Looking for a great plant based supplement to enhance your overall wellness and health? Improve your performance and speed recovery times? Build lean muscle without promoting cancer or heart disease? Sleep better and feel more energized? Then a whole foods, plant based diet is the best, natural path to this utopia! Now, for a lot of us, this isn’t an easy thing to do with our modern, busy lives.
Due to the long research of endurance athlete, Brendan Brazier, the works of Vega were born. What is it?
Vega is a collective line of sports and wellness products that provide clean, plant based nutrition to help you perform at your best, recover faster, and excel in your endeavors! The Vega list of products range from pre-workout energizers and electrolyte mixes, to energy bars, smoothie mixes, protein recovery supplements, energy gels, nutritional shakes and more. These are all produced raw and as plant based, whole foods to promote an alkaline environment for the body.
Why should I incorporate this into my lifestyle?
At Pilot Fitness, you will hear us always speak of sticking to a whole foods, plant based diet for the best in disease prevention and health optimization. With the added complexities of living out of a suitcase for more than 6 months out of the year and still meeting your fitness goals, this can be an overwhelming task! It’s easy to fall behind. Sometimes a little help goes a long way and Vega has the whole package that does just that! Vega is produced from plant based, whole foods!
Vega produces its products to maximize nutrition, not calories. By doing so, these products improve energy and speed recovery. This is essential for flight crews and other professional travelers that are crossing time zones and battling fatigue and losing quality sleep. By energizing through nutrition, you are avoiding the crashes of caffeinated sources or sugar spiked processed foods.
What if I have food allergies?
Vega is dairy free, gluten free, and soy free and contains no artificial ingredients.
How do we use the Vega products and what are our favorites?
Vega Pre-Work Out Energizer: If I know that I am going for a hard day of training, multi-sport adventure or some other type of high energy expenditure like a race, then this is my go to energy base. It provides a lasting source of energy through kombucha, yerba mate, green tea and devils claw with anti-inflammatory properties from turmeric and ginger. This is what both Lauren and myself used during our North Face Endurance Marathon Win.
Additionally, if I find myself feeling fatigued from a long work day crossing time zones or from flying the graveyard shifts, then this is great to perk myself up and stick to my fitness training goals!
Electrolyte Hydrator: A great blend of vitamins and minerals to help sustain yourself on those warmer days when hydration becomes an issue. Great for longer runs or bike rides, mountain hike excursions, you name it. Or add to your water to help fight the dehydration induced from long flights in pressurized aircraft. Great flavors and single sizing packs for on the go convenience.
Endurance Gel: This is the all-in-one blend! Easy to carry single serve packs with the perfect blend of whole food glycogens to continue fueling your muscles with a balanced source hydrating electrolytes. This gel has a great natural texture and flavor with the base made from dates. Another staple I carried with me on my North Face Endurance Marathon win!
All-In-One Nutritional Shake: This is a great product for traveling to enhance your nutrient absorption! The food can be limiting to what you can carry with you on the road, especially if traveling internationally through customs. So this is a nice way to supplement your diet with a plant based food source that is compact and tastes great. This shake powder is very versatile. You can mix it alone in water, or my favorite, adding it to my morning oatmeal. The shake has a varied source of vitamins and minerals from food sources, plant based probiotics and digestive enzymes (a nice stomach recovery after a pool swim due to the chlorine), a green blend including chlorella, and a complete plant based protein blend.
Performance Protein: An amazing plant based protein blend to help you recover from your hardest workouts! Plant based proteins promote an alkaline environment in the body, eliminating the metabolic acidosis conditions caused by consuming animal based proteins and preventing calcium leaching from the bones. This also reduces an environment conducive to cancer growth by eliminating inflammation in the body and avoiding the known cancer promoting effects of whey and casein. A truly clean source of protein to repair muscle!
Protein Bar: One of my personal favorites, this protein bar has a great base of whole food ingredients and plant based proteins. This is one of the few Vega products with refined sugar due to the chocolate coating, but the overall quantity is comparable to what is found in other energy bars. Another easy to carry source of recovery nutrition while traveling away from home and still hitting the training hard! I always keep a couple of these in my food cooler while I am traveling.
Endurance Bar: This energy bar has been formulated to take with you on those longer days high energy outputs! Several great flavors and like the protein bar, whole foods ingredients. These are not chocolate coated, so they hold up well in a pack on hotter days without melting or breaking down. A favorite of mine for climbing trips to the Sierras. A great source of food based sugars to fuel muscle glycogen stores and a small amount of plant based proteins to keep you satisfied.
Thrive Foods by Brendan Brazier: If you are new to the plant based lifestyle and interested to find out more, this a great source for the perspective of a professional endurance athlete. Brendan Brazier, among others, has proven the obtainable benefits and results from a whole foods, plant based diet. He compiles his years of knowledge and own research into this book to help you make the most informed choices regarding the foods you eat and the impact to our environment. Included are many inspiring recipes to help you thrive!
The below picture is after winning The North Face Endurance Challenge Marathon in San Francisco, 2012. The fuel that helped me through was my solid, Haulin’ Oats for breakfast. Pre race, I hydrated with one bottle of water mixed with the Vega Pre-Workout Energizer and I carried 3 Endurance Gel Packs during the race. This helped sustain me through 5,200 of elevation gain, rain, wind, and horrendous mud!
