I don’t want to seem like I am slamming on Tim Ferriss too much.  I like a lot of Tim’s stuff, I’ve read his 1st book and I read his blog occasionally.  He definitely is a very smart guy.  Even though I’ve been studying health and nutrition for a shorter time, I have a completely different model, and respectively disagree with his approach.

Personally in my experience I found my athletic recovery got 500% better when I switched to a diet that was predominantly fruits and vegetables.  This basic organic banana-spinach smoothie recipe costs about $4-5 to make and is delicious.  Not sure how much creatine powder and pills cost but this smoothie is inexpensive, helps with recovery, also nourishes you for a meal and has no negative side-effects.

What makes more sense?  Taking pills or powders from a lab?  Or eating the food humans and primates have eaten for over a million years?  It’s simple, it’s easy and it’s delicious.  Improving your diet for better athletic performance is not as difficult as some people make it out to be.  Try the fruits and vegetables approach and see what happens to your muscle recovery.  You’ve got nothing to lose and a ton of things to gain.
Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

Just wanted to show you what a typical (or actually really good in this case) grocery haul looks like for me.  So if you’re looking for some ideas whether you’re veg*n, omnivore, paleo or something else I picked up some pretty decent stuff you might want to try out.

Have you picked up anything cool from the grocery store lately?  Feel free to share in the comments.  I am definitely looking for winter produce ideas when the fruit availability isn’t as good.

I competed at Tough Mudder TX Coast in Edna, TX on 1/29/12.  This 12-mile 25+ obstacle course DEFINITELY challenged me.  I had run the race a year ago, in Austin, when it was 10 miles.  I am in better shape now, but the course definitely got harder.  The weather was perfect.  2 of the miles were through a swamp about knee deep!  Everything was going great until the 11-mile mark.  The last 3 obstacles were absolutely brutal.  But I survived and made it through.

Now I’m signed up for:

• Tough Mudder Dallas 4/1/12
• Tough Mudder Austin 10/7/12

See you out there!  Train hard

I did this race last year when it was 10 miles, this year it will be 12.  Last time I finished in about 2:40, this year I hope to do it even faster, despite the course being 2 miles longer.  I wanted to share a post with you each day about what I’m doing to prepare both training-wise and diet-wise.  First off is a video of my 10-mile run the other night:

Happy New Year!

Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

Bottom line: anything you want to get good at, anything you want to improve at: you have to accept that you’re going to suck in the beginning.  Once you get over that, and realize that with practice you’ll improve, your mindset changes.  It no longer becomes, frustrating, it becomes fun.

I don’t really recommend using pasteurized concentrates though.  (Pasteurized fruit juice is a whole ‘nother topic).  Use real fruit whenever possible, frozen is the next best.  Also, personally I like to sneak some lettuce or spinach in there to get extra nutrients without really changing up the taste.

This Thanksgiving, I want to tell you a story.  When I was 4 years old my parents took me to a turkey farm for thanksgiving.  Boy, was I ever excited.  When we arrived there, I got to see all of the turkeys running around in a pen.  I was fascinated and immediately wanted one.

My parents said “pick out which one you want!”  So I pointed my finger at the friskiest of the whole bunch.  I was so excited!  This turkey was going to be my pet and run around in the backyard right?  This was going to be best day ever!!  Not exactly.  The farmer took the bird I pointed at and cut off its head on a stump.  It ran around for a few seconds and fell over.  I screamed.  I don’t remember much after that.

What I do know is, even since then, the sight of poultry be it turkey or chicken has been revolting to me.  I hated to look at even other people eating it.  Thanksgiving quickly became my least favorite holiday.  I dreaded it every year, and always tried to excuse myself from it as early as possible.  I hated being questioned every year why I refused to eat turkey.  People pushed it on me, saying it was good for me, that I wouldn’t “get full” eating just potatoes, cranberries and stuffing.

Somehow, as a kid, I just knew it wasn’t right.  Despite my family constantly prodding me that it was tradition, that eating turkey was good for me… somewhere deep down I just knew it was so truly wrong that I just could not partake.  People have been so conditioned in society to just think that turkeys are food.  We don’t want to come to terms with the fact that when 46 million turkeys will be eaten this week, it’s because 46 million turkeys were needlessly murdered.

It would be another 19 years before I became vegetarian.  To this day, it is still disgusting to me.  I can’t even eat the fake chicken patties that are made out of mushrooms, soy etc.  They remind me too much of real chicken.

Afterword:

I hope that your thanksgiving is fun and surrounded by good friends and family.  I hope that you take time to be grateful for the life that you have.  I hate being preachy but just think twice about what you eat this holiday, the animals want to live just as much as you do.

From 2006 to 2010 I was getting injured all the time.  Feet, shins, ankles, knees, hips, quad, hamstrings, I injured it all during that time.  In fact, I seemed to only have brief periods of time between injuries where I could play at my full ability.  It sucked, I just attributed it to being “old” (read: mid-20s) and that injuries and soreness were just the price of activity past your teenage years.

Transitioning to invulnerability

All of that changed in 2011 when I transitioned from a mostly-processed food vegetarian diet to a whole-food, high-raw vegan diet.  For 10 months I pushed myself and pushed myself but just did NOT get injured.  My workout schedule naturally ballooned to 6 days/week because I constantly had energy and was rarely sore.  I have been running longer distances, lifting heavier weights, shredding longer at footbag practices.  It’s like I’ve invulnerable.  I just did not get injured.  I rarely even got sore.

Likewise, in 2011, I haven’t been sick.  Bad colds and bugs have gone around my office, my wife has gotten sick multiple times… and I haven’t gotten much more than a few sniffles.  Now I understand why people on really healthy diets get so frustrated with western medicine.  When you work to pro-actively cultivate health in your life, it’s like there is no place for disease.  That though, is a topic for a whole ‘nother post, maybe a whole book at some point.

At some point the ride had to end

Well, it finally happened, I finally got injured.  The worst part is, it was doing something kind of stupid.  A few days after my half marathon I decided to try to go for my first run in my vibram five-fingers (you know, those shoes that look like a cross between a sock and a glove?).  I read up on the internet about it.  Apparently you should only run 1/4 mile or less the first few times.  I foolishly thought given my diet,  my invulnerability-streak and that I had just ran a half-marathon, I could push the rules a little bit.  Nope.  I ran about 3/4 mile before my calves started to hurt.  The next day, they were incredibly tight and I had difficulty walking around.  That cleared up a couple days later so…  Yesterday, I went for a run in my regular running shoes.  I got about 2 miles when my calves and my ITB started to hurt.  Again, I’m struggling to walk today.

Well, now what?

So I guess it will be stretching and foam rolling for the next few days.  Luckily it’s not too bad, I’ve been injured much, much worse in the past.  But I’ve gotten hurt enough times to learn my lesson on how to bounce back from these injuries.  I’ll be laying off the running, and hitting the foam roller really hard the next few days.

My workouts have consisted of:

• Pull ups
• Chin ups
• Push ups
• Dips
• L-sits
• Planks
• Squats
• Lunges
• Lots of variations on the above

It’s amazing how little equipment you need to get in a good workout.  After some of these days I wake up with my arms and core and completely sore.

Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen