Day 3 - The Same, But Different

A full 3 days into my new programme and how are things going?  Well, that's not as easy to do as you might think.  Trying to separate any actual changes from things that would have happened anyway is quite difficult. Which changes are purely mental and which are physical?  No idea yet.  Maybe I'll never know.

Anyway, the food side is going well – breakfast was the Maca stuff, which is honestly nothing really special as far as I can tell.  Maybe continued use turns you into superman, time will tell.  Lunch was vegan fruit and oat biscuits, since I couldn’t be bothered trying to find something that wasn't full of animals. The biscuits were nice and oaty, which is really all you can ask really.  Finally, dinner was a revitalised version of Monday’s chili, which was vastly improved through the addition of some of my missing ingredients.  

On other fronts, I’ve been feeling a little snacky.  This isn’t unusual, so I’m going to dismiss it for now. Energy levels seem fine, neither up nor down.  I did a short 6km run to test out my calf (no pain, yay!) so that bodes well.  It was an extremely easy run, but it did feel good.  Very much looking forward to getting out for something a little quicker and longer.

All said, not an exciting day food wise.

What is interesting, is reading Rich Roll’s book “Finding Ultra” which I’m enjoying  thus far, about a third of the way through.  The idea that someone can find their passion at age 40 and then go on to do all the amazing things Rich has done… Well, you can’t help but feel a little inspired.  I’m not sure I have his level of inner drive to go above and beyond (hey, I don’t mind a bit of comfort zone) but I can admire it and perform my own scaled down version.  Both Rich Roll and Scott Jurek convinced me that vegan is compatible with being strong and healthy; they are both exactly the sort of athlete I’d like to become.  Well, “become” is a bit strong, perhaps emulate is more apt.

Day 2 - High expectations

Breakfast, fruity oaty cereal with soy milk. A fairly mundane start to the day.  Jumped on the scales expecting to have lost at least 2kg from my efforts over the past two days and was rewarded with a 100 gram increase! Short-termism? Me?  Possibly.

So far there haven’t really been any physiological or psychological changes.  Not too surprising considering the duration of the experiment thus far. There have been a few interesting things:

• I haven’t been hungry.  Actually, this isn’t quite correct.  I’ve felt full, but sometimes I’ve felt like eating out of habit.  When I stop to think about what I want, I find that I’m not actually craving anything, except maybe the ritual of stuffing my face.  Interesting.
• I haven’t experienced any lightness of being or spiritual awakening.  I have felt a little better and alert at times. But then I’ve felt sleepy too. Too early to draw conclusions.
• Last night I slept for 9 hours and woke up sleepy.  No idea why.  Probably just lazy :)

I went to the local coffee shop (Taylor Street Baristas… I love you guys!) and got a soy flat white.  Oh. My. God.  Best coffee ever.  Instead of covering the coffee flavour, the soya added a silken smoothness to it.  I have always liked soy milk, but given a choice of going back, I’d gladly stick to soy purely for the taste.  

Next up, off to the Holland and Barrett health food store to see what they have.  Turns out the answer to that is “quite a lot”.  It isn’t cheap though… Once again my hobbies are looking to set me back a few extra pennies.  Anyway, grabbed some vegan multivitamins (I don’t trust my ability to correctly balance my diet yet), almonds (yummy snack), quinoa (seems to pop up in a lot of recipes) and “Maca’s Secrets” cereal (not sure why I got it, seemed like a good idea at the time).  My vegan pantry is starting to fill out nicely!

Anyway, lunch was chili chickpeas a broccoli, corn, kidney bean salad.  Both were delicious and filling.  I’m beginning to see why people claim that going vegan actually expands your food choices rather than limiting it.

More food than I can eat... And that's really saying something!

In the evening I went to the gym.  This is what I was curious about. Would I feel weaker? Sluggish? Like Superman?  A weird mix of each?  Anyway, I started with my normal weights – push ups, sit ups, lunges, chin ups, leg press, dips, chest press and the like (basically 3 sets of 8 for everything).  The difference in the end? Not much. Felt like normal.  Next up was cardio.  Since I hurt myself running on the weekend I went to the stationary bike.  So very boring.  10 minutes was all I could take before feeling like going into a coma.  So I jumped onto the treadmill and did a slow 10 minute jog.  If it wasn’t for the pulled calf I would have felt pretty good all said.  Let's see how I go once I can get a proper run in.

I’ve been reading up on Veganism, understanding more about the dietary requirements, along with gaining a better understanding of the moral issues.  I’m not sure about throwing out the leather lounge, but I will definitely be avoiding purchasing anything new that is an animal by-product.  So for now I’ll go with trying to be 100% food vegan, with a slow trajectory towards the full lifestyle change required to be a “lifestyle vegan”.

Day 1 - First Steps

Why?

I've decided to take on a vegan (no animal products, including cheese, milk, honey, etc) diet for at least 30 days (and depending on how that goes, ongoing).  The reasons for the dramatic change in diet are many, but primarily it is to support my health and through that, my athletic performance.  I'm planning on running the Edinburgh marathon in May and I want to do everything I can in my power to do it well. For the past 35 years a meat heavy diet has carried me through, but I've never really felt in control of my diet.  Instead it is quite the opposite, eating at the whims of cravings and still always feeling unsatisfied.  Something is clearly missing, so time for a change...

The Food

So the first day wasn’t so bad. In the morning I had porridge with milk (wait, that isn’t vegan!) as I didn’t have any soy/rice/hemp milk yet. For lunch I went out to Wahaca, a Mexican restaurant in the Wharf that is fairly vegetarian friendly.  Going through the menu it was starting to become clear that being vegan isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Everything marked (V) for vegetarian also included a lot of cheese.  When the waiter (server? What do people prefer to be called these days?)… When the guy came over to take out order he didn’t bat an eye at my “can I have this one, without cheese?” questions. Which I thought was rather kind of him.  All said, a meal of rice, tortilla chips, guacamole and salsa left me feeling quite full. Things are looking up.

For dinner, I decided to try out a recipe for “The Best Vegan Chili in the World”.  Worth a shot in any case.  So stopped in at the local M&S, ingredients list in hand.  I stepped out with maybe half of them fulfilled.  Right, never said this would be easy.  So I stop at the Tesco’s on the way and get another 25% of the required goodies.  The rest I’d have to fudge.  After chopping, cooking, pouring and simmering, I ended up with… Not a complete disaster, but definitely not something I’d want to serve guests.  Julie wasn’t impressed, complaining that one of the beans was icky and that it was too bland.  I’m not sure about the icky bean (I quite liked them) but it was indeed quite bland.  It seems the ingredients I skipped were of some importance.  Lesson learnt.

The Exercise

None today, still recovering from Sunday's 25k long run.  Gym tomorrow.

Result: not disaster, must try harder, C+.