"Gary Leighton" > wrote in message
...
> Hi folks.
>
> I've recently gone vegan and I'm trying to figure out how I should get my
> calories. Can someone check my thinking here...
>
> My target weight is about 10 stone, and according to an online BMI
> calculator this means I need about 2000 calories per day to maintain that
> weight.

2000kcal is a reasonable objective - our bodies tend to maintain energy
balance homeostatically, so there is no need to count calories, it is more a
question of getting the food choices and quantity about right (Stephen Walsh
has a great book on doing cooked Vegan diets well)

> The book called The Optimum Nutrition Bilbe says I should get 70% of these
> calories from carbohydrates (and 15% from fat and 15% from protein).

Not a bad plan, although I go more for the 80/10/10 idea.

> carbohydrates give me 4 calories per gram, that means I need about 350
grams
> of carbohydrates per day. Looking at my carbohydrate counter book, it
looks
> as though vegetables contain maybe one sixth carbohydrate by mass (using
> potatoes as an example). So that means that I need to eat about 2.1 kg of
> vegetables (or potatoes at least) every day.

Your observation is correct. Leaf/root vegetable matter is generally not a
complete food for humans as it is energy deficient. Most vegans choose to
obtain much of their calorie intake with starchy grain foods, raw foodists
like me get higher calorie density from fruit as we have found this
healthier than starch foods.

> In fact, it looks to me like
> most vegetables are much less than one sixth carbohydrate by mass so I
would
> need a lot more than 2.1kg if I had a varied diet.

This is actually not a bad objective, around 2kg of food daily, in fact
higher is more realistic. For many people it would be a dream to be able to
eat that much each day and not get fat and unhealthy, yet a well planned
vegan diet can easily offer this.

> That seems like a heck of a lot of veg to me. I doubt I could eat that
much.

To eat 2kg of tough vegetable matter is a little excessive for humans,
however 2kg of fruit daily is easily attainable. A few portions of grains is
also achievable.

> So I think my maths must have gone wrong somewhere. Can anyone tell me
where
> I've gone wrong?

Limiting your choice of plant intake to low calorie plant foods.

John