Live by it

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

The Vegetarian Experiment-Part 1

This past June a good friend of mine came to me for nutrition advice. He is also a fellow triathlete and we train together often, I was more than happy to help. His request was to put him on a diet to improve his athletic performance and to help him get through an Ironman distance triathlon 20 weeks away. This task was large and there was a lot on the line. If you read the title above you probably guessed it but I decided an all vegetarian diet was the way to go. Wait.. what??  There were lots of questions however the main concern of my friend was that “Athletes need protein” you read it every day, in every health magazine, in every grocery store. This is very true in fact endurance athletes need more protein than almost all other types of athletes but there are plenty of alternative sources of protein out there. I told my friend that I can promise that not only will your protein requirements be met but all other nutrient requirements will be met as well. There were lots of protest and many meat cravings along the way but after a few weeks we were in the zone and well on our way.

Test 1

My buddies previous PR in a half ironman distance was 5hr35min not too shabby however I was sure that with a little dietary help I could get his time down.  6 weeks of vegetarian diet later and race day was upon us, 70.3 in Boulder CO. My buddy raced hard and he crossed the line with a 5hr12min PR. So basically 6 weeks of veggies resulted in a 23min PR. Coincidence maybe. I congratulated my friend and told him works not done yet.

Test 2

SOMA Triathlon Half Ironman was the next mile stone in the vegetarian experiment. At this point in the project my friend has been vegetarian for 4 months. 4 months of fighting the craving for Bacon Cheese Burgers and brats (it was football season).  My friend raced hard, holding himself honest on the bike and testing himself on the run. When he crossed the line the clock read 4hr55min. This is respectable taking another 18min off his former new PR just a few months back.  Coincidence ok maybe. But is this thing working?

Test 3

Ironman Arizona was the next little test in the vegetarian experiment. I don’t care who you are but Ironman distance races are as hard as they get let alone doing it purely on a vegetarian diet. It was a long day for my friend but he managed to cross the line in 11hr31min. Not too bad. Surely this is no coincidence something must be working.

Off season came around but I requested that my buddy stay on the vegetarian diet for just a little longer, expecting much protest I was surprised by his response “Gladly”. Fast forward a few weeks of cross training and relaxing watching football hanging with friends.  I asked my friend if he wanted to run a 10k with me on a whim. 

Test 4

The Pima Sun Run 10k is exactly 7 months since the last piece of meat my friend has eaten. It was a great day for a 10k and the results were equally as great 39min46sec for my friend. This was another 1min15sec PR for my Vegetarian Experiment friend. This may not sound that impressive but the average mile time went from a 6min36sec/mile to 6min24sec/mile 12 seconds per mile average. Over the course of a marathon that is 5min12sec. Impressive.

7 Month Conclusion

You have probably already guessed it but the friend I have been referring to was me. I am the Vegetarian Experiment Human guinea pig. Granted these results didn’t come without some sweat under the Arizona Sun and support from my awesome friends and family but I am convinced without a doubt that a vegetarian diet played a major role in helping me make progress towards my goals. After hard workouts I recovered quick. 2 workouts a day, no problem. Time Trial lost through the desert, shitty but i survived.  Not only have I made performance gains over the last 7 months but my physical build has changed considerably. No more gut. People ask me stupid questions; No, being a vegetarian I am not starving all the time, I don’t just eat salads all the time, food is not plain and bland, I’m not frail and weak.  If you thing being vegetarian is something that is just a trend or something that only extremists and weirdo’s do or maybe you think its gay and not American, I challenge you to give it a try you may just be surprised what you get.   

  

The experiment continues....

Not So “Sweet” Sweeteners

Walk down the drink aisle at any grocery store and you will notice basically two types of items, Drinks and Diet Drinks. Let’s face it in todays society there is a growing concern of becoming over weight and trying to watch your weight. Every corner you turn there is an advertisement for some sort of new diet pill, drug, book or drink. With the thousands of new diet products hitting the market I have little confidence that it is doing anything. It’s easy to see this proof year after year as more diet products come out and the amount of overweight people keeps going up; there is no end in sight. This brings me to my initial point I want to discuss on artificial sweeteners. Diet coke is the second highest selling drink in America, and its sweetener is aspartame. The two biggest artificial sweeteners used in manufacturing today are Aspartame (200 times sweeter than table sugar) and Sucralose (600 times sweeter than table sugar) both products can not be broken down by our bodies so they do not yield any calories.

You are what you eat!

If you eat protein rich foods it will allow your body to grow, heal and repair. If you eat Carbohydrate rich foods it will give you energy for just about any activity you encounter. Eating Fats provide energy for low intensity activities and basal metabolic systems as well as many vital bodily systems such as blood pressure regulation. Eating or drinking foods with artificial sweeteners will give no benefit. So why eat or drink foods with artificial sweeteners? We do this in hope to curve that craving for foods that we have. So we can consume as much as we want and not gain a pound. (I made that last statement laughing). In fact consuming diet drinks that contain artificial sweeteners trick our bodies into eating more food.  There are a number of reasons why; one of them is that by consuming an artificial sweetener you trick your body into thinking you have had something with sugar. When you have eaten or drink something with real sugar (that your body thought you had) you body is expecting that sweetness to pass into your blood and give a calorie and insulin boost. However because you have consumed a non nutritive sweetener your blood stream does not receive that boost of calories and your body desires more calories throughout the day. This is a negative feedback loop. There are several more reasons why artificial sweeteners do not prevent weight gain and instead promote weight gain but in the interest of time I cannot go into it.

What can I do?

Read food labels; this past weekend I picked up a can of sparkling water or fizzy water I like to call it. I took a drink and I noticed that this was the sweetest water I have ever tasted. I did not read the label and the drink contained Sucralose along with 25 other chemicals that were not H₂O. I didn’t die but I also did not finish that drink. Be careful when you pick up products; read the label and pay attention to the ingredients. Don’t drink or eat foods that do not give any nutritional value. I stand by my word that “There is no need to consume foods or drinks that don’t provide any benefit” Do this and you body will thank you.  If you desire something sweet, eat something sweet but don’t over consume.

Fundrasing

Iv started a site to help me raise some funds so I can race more in 2012. Check it out
http://addicted.bbnow.org/index.php

Email to the CEO of Sprint

Dan-

I really wish i was actually talking to you right now being the CEO of a company i can only imagine how busy you actually are. I know that someone else is going to read this and most likely delete the email and my effort to email you will be wasted. However i don't care. I have been a customer for 5 years with sprint, never late payment never an issue. recently I broke my phone and had it quickly replaced by my insurance plan. This replacement phone recently started acting funky and was not working up to my standards. I called into tech support 3 times and followed their directions on how to fix the issues i had been having. Next step was to take my phone into the store, which was not easy for me to do. I have a busy life, i have a demanding job and am training for an ironman so my free time is a rare commodity. I made time to go into the sprint store to have my phone looked at, I left it there for 2 hrs. The tech came back to me and informed me that my phone was OK but they needed to flash the software and they needed another 1-2 hrs to do this. So 4 hours total time, that is unacceptable for me to be waiting around for 4 hours just to have the same broken phone. I spoke with a representative 1 more time on the phone to cancel my account which i was surprised was so easily done.

I will not be a customer of sprint ever again and will not recommend your company to another person.

Sincerely

The Gluten Free Triathlete

There is a lot of talk today about different types of diets that claim many desirable health benefits.  The two most popular I hear about are the Paleo Diet and Gluten Free Diets today were talking only about Gluten free diets. Before you go head over kilt into something, I feel it is best to understand what you are going into and for what reasons. You need to understand if you need to be Gluten Free?  What being Gluten Free means? Why you would want to be Gluten Free? Also what are you going to be losing by going Gluten Free?

Gluten is everywhere?

Gluten is the major protein that is found in wheat products such as breads and pasta. The Gluten Protein is found in the wheat seed and is approximately 80% of the protein found in whole wheat products. The Gluten protein has elastic properties that give the desired doughy texture to the products it is found in.  The Gluten protein can also be refined in a wheat mill and used as an additive in many manufactured food products because of its elasticity characteristics, availability, and low cost to refine.

Gluten Free or Not?

There are truly only 2 reasons why a person should be gluten free and hundreds of reasons why people actually choose to be gluten free. The first reason is Celiac Disease. Celiac Disease effects about 1% of the population comprised predominantly of white American women in their mid to late 30’s. Celiac Disease is an autoimmunity disease that causes the intestines to inflame and inhibit all absorption of nutrients. Celiac disease if un-treated is a very serious disease that causes dramatic weight loss and needs to be diagnosed by a doctor.  The Second Reason is Gluten Sensitivity. Gluten Sensitivity affects about 10% of the population and is becoming more and more prevalent. The cause of Gluten Sensitivity is unknown but it is likely a cross of gluten allergies and some other unknown stress related problems.  The Symptoms of Gluten Sensitivity can range from extreme to mild discomfort, just to be safe this is something that needs to be discussed with your doctor.

Health Benefits of Gluten Free

If you lie outside of the 11% of the population that has been diagnosed with a Gluten problem and you choose to be Gluten free there are a number of health benefits. These health benefits include weight loss, and a leaner body composition. I personally do not believe that it is the removal of Gluten from the diet that gives you these health benefits. The benefits of you are seeing come from decreasing the amount of processed foods you eat daily and from preparing food from home.  If you are going to go gluten free you are making a life change that is going to cause you to be more conscious of what you are putting into your body. From an athletes perspective this is key to performance gains and life long health regardless if you remove Gluten or not.

Health Benefits of Gluten

If you took the time to read the last paragraph then you understand now that the health benefits from being Gluten Free are not actually from being Gluten free. The health benefits are from taking the time to see what you are eating, preparing foods from home and by limiting the amount of processed foods from the diet. Gluten is not bad for you, it does not make you fat or sick, heavily processed foods and inappropriate portion sizes are most likely the culprit.

Take Home Message

If you have a serious Gluten problem that a doctor has diagnosed then always follow what they say. If you are the other 89% and are looking for performance and health gains you need to make the decision to go gluten free all together which is a difficult task and takes time to become efficient at. Or the other option is you can slow down daily, Don’t eat out so much, Take the time to prepare foods at home and Limit the amount of processed foods in your diet. Option 2 is what I’ve chosen, and I think if you give it a good old college try you will find that it’s not all that hard to do. Slow down eat well!

Carbohydrates Triathletes Best Friend

In the world we live in today there is an increasing talk about Carbohydrates. The truth is that carbohydrates really are the endurance athlete’s best friend, with out them we could not Swim, Bike or Run with any bit of enjoyment or proficiency.  Without carbohydrates our capacity for endurance would just about disappear. So the question on everyone’s mind is how many carbohydrates do I need? To answer this we first need to understand what carbohydrates are and what they do in our bodies.

What is a Carbohydrate?

To the endurance athlete carbohydrates are basically either Glucose, Fructose or some combination of the two. (There are different types of Carbohydrates but for this we are only going to talk about those two.) Carbohydrates can be linked together to form different types of Sugars or chemical structures such as Sucrose (Glucose linked with Fructose) also know as table sugar. Carbohydrates can also be linked together to form more complex molecules like Amylose or Amylopectin which is basically a long string of glucose molecules linked together commonly found in plants.  Carbohydrates are found in foods like fruit, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, grains, and sweets. Carbohydrates can be classified as either Simple like in cookies and soda or Complex like in whole wheat bread or pasta.

What does it do in the body?

Carbohydrates once they enter the mouth begin to break down into a digestible form.  Your saliva contains an enzyme called amylase that begins to break down complex carbohydrates into a more simple form preferred by the small intestines.  Next, carbohydrates are moved down into your stomach where they are further broken down into a digestible form called chyme. This mix of partially digested food is then released slowly into your small intestines where it is broken down further into the simplest form, glucose. Glucose now can be absorbed into your blood stream.  Once glucose is in circulation your muscle cells and liver can begin to uptake glucose with a little help of from our friend insulin. Inside the cell, glucose either is made into glycogen for storage or used for energy in glycolysis during exercise. Once glucose has entered glycolysis it can be used to make energy both anaerobic for a short period of time or glucose can be used to fuel the citric acid cycle at medium to medium high aerobic efforts. Depending on your exercise intensity your body will begin to burn a blend of fat and carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates are not 100% essential but for an endurance athlete they are critical. With out carbohydrates it would take a long time to restore glycogen levels to an acceptable range after training.

How much do I need?

Now that you have the gist of what a carbohydrate is we can discuss how much and endurance athlete needs. Typically and endurance athlete needs 50-65% of their diets from Carbohydrates and less than 10% of those carbohydrates coming from a simple form. Here is what I recommend.

Training time                      Carbohydrate grams/pound body weight

1 hour/day                          2.7-3.2 per lb

2 hours/day                        3.6 per lb

3 hours/day                        4.5 per lb

4 hours/day                        5.4-5.9 per lb

So if I am a 180lb man and I am training 2 hours per day, 180lbX3.6g/lb=648g grams of carbohydrates. I recommend splitting these up through each meal of the day so for 5 meals that is 129g per meal. Since are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate that is about 520 calories per meal from carbohydrates.

I realize that this may be a little bit too much information, but the beautiful human machine is complex and there is no owner’s manual.  So go out there eat carbs and train hard!