As I was packing for my Crazy European Bicycle Experiment(tm), I was thinking to myself "How Did I Get Here?" I mean, really? In total I will ride at least 2000 miles over 60 days on unknown terrain in the heat of Summer and I know I can do it. I don't even think it will be that challenging, not the kind of "OH GOD, WHEN WILL THIS END!?!!" challenging. I'm just a recreational athlete. I don't train everyday, unless you call riding around Chicago training.
I remember though, where it all began... It was when I posted
"The Vegan Warrior" that started me down this road. [1]
This was just when I started working at the Health Food company. I've always eaten relatively healthy, and kept up with advancements in human nutrition, since my early days as a starving Wrestler, but my knowledge of human nutrition AND performance was, in retrospect, still sort of infantile compared to what I would come to know in the following years.
My diet & lifestyle evolved in small increments, picking up new foods little by little, increasing the frequency of whole foods I already liked, artichoke hearts, steamed broccoli, oats, almonds, etc... I started adding greens like chard, collards, kale, other grains like quinoa, amaranth, kasha, teff and more and more nuts, and a variety of beans and seeds.
As I learned more about preparing these foods, I bought appliances/utensils to help prepare them in varied ways. Dopamine receptors began to create those positive memories of foods and feeling. My palate began to change, to be more sensitive to subtleties of clove, cumin, lavender. I began to crave them, love them.
Just by absolute volume considerations, the addition of new foods started replacing tofurkey hot dogs, soy milk, seitan, soy ice cream. I didn't have to think about it. It just happened and my grocery bill dropped too.
As I scoured through nutritional research journals at the Health Food Company, I began incorporating the science into my diet. I added brazil nuts for selenium, savoy cabbage/pumpkin seeds for zinc, red wine marinated beets for betalins, made a loaf of Flax seed bread each week for Ω3's. All this may seem like too much, but it takes about as much thought as knowing orange juice has vitamin C, once you take the time to learn it.
I also became interested in knowing how certain food substances affected my blood/body morphology and thus began the
"Tale of the Tape" experiments, Green Tea lowered my iron, Coconut Oil raised my Cholesterol (115-->140), but improved my cholesterol ratios, etc... I started doing kung fu regularly, added yoga to my exercise regime, bicycled year round as transportation, walked up stairs instead of taking the elevator.
The combination of sound nutrition, daily exercise, science and experimental data transformed my body in ways I never would have imagined 5 years ago. The food greatly reduced the recovery time during my marathon training, while maintaining my energy levels. I now repair at an extraordinary rate. It wasn't linear. It allowed me to work more, do more, which increased my recovery rate even further to the point where I could burn 1200 Cal/hour for 3 hours straight, a full pound of fat in 3 hours. [2]
The microflora populations in my gut evolved to digest plants to produce vitamins and carbs, break down glucose polymers and increase plant protein digestibility. I am in the best shape of my life, which is truly remarkable since I used to practice 3 hours/day, 6 days/week as a HS football player & wrestler. I never would've been able to run a 4 hour marathon in just 18 weeks of training back then, despite the advantage of my youth. And this year, my experimentally determined lactate threshold is up 10BPM to 172BPM, which calculates to < 30 year old athlete's heart. Injuries I've dealt with for years disappeared, slowly, but disappeared nonetheless.
Being a scientist, I'm always a skeptic, but a scientist is also an empiricist and it's irrefutable to me that my body excels on a whole food plant based diet. The data doesn't lie. I have statin drug like cholesterol levels without statins. I don't get sick anymore, not even colds, I need 40% less sleep than average folks. I don't get stomach aches, seasonal allergies, rarely get head aches (like 4x/year), etc... My blood parameters are ideal. Inside & out all the testing says I'm in great shape. My energy levels almost superhuman. My resting heart rate is in the low 40's.
Everything makes sense, from our evolutionary history, comparative anatomy, medical research, epidemiological studies. I really believe that we have been taught a big huge lie on what "food" is and how we should live. There's a number of Medical & Nutritional researchers who realize this as well,that know how subtle compositional changes in our food have dramatic long term effects.
The point is that I'm not unusual. I don't think I'm remarkable, or that my results are atypical. I think the Standard American Diet is a cumulative poison and people who eat this way have been living with a hangover for years.
I think the culture we were indoctrinated into makes us sick. The scientific data is piling up, but culture is so difficult to change once its ingrained into a person's mind. It's so difficult to unlearn what you've learned and when you question it, there's a dozen other people who try to push you back into line and tell you that you're crazy and you'll die. I went through that when I 1st became vegetarian en route to becoming vegan; I just didn't believe them.
I know I'm sounding preachy, but as I'm getting older, I'm seeing way too many people I care about feeling horrible all the time, and thinking it's just "old age." not realizing the body has an amazing capacity to repair itself given the right fuel, nutrients and stimulus.
Please, go see
Forks Over Knives. The documentary is somewhat simplified and they do over-exaggerate a bit, but the science is so deep from how branch chained amino acids up regulate IGF-1 to increase cancer growth to the development of fat microdroplets dampening insulin receptors, to sulfur amino acids lowering blood pH and increasing bone demineralization, to phyto-nutrients altering kidney stone crystal structures allowing them to shrink and pass without incidence. Even micronutrients alter your bone structure on the molecular level to make them more pliable, more resilient to shock.
jv
[1] The irony is that my years at the Health Food Company, gave me enough knowledge to realize I don't need supplements except B12 and Vit D. Those are the only supplement I take. Everything else is obtained from whole foods.
[2] This is what I mean by "non-linear" as you get in better shape, your capacity to do work increases, your ability to access your fat stores increases, so you don't get energy crashes, your blood glucose levels are more constant, and you don't get super hungry to the point where you binge eat. All this makes it easier to exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle & body mass.
