11 Tips for Going Vegan
I recently went vegan...again. I've been vegan several times in my life, once for about 3 years. That was a long time ago, and now that I've made the transition again I wanted to document some of the key things that make the transition easy and painless. When I've read about the transitions made by others it can often sounds easy, like a person just went vegan after some big event in their life - a health scare or a realization about factory farming, or they just decided and that was it. That was how I went vegan originally, but this time it was different. It was just a desire to eat better, lose some weight and get in better shape, but the truth is that none of that made it easy like the first time I did it.
I hear people say, "Oh I could never do that it would be so hard." In reality this time it was easy, but it was about my 10th attempt to really make the transition so I've learned a few things about how to make it easy and how to fail in the transition. I wanted to share my tips in case they are useful for someone else trying to make the transition to a plant based diet.
1) Have a goal. Have some reason to do it. Like I mentioned before sometimes the reason comes suddenly and other times it has to be self-generated. If you haven't been struck with a sudden reason that has made your transition obvious and easy, you may need to come up with something. In my case I picked an ultramarathon that I want to run. It's a really compelling goal for me and I hadn't been making much progress. I linked going vegan with the achievement of the goal and it became much easier.
Book Review – Born to Run
[amazonify]B0028MBKVG:right[/amazonify]
I have just finished reading the incredible book called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. This is bound to be Nike's least favorite book of the year. The book begins with Chris' exploration of why he - and so many other people running today are so frequently injured (he claims 80% of all runners experience some injury each year). It's then that he learns about the Tarahumara indians who live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico, some of the harshest terrain on earth and they run 30, 40, 50 miles or more just for fun - in homemade sandals. No orthotics. No high engineered shoes with million dollar research budgets. No physical therapists, podiatrists, or orthopedists. Injuries are for them are extremely rare. So what's up with that Nike?
Raw Food Experiment- Day 1/90
Today I begin a Raw Food Challenge. If you aren't familiar with the idea of eating raw of living foods. There are some good descriptions at: http://www.living-foods.com/faq.html or here.
I've been fascinated by raw and living foods for about 3 and a half years since I saw the exquisite book Raw Food/Real World
Today is my 37th birthday and it's time to get a bit more committed and serious to my health. I aim to stay at 95-100% for the next 90 days and report my progress. As of this morning I weighed 210lbs. and 28% body fat. I know from a few short-term experiments that I may lose weight very fast eating raw, or I might not. I haven't worked out why it can take so long sometimes and other times the weight just falls off.