The Diet Jouney - Part 1

It has been quite some time since my conversion to plant powered and I've been reflecting a bit on my diet and the road I've taken getting to where I am today.  I realised it is quite difficult to separate the improvements brought about from my not eating animal products from the general improvement due to my taking more care with what I put in my body.  Applying conscious thought to what I am eating is almost as important as what sort of thing I decide to eat...

Those who know me will already be aware that I went from some 99kg down to 80kg using a low-carb diet called the TNT diet from Men's Health.  For a year and a bit, I cut down my carb intake to less than 20g a day, started going to the gym to do resistance training and a bit of cardio (primarily the elliptical initially, later more running).  While the diet was massively successful for me, I wouldn't recommend this diet to anyone, as I believe it isn't particularily healthy.  The near-daily fry up breakfasts of bacon, eggs, tomato, cheese (yes, melted onto the bacon) and mushrooms will probably kill you.  It will be a delicious death, granted, but possibly not worth it in the long run.

Like this, only not as healthy looking...

All that said, it was successful.  However... why did it work???

I think the success came down to three main things:

1. It broke my sugar addiction.  Since I couldn't have carbs, I finally gave up casual chocolate, muffin and chocolate-muffin consumption.  This alone probably accounted for 50% of the weight loss, due to the removal of low nutritional content, high calorie and low satiety foods from my diet.  
2. I started to learn what is in or added to food.  I found out about the evils of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), learnt to read labels and generally become more aware of the crap I was putting in my body. Companies put a lot of stuff in food to make it taste better, make you want to eat more of it and make it cheaper to produce.  Almost none of those things are aligned with a goal of making anything healthy.  So I learnt to read labels and start being much more picky about what I bought.
3. Exercise.  Doesn't matter what sort you do, but do as much of it as time allows.  You will feel better, live longer and be able to do more in life.  As a certain mega-corp admonishes - just do it.

Each of these opened up new processes - I could eat a muffin as a special occasion (making it all the more delicious), or choose a healthier option when out shopping, or actually enjoy group physical activity without being the guy at the back gasping and wheezing - that changed my life for the better.

After I lost the weight, I dropped that diet and went back to a "balanced" diet, keeping the knowledge I'd gained and employing it in a more natural way.  I stayed off chocolate for the most part, kept exercising and always checked the labels of anything I bought. I also stopped the fry up breakfasts.  Seriously, after a year I was utterly sick of meat and cheese.

In the next post I'll go into why I think the vegan diet has been the logical progression from this and how it has taken me from somewhat healthier to truly healthy.

Moroccan Strength Training

We recently got back from spending three days trekking through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. It was a fantastic adventure, tromping up the mountains and back down into the valleys...

The elevation profile looks like a roller coaster with over 2,500 metres of elevation gain over the first two days before the GPS died.  I forgot to bring spare batteries.  *sigh*

Anyway! While on the adventure we had a mule...

And a dedicated chef, Mohammed! He was more than happy to prepare a delicious vegetarian (and I'm fairly sure vegan) meal for us three times a day. Now you know why the mule has so much stuff on it :)

So, food was awesome, sights were brilliant and walking up and down hills for hours on end was amazing strength training for my legs.  I had started introducing some into my training hills recently and this has convinced me I really need better leg strength. From what I've read it has the dual benefit of being lower impact and reducing the chances of injury.  On the downside it is really hard and not fun at all.  But then again, speed intervals aren't exactly the most enjoyable thing to do either... Wait, why do I do running again?

Oh right, I'm clearly I'm a unrepentant masochist. Good to know.

Final bit is the diet and exercise are clearly working very well, I got this great news from the (yes, probably highly inaccurate) set measuring thingy at the gym:

Ooooooooooh yeah baby.  Another milestone reached thanks to plant power :)

Racing and Food

Okie dokie.  So training is going well, just 16 weeks out from the Edinburgh Marathon now.  My long run is back up at 22km and increasing each week.  I plan to be at 32km within 8 weeks or so.  I'm also working on my speed and I've currently set myself three tiers of goals:

• Tier 3 - Worst Case - Complete the damn thing.  No matter if I have to walk, I don't want a DNF (Did Not Finish) on my first marathon.  Or worse yet, a DNS (Did Not Start) due to injury.  Must get this tier at a minimum!
• Tier 2 - Reality Check - 3 hours 30 minutes.  Based on my existing times and proper preparation, I should be able to clock this time.  Not easily, but should be doable.
• Tier 1 - Platinum Standard Awesomeness - Sub 3 hours 10 minutes.  This is my primary goal, as it will get me a good for age place at the London Marathon. It is a stretch, but if I train well, I feel I have this in me.

So there you have it, I've outed my expectations.  Let's review again after I've done my warm up races.

Next up, I thought I'd do a walk through of a recent stir-fry extravaganza!

Step 1: Get lots of stir fry ingredients.  Here I have carrots, broccoli, mushroom, baby corn, Chinese lettuce marinated tofu, and sweet pepper.

Step 2: Cook in a wok until, you know, all cooked and stuff

Step 3: Add some sauce and put in a plate. People like plates, they tend to add a touch of refinement over eating directly from the wok.  Fancy chopsticks are totally optional.

Why I don't have a cooking show on TV is a mystery.  Clearly I'm a genius.

Or not.  You know, since it didn't actually taste that good.  Word to the wise: don't use a BBQ stir fry sauce with tofu that has a completely different flavour.  They compete.  And not in a good way. 

Back to the drawing board...