Originally Posted by
Smallwheels
Vegan eating looks to be more expensive than meat eating unless the vegan grows his own food.
I'm mostly vegan, with occasional dairy (cheese) or egg. Being vegan is way, way cheaper than eating meat, unless maybe you're buying a lot of fake meat products. I could see how that could potentially get expensive, although I haven't done any cost comparisons between a fake-meat-centered diet and a meat-centered diet.
To answer the OP's question, the difference between being vegan or vegetarian and being omnivorous is that you need to eat more, and more often, to get the same amount of energy as you'd get from eating meat. I.e., if you eat meat, you're satiated for a longer period of time than if you're vegan. Think vegetarian animals versus meat eating animals. The vegetarians eat all day long, the meat eaters eat occasionally. The key to being capable of expending energy as a vegan athlete, then, is to eat many small meals throughout the day.