat loss.

If you are going to stick to this diet, you need to eat vegetables with lots of protien. Peas and the like.

you need b12 capsules and iron (try eating stuff cooked in cast iron pans)

There is no culture in the entire world that has been successful on a vegan diet. It is very destructive to the body and contrary to what our bodies were designed to eat. Mankind has been involved in agriculture for about 12,000 years. Primitive peoples ate diets very high in animal fats, cultured dairy products, and had NO cavities, NO plaque build up on the teeth, and NO heart disease and other degenerative diseases.

This was all documented by Dr. Weston A. Price, DDS in the early 30's from his travels all around the world to 100's of primitive cultures that had not been contaminated with modern man's diets. To his great disappointment, he found NO cultures on vegan diets that were healthy. He did find that many cultures that ate large amounts of animals (wild and grass fed) were very healthy and very resistant to diseases.

The vegan diet does not support good muscle tissue and is lacking in many nutrients necessary for good health. It is a fad diet.

Yes you can and will lose weight on the diet, but so did the concentration camp survivors in Nazi Germany. It's easy to lose weight when you are starving your body.

If you want to read the accounts of Weston Price, you can get his book called, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration." It is highly recommended reading to see what actually makes people healthy with 1,000's of years of proof, not some study done by a corporation that is funding it and looking for some specific reasons to recommend products.
good luck to you