Month: December 2012

body image · diets · sports nutrition

Why Sports Nutrition Counselling Is Not for Me (in the Long Run)

Tracy I14 Comments

I posted recently about vegan sports nutrition. I know I can fuel my body sufficiently on a vegan diet. A sports nutritionist confirmed that for me. And she was impressed with the choices I make, even before she “counselled” me. In fact, she had very little to say about how I should change my eating, given my level of activity.

Samantha posted about why she hates Weight Watchers. I have also had my ups and downs (literally) with WW and other programs. There are lots of reasons to be wary of any program that focuses on weight loss as the sole goal. And there are lots of programs like that out there.

When I was in my twenties I (twice) lost a considerable amount of weight through a centre called “Physician’s Weight Loss Clinic.” I am 5 feet, 4 inches tall and when I joined I weighed about 120 pounds. On their 700 calorie a day diet (!!) and with *daily* weigh-ins, I went down to 105 pounds (that’s 11 pounds lower than the low end for my height at WW; WW would refuse me or demand a doctor’s note).

Forget any form of activity on the Physician’s Weight Loss Clinic plan. I could barely make it through a work day at my summer job in an air conditioned office answering phones at a desk all day. I’m sure the nurse who did the weigh-ins had an eating disorder. By the time I reached goal, I had one too.

As Samantha said, apart from the fact that these programs don’t usually “work” for long term weight maintenance, they do not have a good handle on what active people require. They do not support, encourage, or even understand eating for performance.

Sports nutrition is a far cry from the calorie-restricted plans weight loss centres and programs offer. And sports nutrition counselling provides solid information for the athlete who regards food as fuel for enhancing her performance. In general, I had a positive experience with it in that respect.

So why have I decided that it’s not for me? I have a history of food obsession, chronic dieting, and disordered eating. The diet industry fostered the attitudes and behaviors that resulted in an almost complete disconnect between my physical hunger signals and my actual desire for food. I had no sense of proper portions and still today struggle most not with what to eat but how much.

At various times of my life, I have attempted to “recover” what I lost: a natural, intuitive relationship with food as a response to hunger and physical need. The most hope for a new approach came to me through the work of Geneen Roth (especially Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating) Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter (Overcoming Overeating), and Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (Intuitive Eating).

The approach, popularized in the early nineties, teaches people to re-connect with their hunger signals and to stop demonizing some foods as “bad” while others are praised as “good.” All of them said to throw away the scale and commit to never dieting again.

When I first encountered these works, I was a PhD student in a demanding doctoral program. I spent most of my day thinking about food and judging my body harshly. I starved myself for weeks on end and worked out for hours every day. These authors promised relief from the obsession with food and, more importantly, from the body hatred that fuelled my workouts.

This month, after some reflection, I made a decision to return to the authors and books that gave me so much hope twenty years ago. I will be blogging more about that at some point soon.

So what does all of this have to do with sports nutrition and sports nutrition counselling? Given my history, it is beyond easy for me to convince myself that a solid “plan” is not a diet. Even the diet industry avoids the word “diet” these days.

But for me, no matter how sound the information I receive from a nutrition counsellor is, it starts me down the path of what I call “mediated eating.” The eating is mediated by information about what and how much I should be eating. And that disassociates me from my body, my physical hunger signals, my intuitive relationship with food.

For me, that is dangerous. It fosters old patterns of behavior and soon I am back to an obsessive relationship with food. Eating is then mediated by the desire to change my body. My body is no longer acceptable as it is.

And the cycle starts all over again. I can feel that creeping back into my life right now. It started with the nutrition counselling. I want to nip it in the bud.

Now, maybe someone who is blogging about being “fittest at fifty” is just fooling herself if she thinks she can have that as a goal and yet not have an at least somewhat mediated relationship with food.

We will have to see. If I want freedom from the obsession with food, weight, and body image, I need to accept that for me (not necessarily for you), sports nutrition has all the psychological trappings of any other plan.

And that’s why I am no longer interested in sports nutrition or sports nutrition counselling.

aging · weight loss

Monday morning, perimenopause, and metabolism

Sam B4 Comments

So finally the kids are all teenagers (or beyond) and my career is established. It’s time to put some effort into getting fitter and staying fit through mid-life and beyond.

Fine. Sounds good.

Except that what’s changed is my metabolism. Gone are the days of easy diets and quick weight loss, speedy change in body composition. Now I work very hard–good nutrition, lots of exercise–to pretty much stay the same!

And mostly I don’t care about weight. I care about fitness. And it looks like that’s an excellent attitude to have because with age the rules of the game have changed.

There’s lots of research in the area of midlife health and fitness–baby boomers demanded it–and none of it is good news if what you care about is weight and body fat.

For runners, you need to run further and faster each year to burn the same number of calories. Getting fitter just means it takes less effort, hence fewer calories, to do the same thing. That’s just what fitness is. Ignore the calorie counters on exercise equipment at the gym.

And no matter what else you do, you’re aging and your metabolism is slowing down. And truth be told, few people run more or run harder as they age. Why that’s so was the subject of an earlier blog post, Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice?

There’s a sad funny story in Timothy Coalfield’s new book The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness about a colleague who ran 18 marathons, one a year, and gained one pound per marathon.

Krista Scott Dixon also thinks the burden is especially heavy for those of us who want to stay fit as we age.

“Aging has a sense of humour. And it’s like that practical joker roommate who thinks it’s hi-larious to prop a bucket of water above a half-open door. Hee hee hee! I made your knees fall apart! Enjoy the hemorrhoids! And now you pee when you run! Hee! Whether male or female, when you’re young you sorta fail to appreciate this laff riot. (Don’t worry. It’s coming to visit you too.)” http://www.stumptuous.com/rant-66-december-2012-the-first-rule-of-fast-club

So what’s my attitude in the face of this kind of news?

I’m going to work hard to do what I can do and not care so much about what I can’t.

I’m healthy, happy, fit, getting stronger, and moving faster.

And that’s what counts.

Dreaming of summer, scheduling rides and races
cycling · triathalon

Dreaming of summer, scheduling rides and races

Sam B1 Comment

It’s what cyclists (runners and triathletes too) do as we’re about to turn the corner, past midwinter, into days of more light (if not necessarily, for awhile at least, more warmth)…

We start planning and scheduling summer rides and races.

Sadly I’ll miss Paris-Ancaster (next year I’ll definitely hold the date) and the Ontario Randonneurs’ Devils Week as I’ll be speaking at philosophy conferences. Pesky day job!

In addition to regularly doing some of the London Centennial Wheelers and London Cycling Club weekly rides, here’s what I’m thinking of so far:

July 13 Kincardine Women’s Triathlon

The photo above is me on the bike course of that race a few summers ago…I can date the picture by looking at the bike. I have a better, faster bike now.

July 20 Warrior Dash

July 27-28 MS Bike Tour, Grand Bend to London

August 16-18 Centurion Niagara

Sept 14 Grandfono, Niagara Falls

Details on all of these just rolling in…

I’d also like to throw in a duathlon or two. And depending on how the transition from indoor to outdoor rowing goes, I might be doing some of those events as well.

And of course there’ll be a cycling holiday thrown in for fun, not speed.

What are your favourite spring/summer events?

weight loss

Oh no, skinny face!

Sam B9 Comments

Because of my size, I have to lose a lot of weight before I get compliments on my changing shape.

The complications that follow from dealing with the well meaning noters of weight loss is a whole other post. Needless to say it’s overwhelming, dispiriting, and a big mess. More about this later.

But inevitably, without fail, the first thing people do notice is wrinkles. They don’t say that. No one ever says, “Wow you look wrinkly.” (Okay, teenagers might.)

Friends say, “You look tired.”

“Have you been working out too much?”

“Getting enough sleep?”

But I know that what they are noticing (since I notice them too) are new lines on my face.

It fascinates me that people don’t associate this change with weight loss. Since all weight loss is positive, on mainstream accounts of beauty, any bad effects must be due to something else, like sudden onset aging or lack of sleep.

When I lose weight I lose first and fastest from my face and then my waist.

And a sad fact about my age: it’s either thin body or smooth skin. Take your pick. You can’t have both.

My mother and I share this, plump faces and smooth skin.

So many people compliment me on looking young, but they don’t even consider that it’s a side effect of being overweight.

Writing about fasting, Krista Scott Dixon sounds like she actually likes her skinny face but she’s younger than me, fewer wrinkles.

“I loved the way my face looked as my bodyfat dwindled. Leonine, I said to myself, looking at my chiseled jaw. Androfemme. I enjoyed the feel of both of these words in my mouth. My father had other words for it. You look like you just got out of a prison camp, he said. (Actually he said Auschwitz. But he has a flair for inappropriate hyperbole. Please excuse him. As you can see, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Love you dad!)

Your face! So skinny! said the coffee shop barista. (Yes, the barista.) Drink more milk.

You have your thin wrinkles, said my quasi-Aspie friend with no internal editor. You know, the wrinkles you get when you’re too thin. Right there, around your mouth.”

http://www.stumptuous.com/rant-66-december-2012-the-first-rule-of-fast-club

It sounds like the dreaded skinny face only happens to Krista when she’s at her very leanest.  The sad part for me is that it happens first. Luckily I can live with the wrinkles if I get to go up hills faster and keep my hips, knees, and ankles happy for another thirty years or more. That’s the reason why I’d like to be leaner even though it’s clear to me that being fat and fit are perfectly consistent.

I’m typically not bothered much by traditional standards of beauty and whether or not I match them. Life’s too short. We all die in the end. The people who care about mainstream beauty don’t much interest me much anyway so why should I be concerned with what they think?

“We all die in the end anyway” might strike you as a gloomy thing to think or say. But really once you adjust to that big piece of bad news everything is small potatoes. It’s quite liberating. The joys of philosophy.

But as you might imagine there’s lots of angsty ink spilled in women’s magazines about this conundrum. Here’s a snippet:

There’s an old saying that, as you get older, you need to choose between your face and your rear end. In other words, if you’re skinny you’ll look good from behind, but your face will suffer.

Depressing as it may seem, there is some truth to the saying. A couple of studies have found that women with a low body mass index (BMI) have increased skin aging — including one study of identical twins. When the twins were under age 40, the heavier twin looked older. But after age 40, it was the thinner twin who looked older

Do skinny women just look older, or do they actually have more wrinkles? Actually, both are true. “In general what happens is, as your BMI goes lower you lose some volume of soft tissue, particularly over the age of 40,” explains Robert Weiss, MD, Dermatologist at the Maryland Laser Skin and Vein Institute, Associate Professor of Dermatology at Johns Hopkins University, and Fellow with the American Academy of Dermatology. “When you lose that volume of soft tissue, the wrinkles do either become deeper or more noticeable.”

from Do skinny people get more wrinkles? on Discovery Fit & Health.

Aikido

Why is it so hard to kiai?

Sam B8 Comments

Kiai: “In martial arts, the term commonly refers to a short yell made before, during, or after a technique. Students of Japanese martial arts such as aikido, karate, kobudo, kendo, or judo (or related arts such as taiko drumming) use kiai to startle an opponent, express confidence, or express victory.” (Wikipedia)

Many years ago, as an undergraduate student at Dalhousie University, I was prompted to take my first martial arts classes, a women’s self-defense class, after being attacked in Halifax, once at night and once on a crowded street during the day. I got away both times and I wasn’t hurt but my response, or lack thereof, really bothered me.

What shocked me was that I was silent while being held against a car on a crowded street. There were police officers across the street but I didn’t yell to get their attention. Not even a “Hello” or “Over here.” I don’t know if 19 year old me was scared the man holding me would hit me if I yelled. I don’t know. I just froze.

The police saw me and rescued me. Thank you. After, while getting a lecture from the police about being in that neighbourhood (I lived there!) I felt so stupid and so angry with myself.

So I did something about it. Along with a group of young women I spent a weekend learning some self-defense basics. I learned to get up quickly from the ground, to break a board into two pieces, and to yell. We were all surprised at how hard it was to yell.

Tonight I found out it’s still hard!

In Aikido, we kiai with each strike, throw, or pin. The purpose of the kiai is both internal and external. Externally, the goal is to shock or startle your partner. Most Aikido techniques begin by taking one’s partner off balance and a good kiai helps with this. But it’s also internal. The kiai focuses your own attention and energy on the technique and on the person in front of you.

A good kiai is a self defense technique in its own right.

And I do kiai. But too quietly apparently. My own perception is that I’m incredibly loud. But not so, I’m told.

When I teach, the voice of authority is the quiet voice. I almost never get loud to get my students’ attention. I speak quietly and make them come to me.

There are of course years of socialization as a woman in our society that Aikido is up against. In Aikido we’re told to stand tall, to make big movements, to be determined, and to be loud. Taking up space and being loud? That’s just about the opposite of what women in our society are supposed to do.

I think I don’t like getting attention through being loud. And being forceful in the way that Aikido requires isn’t easy for me. But I’m working on it. And I’m very certain now that I’d yell if attacked.

So I will have to get louder. Maybe my kiai will be my new morning call to wake up teenagers. 🙂 I can see that going really well.

aging · athletes · cycling · health · injury · training

Bye bye Vitamin I?

Sam B3 Comments

After caffeine, iburprofen is the drug of choice of my midlife athlete friends. We go for long bike rides, stop for brunch, and out come the plastic baggies filled with cell phones, mini tubes of sunblock, credit cards, cash, and inevitably a stash of pills. Vitamin I, we call it. Without which us aging athletes wouldn’t function. Or so we think.

(Okay, my plastic baggie also contains the unlikely cycling lipstick. Only Shannon understands.)

Even the urban dictionary lists Vitamin I: “Ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory. Used to such a great extent by many athletes that it can be considered to have a DRI of 400-800 mg much like a real vitamin. Oh man, my shins are killing me, time to pop some vitamin I.”

But now comes the bad news. This headline certainly caught my eye, Ibuprofen use by athletes may cause harm: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories can aggravate injury to small intestine.

In a study published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, nine healthy trained men cycled using different combinations of ibuprofen, no ibuprofen and rest.

The study found that ibuprofen aggravates injury in the small intestine, based on measurements of cell leakage in the gut lining.

“We conclude that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs consumption by athletes is not harmless and should be discouraged.”

However, it wasn’t all bad news because the research also seemed to suggest there also isn’t a benefit to taking Ibuprofen

Physical therapy professor Stuart Warden of Indiana University’s school of health and rehabilitation sciences previously wrote an editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine about the practice.

“There is no clinical evidence to suggest that regular use of NSAIDs reduces injury risk or improves function in the typical athlete,” Warden concluded.

Since there’s no evidence of benefit and the pain relievers are potentially doing more harm than good to the kidneys and gastrointestinal system, Warden said, there’s no reason for athletes to use NSAIDs beforehand.

“It seems to be part of the sports culture right now,” said Greg Wells, a sport scientist and physiologist based in Toronto.

This seems like a no-brainer–risk of harm, no evidence of benefit–think I’ll try post ride ice baths instead. There is evidence they help but brrrr.

fitness · motivation

When do you work out?

Sam B5 Comments

My very strong preference is to work out early in the morning. Exercise first, write after.

But I’ve long been aware that it might not be optimal. If you have to choose between sleep and exercise, from a health point of view, sleep wins hands down. It’s not even a contest. (Note to self: blog about why this is so later.)

I’m an early riser by long habit though and once I’m up, I’m up. I sleep and wake up as if I have an on/off switch. And usually I’m in bed early and get enough sleep.

Just last night my partner stopped by our bed and noted he was going downstairs for while but first he’d sit and read and watch me fall asleep. “It’s not like it takes very long,” he said. And it’s true. I do use an alarm clock but often I wake before it goes off and I’m not a user/abuser of the snooze button. (His alarm, on the other hand, is set so that to turn it off you need to do math problems on the ‘challenging’ setting.) But I’m digressing.

My point is that I do my best workouts early in the day.

This isn’t good though when your races are in the evening. I know that you ought to train, some of the time at least, at the same time as you race. And very few races are held at 6 am.

In Australia it was worse because I didn’t have a car and I had to ride to the point where training was held, usually a good 20 km out of town. And I’m old enough to like coffee and a real breakfast before I leave the house. So to make 6 am training I set a 430 am alarm. It’s called Stupid O’Clock in my pull down alarm menu. The photo above is from one of those early morning rides, love watching the sun rise as I bike.

I’ve also trained in the evening. Not because I like to but it’s when things were scheduled. All of my running clinics were evening affairs, ditto track training at the velodrome, ditto masters swimming, ditto Aikido, now rowing. The only one of those that I can right to sleep after is swimming. Something about cold water and  warm jammies.

But now there’s research that says both times are wrong and that afternoon is best.

Why Afternoon May Be the Best Time to Exercise by Gretchen Reynolds:

“The heart, the liver, the brain — all are controlled by an endogenous circadian rhythm,” says Christopher Colwell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Brain Research Institute, who led a series of new experiments on how exercise affects the body’s internal clock. The studies were conducted in mice, but the findings suggest that exercise does affect our circadian rhythms, and the effect may be most beneficial if the exercise is undertaken midday.

I posted the Reynolds’ story to Facebook and a friend shared a link about chronobiology, a burgeoning research area. Timing is Everything: Modern life is 24-7, but there may be negative consequences to defying our body’s internal clock by Cynthia Macdonald.

While there may be 24 hours fitness centres in most cities, probably the majority of us should stay away from exercise after early evening.

Though there are outliers of course. After coming home from the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy where I encountered for the first time the word “chrononormativity” I’ve been thinking about time and the judgements we make about those who keep unusual schedules. I’m also a parent of sleepy teenagers who struggle to make their internal clocks match the beat of adult, working life.

Sleep and schedules are often on my mind. Not sure if I’ll ever become an afternoon exerciser though.

Are there times of day that you like best for exercise? Any times you avoid?

Aikido

Thinking about quitting: Life lessons from Kenny Rogers and Aristotle

Sam B14 Comments

“If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Now Ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’

Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

The topic of this long rambly post is the the virtue of determination versus knowing when you’ve had enough. It’s an important life lesson and one I’m just sorting out.

In favour of working hard and determination: I have three academically gifted children and I’m aware of some of the challenges gifted children face. One of the dangers of the standard school system for them is that almost everything is easy. They can do whatever is asked with little effort. But this means that when they encounter something hard, they haven’t acquired the experience of finding something hard and then learning it anyway. It’s not just work habits that are missing. It’s recognizing that you can be missing skills or abilities and learn them.  Researchers say should never praise bright children for their intelligence as it often backfires.

Instead, parents and teachers ought to commend all children for their effort

From the BBC: “The researchers found children commended for their ability when they were successful learned to believe that intelligence is a fixed trait that cannot be developed or improved. They blamed poor performance on their own lack of intelligence. When children praised for their hard work performed poorly, they blamed their lack of success on poor effort and demonstrated a clear determination to learn strategies that would enhance subsequent performances.” Read more, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/130126.stm

This is true too for athletically talented people. Some sports play on our strengths and others don’t. Often we are best at the ones we come to with a great deal of natural talent and then build from there. I love having the strength and aerobic capacity that when I try something new I can focus on skill rather than fitness. But this can prove tricky for gifted athletes in the same way it’s true for those gifted at school. The connection between sports smarts and classroom smarts is the subject of another post, but here’s a heads up: they’re linked, see Elite Soccer Players Are Smarter Than You Are.

My brother was good at most things physical but I remember the first time he put on skates. I was the figure skating older sister and he was the soon-to-be hockey playing much younger brother. He ran onto this ice and fell over. And fell again. And again. He came off the ice and threw off the skates in disgust. “I can’t skate,” he exclaimed. He seemed really surprised. “Oh, but you’ve got to learn. No one can skate right away.” It took a bit to persuade him but eventually he tried again. And zoom! He was gone in a flash. Well, after a few lessons anyway.

So as a parent I’ve urged my kids to get outside their comfort zones, try things they find challenging, and then stick with it anyway. I was very proud of my daughter when she failed one the many exams she needed to take en route to becoming a lifeguard. What I loved was seeing her resilience and determination. She bounced back, redid the exam, and passed. Learning to fail is a wonderful thing. If you aren’t failing at something regularly then it’s a clear sign you aren’t challenging yourself. It’s better to aim high and fail once in a while than to never know what you’re capable of. I have a poster in my office that has the Samuel Beckett quote about failure on it: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

So determination and willingness to risk failure are important virtues, virtues necessary for leading a good life.

But determination and perseverance can also be overrated virtues: There are dozens (probably hundreds, maybe even thousands) of motivational posters praising hard work, perseverance and determination. But very few sing the praises of cutting your losses and moving on.  But sometimes it makes sense to quit. Aristotle describes a virtue as a “mean” or “intermediate” between two extremes: one of excess and one of deficiency. Most people quit things too easily. Exercise plans, learning French, and piano lessons spring immediately to mind. And successful people, we’re told, stick to it, they have determination. I suspect given that most people go wrong in this direction, determination makes sense as the virtue to encourage.

However, people can also go wrong in the other direction, sticking with something long past the point where sticking with it makes sense. People stay in bad jobs and bad relationships counting the time put in (sunk costs) for far more than it’s worth. Successful people also know when to quit. It turns out that trying lots of things, cutting your losses early, and moving on is a trait many high achievers share.

There’s a great Freakonomics podcast on this subject, The Upside of Quitting.

Here’a quote from the website: “Sudhir Venkatesh, the Columbia sociologist (and blog contributor) whose research we wrote about in both Freakonomics (“Why Do Drug Dealers Live With Their Moms?”) and SuperFreakonomics (“What Do a Street Prostitute and a Department-Store Santa Have in Common?”) has lately been doing a lot of research into quitting. So we brought him aboard for this hour to talk to two groups of workers whose skills are perishable and yet have a hard time walking away from their jobs: prostitutes and baseball players. Along with one of his students at Columbia, a former ballplayer named Justin Humphries, Venkatesh took a look at the socioeconomic background and outcome of the 2001 baseball draft class (which included Humphries) and found that, for many of them, sticking it out for years in the minors amounted to a poor economic decision, at least when compared to observationally equivalent young men”

Why I am thinking about this: This week I seriously considered quitting Aikido. Short story—I’m not being invited to test. Longer story—My progress is too slow (glacial pace), there’s lots of other physical activities I’m good at, I’m the sort of person who needs progress. I also worry that I hurt myself too much and that Aikido endangers other physical activities I’m loathe to give up. At the higher belt levels people seem to do only Aikido (not Aikido + other sports) and I’m all about well roundedness. It’s also an indoor activity and for the most part, I much prefer being outside.

I’ve decided to stick with it for now. I’ll apply another blast of effort and see where it takes me. I really do enjoy Aikido so it’s no great sacrifice staying. You can read more about what I love about Aikido here.

But I don’t want to make the mistake of dogged, thankless determination either.

I’ll take the bad news stoically, work hard, and continue to train as if I’m going to test (a great way to polish up the techniques), and reassess come spring when the call of the outdoors is a little louder. That is, when there are opportunity costs as well as sunk costs to consider.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn481KcjvMo&fs=1%5D

sports nutrition

Vegan Sports Nutrition

Tracy I12 Comments

My trainer has said on a number of occasions that I have two main things working against me as I attempt to increase my lean mass and decrease my body fat percentage: my age and my vegan diet. I’m only going to get older. This I know.  And I am strongly committed to a vegan diet for ethical reasons. So I found his opinion quite discouraging at first.

But I have now come to the conclusion that he is just wrong. My first piece of evidence comes from this amazing gym in Melbourne, Vegan Strength.  These guys are all vegan and I defy anyone to say that they don’t have enviable lean mass to fat body composition.

And then there’s Amber from Go Kaleo. She has a great video response to the claim that eating a vegan diet makes you “skinny fat.”

Exhibit 3, Samantha’s post the other day about vegan athletes.  Clearly, these people are not under-performing and do not have compromised fitness. And yet they are vegan.

Here’s a good article from The Yoga Journal (author Rachel Seligman) about the merits of a vegan diet for sports nutrition.

According to the article, “these athletes say they stick with it because they feel—and perform—better. After six months without meat, eggs, or dairy, Jurek found he bounced back quicker even as his workouts grew harder and longer; he didn’t feel as sore or tired after one of his ultramarathons, he says. Vardaros says she rarely gets sick and outlasts her nonvegan friends in training. Heidrich says she has more energy, which has allowed her to dramatically increase her training. Not long after she committed to veganism, she completed her first Ironman Triathlon (a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike ride followed by a 26.2-mile marathon).”

Finally, my own visit to a sport nutritionist a few months ago yielded very little advice. She did a detailed analysis of the nutritional composition of my diet over a three-day period. The only thing I wasn’t doing to fuel my body for optimum performance was eating frequently enough throughout the day.

The myth that vegans (or even vegetarians) cannot be athletes flows directly from two assumptions. First, athletes requires lots of protein to gain and maintain muscle mass.  And second, the only sources of quality protein are animal sources. The second assumption is off the mark.

According to The Yoga Journal article, getting enough “protein is no problem on a vegan diet. Half a cup of lentils or tofu gives you 9 or 10 grams of protein; two tablespoons of peanut butter gives you 8 grams. Beans, nuts, and grains are all good sources of protein; even veggies contain small amounts. And though meat is sometimes praised for having a complete spectrum of the amino acids our bodies need, vegans can get all the necessary amino acids if they eat a variety of foods every day.”

While I don’t think I’ve hit on a totally winning balance of fuel and activity yet, I do feel encouraged that I can continue to eat vegan. “Skinny-fat” is not the best I can hope for. I can continue to alter my body composition and stay true to my ethical commitments at the same time.

For more resources on vegan sports nutrition, see VeganHealth.org, which has a list of further readings on the topic.

Two great books about male PhDs, fitness, and obsession
Aikido

Two great books about male PhDs, fitness, and obsession

Sam B1 Comment

1. One of my very favourite memoirs is Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Samuel Fussell (yes, son of Paul Fussell). Published in 1992, it’s the story of an English PhD who turns to body building post degree, loves the life, quits (read the book to find out why) then writes a book about it.

At age 26, scrawny, Oxford-educated Samuel Fussell entered a YMCA gym in New York to escape the terrors of big city life.Four years and 80 lbs. of firm, bulging muscle later, he was competing for bodybuilding titles in the “Iron Mecca” of Southern California-so weak from intense training and starvation he could barely walk. MUSCLE is the harrowing, often hilarious chronicle of Fussell’s divine obsession, his search for identity in a bizarre, eccentric world of “health fascists,” “gym bunnies” and “muscleheads”-and his devout, single-minded acceptance of illness, pain, nausea, and steroid-induced rage in his quest for the holy grail of physical perfection.

2. I mentioned Muscle to one of the senior black belts at our Aikido club and he recommended Angry White Pyjamas. 

I can see why one book brought the other to mind. The two books have a lot in common. The genre is English-PhD-drops-everything-academic-gets physical-writes a memoir about his experiences.

Here’s the publisher’s description of Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons From The Tokyo Riot Police by Robert Twigger

Adrift in Tokyo, translating obscene rap lyrics for giggling Japanese high school girls, “thirtynothing” Robert Twigger comes to a revelation about himself: He has never been fit nor brave. Guided by his roommates, Fat Frank and Chris, he sets out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is drawn into the world of Japanese martial arts, joining the Tokyo Riot Police on their yearlong, brutally demanding course of “budo” training, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against bloodstained “white pyjamas” and fractured collarbones. In “Angry White Pyjamas, ” Twigger blends, the ancient with the modern–the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s–to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of life in contemporary Japan.

Can you think of any other books in this genre?

How about with a PhD in some other subject or are only English PhDs so inclined to take up sports and then write about it?

Or books by women who get obsessed in this way and then write about it?