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.

2) Attack all your addictions at once.  For me I've been a strong 6 Coke-a-day guy for a long long time not to mention the bag of M&Ms that goes with each Coke.  The running joke around my house is that it's easy for me to quit soda and caffeine because I do it multiple times every single day.  Unfortunately I started again just as many times.  This time I gave it all up together.  Drinking soda for me leads me to vending machines or fast-food restaurants and all manner of unhealthy cuisine.  Giving that up takes away the temptation to go to those places.  I've found giving up all the unhealthy habits at one time is actually a lot easier than trying to do it one piece at a time.

3) Prepare for the transition.  While  I do say attack all the addictions at once when you really commit, it was very helpful to me to practice for a month before I went 100% vegan.  This meant that I could eat whatever I wanted, but whenever possible I had to try to eat vegan.  This was great practice at just doing the mental exercise of thinking of good choices and choosing to drink more water rather than a soda every time.  In order to have a vegan lunch for example I had to think about it and prepare for it.  This required more effort.  It's much easier to go through the practice when there is no pressure to stay 100%.  If I made a non-vegan choice it wasn't failure just a chance to improve before I made the big leap.

4) Eat green.  The easiest way to break sugar addiction is eat a lot of greens.  I don't know exactly why this works, but every time I've ever been able to break my sugar addictions it has been preceded by a dramatic increase in consumption of greens.  The easiest and most effective way to get a lot of greens first thing in the morning is to make a green juice.  My favorite is a simple green lemonade (will post recipe later).  It's a bit of an acquired taste, but is pretty good once you get used to it.  I recommend eating more greens later in the day as well in either a salad or a green smoothie.  If you can find a couple chances a day to get some serious greens into your body, breaking food addictions will be a lot easier.

5) Prepare everyday.  The best thing to do to stay on track is to know what you are going to eat before you start the day.  If you are deciding something vegan you can eat as you are running out the door late for work, it's going to be tough.  Next you might get some blood sugar issues, followed by cravings, and then you are off track.  If you already have food with you or you know where you are going to grab food things are much easier.  Plan the night before and everything gets much easier.  Also make sure you have some quick emergency snacks handy in case you get hungry.  A bag of raw nuts or a Larabar within easy reach is really easy.

6) Stick to a routine.  My personal opinion is that you need to limit variety as much as possible.  The fewer number of times you have to make a decision of what to eat the better off you'll be.  I might go for a couple of weeks eating pretty much the same thing for each meal.  I might have green juice every morning for breakfast (24 oz.), then a mid-morning snack of nuts and seeds, lunch might be quinoa with either steamed veggies or sauteed veggies, a Larabar in the afternoon, and a green smoothie at the end of the day.  This is a basic structure I use and I can cook the quinoa and veggies on a Sunday and just have them available for lunches for 2-3 days.  Then I refresh that mid-week.  So I basically cook 2 days per week and then just make a quick smoothie and juice each day.  This takes no less time than cooking normally and is only slightly more time consuming than grabbing fast food.

7) Find other people.  Find a few people online that are vegans doing something similar.  I'm pretty sure they are out there.  For my goal finding ultramarathoners who are vegan is super easy.  Reading their twitter posts is inspiring and keeps me focused, plus I get great new ideas each day.   This also keeps me focused on my goal.

Don't let it get boring.  I said above that you should stick to a routine.  While that can really help you should find ways to mix up the routine every 2 to 3 weeks.  This might mean finding some great vegan cookbooks.  There are some seriously awful ones out there, but also some great ones.  My favorite one is currently the Jaiseed cookbook.  I love that book because the food is extremely flavorful but also simple.  It's easier for me to keep to a super simple routine most of the time, but every couple of weeks its awesome to cook up something super flavorful and savory.  You really don't need to try to be cooking new recipes everyday, that's way too much work.

9) Eat live food whenever possible.  Some would call this a "raw vegan" diet, but really what we are looking for is food that has its natural waters in it that still tastes alive and that hasn't had all the nutrients cooked out of them.  When I eat a lot of cooked food I find it much easier to slip back over the line -first a bit of cheese, then some food made with eggs, etc.  Pretty soon I'm back to my junk food diet.  When I'm eating a "high raw" diet there is really nothing in the animal world that really compares to a fresh strawberry or fresh spinach and I think this sends my brain the signal that I'm doing something distinctly different - the line is very distinct.  On the other hand, my body also at times craves food that is warm or crunchy and that can be a bit more work to replicate with raw food.  For this reason I try to eat 2 meals a day that are made with fresh fruits and vegetables (e.g. juice, smoothie, salad, etc.).

10) Don't make it forever.  Thinking about never being able to eat a steak again might seem really great after you've been vegan for a while, but going into it that might seem extremely limiting and if  you are like me your brain seems to rebel against that thought and decide to make sure you still have choices available.  Try setting a deadline to try a vegan diet until the end of the summer.  Make it 2-3 months so you are really feeling all the benefits, and when your deadline comes up you can make a decision about whether to continue or not.  In reality every day, every food choice is a decision about whether to eat a plant based diet or not, but by putting a finite time on how long you are going to limit your choice to a vegan diet will make your brain so much less rebellious.

11) Transition over a long weekend of holiday.  I always find it easier to make these changes beginning on a Friday before a long weekend.  This way you only have one day to deal with your normal weekday routine and for most people the weekend provides more flexibility.  If you are dropping caffeine, trying to be productive with a bit of a headache might not be a lot of fun.  If you can do it over a long weekend, most of the painful part of caffeine withdrawl can be kicked in 3-4 days.  If you a fueling yourself with tons of greens then you will already be squashing the major cravings.

Well those are the 11 key things that I think have made the transition for me feel very easy and natural.  I'm feeling better than I've felt in a long time.  Good luck with your transition.  If you have any other tips to add please add them in the comments.

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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?

Okay, so maybe it's not all Nike's fault, but the book does go into a significant exploration of the evidence that running shoes prevent injuries.  Guess what - there really isn't any.  Say what?  In fact, the more expensive your running shoes, the more likely you are to be hurt (See http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0103/mw.htm).  All that R&D on protecting and padding the feet and legs, seems to actually protect us from the sensations that tell us we aren't running right.  You run barefoot - your form will completely change.  Your body will inform you.

I learned this at some level many years ago.  In middle school we had a grass track and you could choose to run barefoot or with shoes.  One day I took off my shoes and realized that I was a lot faster, in fact I went from being middle of the pack to one of the fastest kids in school.  Then I thought - maybe I'm gifted at running, I should join the track team.  At track meets you have to wear shoes.  For me I was always significantly slower at meets that I was running barefoot on the home track.  I also learned I liked running less when running in shoes.  I started running barefoot on road and hiking barefoot, but eventually enough people looked at me strangely and telling me I'd get hurt that I started wearing shoes again.  Looking back now that's when I actually started getting hurt.  Lots of hurt.  In fact I haven't stayed healthy as a runner long enough to reach any of my big running goals.  I am so invigorated by this new movement to minimal footwear that I intend to begin barefoot running and hiking again - for the sheer fun of it.

The book is written as a great adventure story as he tracks down the history and mythology of the Tarahumara, ultimately culminating in a race in the Copper Canyons between some of America's best Ultramarathoners and the traditional runners.  A great story and well told.  I had a hard time putting the book down.  In between the story Chris masterfully weaves in an exploration of the science of running - and ultimately the evidence that humans were literally born, or evolved to run.  I was fascinated by the description of persistent hunting (check name).  This is where primitive hunters, our ancestors, would literally hunt by running an animal to death - since humans can out distance any other animal on earth.

In addition to all of the above, I love this book because it challenges accepted wisdom that many have taken for granted for a long long time and challenges the notion of what it means to be human. It will almost surely open up your sense of what is possible for humans and you may not just get the idea that our species is not only built to run long distances, but it can be joyful and fun.

Whether you are a lover of running or just a good story, this book is highly recommended.

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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 in a book store.  It totally shifted my view of what food could be.  Raw food is not all about carrots and celery.  There is enormous sophistication and flavor that can be created with purely raw, organic, delicious, healthy ingredients.  One of the most sumptuous meals I've ever eaten was at the raw restaurant Pure Food & Wine in New York City.  I've dabbled with a raw diet now and then and done a few stretches with it, but never stuck to it for more than a few weeks.  I absolutely love how I feel when I eat this way, but have found it to be a real challenge to stick to that when working crazy long hours and eating out for business.  Hopefully I've learned enough from my prior experiences to succeed this time.

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.

The other thing I will be incorporating into my diet over the next 90 days are superfoods.  I recently saw David Wolfe speak and I read his book brand new book Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future .  I guess I remain a bit skeptical about some of that, but like most things it's worth testing for oneself.  I've begun to introduce superfoods into my diet now and will continue for the next 90 days, primarily on a daily basis with goji berries, cacao, maca, raw honey, fresh coconut or coconut butter, spirulina, hempseeds, and occasionally aloe vera.  I also will  also eat kelp and chlorella on a daily basis as they are listed as honorable mention superfoods in David's book.  I will also start out taking MSM, milk thistle, Vitamin D, and alfalfa supplements on a regular basis during the 90 days, but may make adjustments as I see fit.

I'm planning to post fairly frequently on my progress as well as give people an idea of what I have been eating.  I think that the staple of my diet will end up being a large daily green smoothie.  I started today with one that was just a cornucopia of goodness.  Here's what I threw in:

• 2 bananas
• 1 orange
• 1 apple
• raw honey
• frozen peaches
• coconut butter (2 tbsp)  - at this point I blend it and give some to the kids then I take the remaining and the rest
• cacao (2 tbsp)
• ginger (very small chunk)
• maca (2 tbsp)
• MSM (1 tbsp)
• hempseeds (3 tbsp)
• basil leaves (3 today - really adds a nice flavor)
• aloe vera (1 small leaf fileted)
• spinach (2 large handfulls)
• turmeric (1 tsp) - I'd never tried this before, but thought it would be nice

Blend that up and it's 30 oz. of total goodness that I drink over a period of 30-45 minutes.  It keeps me going for a good chunk of the day.

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