January 15, 2010 - 5:02 pm
Today's blog is way, way off the topics I usually cover--politics, economics and markets. Instead I want to talk about diet and its relationship to health and fitness. If you're desperate for a link to the usual topics of politics, economics and markets, then I would say that I'm offering America a health care plan of my own. (Also See: "Costs Of The 'Silent Pandemic'.")
My health care plan is a vegan diet. As I'll discuss below, you don't have to go whole-hog vegan--oops, poor metaphor--to enjoy the benefits of a vegan diet. Contrary to what the vegan purists tell you, you can be a "mostly vegan."
Here is the genesis of my mostly vegan conversion. Last year I turned 55 and hated the way I looked and felt. Some joker kept doctoring my photos by adding a double chin. No one who looked at the 182 pounds I carried on my six-foot frame would have called me fat, but I was 30 pounds over my college weight and 20 pounds over my marriage weight. My lean body mass index showed more fat than my weight suggested.
So in March 2009 I bought a bike - a Trek 7.6 commuter--and started with 10-mile rides. By May I was up to 20 mile rides. At that point I took the plunge and bought a serious road bike--a Trek Madone 5.2, a slightly cheaper variant of the 6.9 model used by Lance Armstrong.
By July I was doing 30-40 mile rides and by August I was doing them pretty hard, maintaining 18-19 miles per hour on the flat parts. In October I entered my first race, an uphill time trial ... and did surprisingly well.
The biking alone quickly shed me of six to seven pounds, but I didn't think too much about it. The trigger that caused me to begin eating a plant-rich diet and lose another six to seven pounds had more to do with workout recovery than weight.
My work and travel schedule is such that I can't ride every day or take long rides during the week. Sometimes I'm traveling and can't ride at all. Instead I'll use the stationary bike or the elliptical at the hotel gym. What I do, then, is substitute quality for quantity and try to make at least 30 minutes in a 60-minute workout as hard as I can.
Intensity, though, comes at a price. The price is lactic acid, which can run you down if not flushed out with long easy rides in between the hard ones. The best training program for biking, running or swimming will always be a mix of hard intensity and long easy recovery and base-building rides. But when you're trying to get fit on a time-crunched schedule, something has to give. For me, it is the long slow rides. I just don't have time to do them.
This is where the plant-rich diet--i.e., mostly vegan--comes in. Turns out that a vegan diet is the one mostly likely to contain natural antioxidants and minerals that neutralize waste products like lactic acid.
Over the summer my at-home diet began to look like this:
BREAKFAST
Smoothie made of non-sweetened soy milk, a package of frozen blueberries and raspberries, bananas and (here I cheat a bit) some yogurt. Milk-based yogurt violates the vegan idea, but, heck, I just like it. Makes the smoothies smoother. I also eat a high-grain, non-sweetened cereal, such as Ezekiel's Golden Flax.
LUNCH
A salad of brown rice, baby spinach leaves, soy beans, kidney beans, beets, sliced almonds and a splash of balsamic vinegar.
DINNER
Here is where I abandon the vegan diet and happily eat whatever my lovely wife serves. (She's a great cook.) But I've learned to enjoy smaller portions of meat and bigger heapings of vegetables. Sometimes I'll pad the meal with brown rice, a batch of which is always in our refrigerator.
On the road I always take some Ezekiel cereal, sliced almonds and apples. It's not easy to eat vegan on the road but, remember, I'm not trying to be a pure vegan. Mostly vegan will do. My goal is simply to consume as high a percentage of calories from plants as I can without making a nuisance of myself or driving myself nuts. I'd rather eat nuts than go nuts.
The result of this new, mostly vegan diet, combined with biking, has been impressive. The vegan-like diet works superbly as a way to recover from heavy anaerobic workouts. I now weigh 168 pounds and feel terrific. The vegan fans are right about this: You do feel cleaner inside.
The notion of a vegan diet is repellent to a lot of men and especially conservative men. If you're like me, your mental picture of a "vegan" might be that of an eco-hippie or a PETA purist or someone who eschews deodorant as well as meat. That's increasingly inaccurate. In December I had dinner with a guy who is none of those. He's actually a very macho guy and a political conservative to boot: the British adventurer and TV star Bear Grylls. Since Grylls eats snakes and other vermin on his show, Man vs. Wild, he's not a pure vegan. But for dinner at the hotel Grylls ordered vegan. He is amazingly fit and radiates vitality.
If you want to learn more about vegan diets without the annoying eco-lecture that often goes with it, I recommend The Engine 2 Diet. The author is a former pro triathlete and now a firefighter in Texas. Vegans in Texas? Heck, yes.
