The Great Vegetable Experiment

I have a confession to make. I consume a plant based diet.

This is not to say that I am a vegan or a vegetarian. These folks seem to have adopted the phrase "plant based" to pertain solely to them, but I think the term more appropriately describes our relationships with fruits and vegetables. To that end, I extol the power of vegetables as a primary staple in the human diet.

Let's get one thing straight. I have always disliked eating vegetables. Most of them taste bland, and some are downright disgusting. The closest thing I got to a vegetable growing up was pizza sauce and ketchup. If I had my way, I would be eating cheeseburgers (minus the veggies), pizza (minus the veggies), and ice cream (probably shouldn't have veggies in the first place) on a daily basis.

Despite that, I now understand the power vegetables have when it comes to general health, athletic fitness, and overall happiness. They are a tremendous source of energy, which in turn gives us the capacity to perform better and feel better.

If you think about it, being "plant powered" is the closest that a person can come to consuming and harnessing the power and energy of the sun. Plants utilize the energy of the sun, through photosynthesis, to produce energy in the form of sugar. When we eat plants, we are consuming "sun sugar".

Wow, Carl Segan was right. We are all made of "star stuff".

Okay, so maybe that's a bit of cosmic gobbledygook, but you see my point. The vitamins, fiber, and energy from plants is the most natural form of energy. Homans are evolutionarily equipped to break down these foods and harness their nutrients and utilize them in an efficient manner.

Contrast that with the highly processed, nutrient void foods many people have in their diets. These foods do not break down easily. We absorb far more toxic ingredients through these processed foods than actual nutrients. In addition, they contain sugar on steroids, which contributes to heart problems, diabetes, and the buildup of fat we all love to complain about.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Peanut M&Ms, and indulge from time to time. However, vegetables are now a primary staple in my diet. A food I primarily eat for function, yet has provided me such a great benefit - from being more fit, healthier, happier, and more energetic - that I actually miss my vegetables when I don't get to eat them. Even though I've always hated veggies, I love veggies.

Now the hard part. I believe that it is necessary to eat a whole lot of vegetables. Veggies should be (and are for me) the primary source of food for any person. For over a year, they were for me, but then it dropped off for a while. Until recently.

During the year when I first started getting very healthy, I was eating vegetables with every meal. My morning shake had spinach in it. For dinner I had Brussels sprouts and asparagus. On top of that, I had a large green shake for my afternoon snack.

I felt absolutely great during that year. I was performing at new levels. My blood pressure was perfect. My cholesterol was perfect. Zero anxiety or stress. Plenty of energy. Lots of joy. But I started thinking that maybe it was overkill. Perhaps I was taking in too many veggies, and I should cut it back.

So I went to having just my concentrated shake in the afternoon. As you now know, I hate veggies, so getting them in all at once was preferable to spreading them out over the course of the day. There was a noticeable change. While I still felt "okay", I didn't feel fantastic as I had. So again I made the choice to start eating more veggies more frequently throughout the day. Within a short time I was once again feeling like Superman.

And wouldn't you know it, I realized that I don't hate veggies after all!

Here are some tips on how to become plant-based, and add more fruits and veggies into your daily life.

1. Eat some veggies at every meal and during snacks. This means every meal. For breakfast, make a smoothie with some spinach or kale in it. For lunch, throw some bell peppers and tomatoes in your omelette. For dinner, stir fry up some zucchini and squash. Eat a carrot "just 'cause". Whatever it is, a veggie has it's place on your plate. What this does is not only imprints healthy habits, but it also assures that you are having effective distribution of nutrient rich foods throughout the day, rather than "loading up" at just one meal. This keeps you energized and healthy at all times.
2. Make shopping for veggies fun. Literally every shape and color of the rainbow is represented in the produce aisle of the supermarket. What an exciting opportunity to try something new! It's almost like going to an art store to pick up some supplies. What type of picture do you want to paint today? There are numerous combinations of meals you can make with each vegetable. Become inspired! Additionally, there are a number of produce co-ops which will deliver farm fresh fruits and vegetables to your home. Each week is like a new discovery of different types of foods.
3. Start drinking a veggie smoothie every day. This one is great for those of you who, like me, don't like the taste of vegetables. It is easier and quicker to drink a salad than to eat it. "But Adam, that sounds disgusting!". Well, you may be right, if the smoothie is only veggies. But it's amazing what a banana or apple can do to improve the taste!
4. Craving sugar? Eat an apple. Still craving sugar? Eat another apple. Don't just give into the temptation for ice cream (although, indulging every once in a while is not a crime!). Instead, when you're craving sugar, eat an apple. If it helps, tell yourself that you'll have the ice cream after you finish the apple. Then, if you're still craving the sugar, repeat the process. Your mind is trying to trick you into eating the sugar on steroids. It is important to beat your mind at its own game! Eat as many apples as it takes. No doctor has ever said "He died from eating too many apples."

I challenge you to experiment with eating more vegetables. More than you think is necessary. Just see how well you begin to feel.

Locally Grown

I thought it had been a while since I posted anything about our experience with the Tower Garden and our efforts to grow our own fruits and veggies, but then I realized I haven't posted anything about it at all. It seems to happen frequently with me that I intend so much to do something that eventually I assume it already happened. That excuse doesn't get me very far at work or with family. However, before I get into that I have a few brief updates and shameless self promotion to bore you with, so thanks in advance for bearing with me!

First and foremost, I am honored to have had an article posted by MindBodyGreen.com. If you haven't read it already, here is the link. I am truly grateful to have had my article published on a site ripe with talent and expertise. MBG is a great site because it reaches broadly across many aspects of health and wellness, and presents itself in a positive, uplifting, and inspirational fashion. With so much negativity on the internet, it is a welcome oasis, and it is my goal to exude the positive on this site as well. Thanks to all who have read the article and have found this site as a result. Welcome!

Second, I have made a lot of progress on my swimming as of late. Today I woke up at 4:30 am to do an iron distance (2.4 mile) swim. This is the longest distance I have ever swum, and psychologically one of the most significant milestones to surpass (one of the others was swimming in open water). When I first began seriously swimming (not just swimming to get back to my surfboard, or showing off in front of the kids), it was intimidating to think of swimming a few hundred yards, let alone over 4,000. I was frequently out of breath after a few laps. I could not even fathom (unintended pun win!) doing a non-stop 2.4 mile swim. But the power of persistence pays off, and I achieved that today. To get beyond our negative perceptions, and the "I can'ts" running through our heads, we need to break through a number of barriers, physical and mental. For me it was slowly increasing the yardage while swimming through the intimidation. Where once I was standing at the end of a pool intimidated by the idea of swimming 2,000 yards, I can now confidently do more than twice that, and 2,000 now appears easy. Our perception about certain challenges (in this case distance) begin to change as we break through barriers.

One additional note on the swimming. In the beginning I had resigned myself to the fact that I would likely not be able to swim any significant distance at a pace under 2 min/100 meters. After all, I am a "sinker" with a bad shoulder. However, today I completed my swim at an average pace of 1:45/100.

So now to switch gears completely and break all the rules taught to me by my writing teachers (well, I guess I've already done that many times over. Especially with my overuse of parentheses), I'm going to talk about something completely different. Home grown food.

With the idea in mind that we wanted to source our produce locally, we began getting a weekly delivery from a local organic farm (as described in "So THAT's a Parsnip... Do You Eat It?..."). That has been working well, since it is affordable and abundant, but there are some shortcomings. First, we get whatever is given to us. This is okay in theory, but it also turns into a lot of uneaten potatoes and ears of corn in our fridge. Also, sometimes the fruits or veggies go bad before we have a chance to eat them. Therefore, we came to the conclusion we should begin growing some of our own. Besides, you don't get more locally grown than in your own backyard!

The Tower Garden was our first purchase. Essentially, it is a hydroponic system that provides water and nutrients via a pumping system. We set it up and began growing veggies in early June. Here is what it looks like now.

What you can't see is the tower itself as it is covered by a tropical rainforest of monstrous vegetation. We had about a 80% success rate with the seedlings, and have thus far been able to harvest chard, kale, two kinds of lettuce, cucumber, squash, and zucchini. Still yet to bear fruit we have tomatoes, lima beans, brussels sprouts, and broccoli. The produce is delicious and fresh, as we cut it off right when we need it, and it has thus far been plentiful.

A few weeks ago, we increased our production capacity of veggies by building a raised garden bed. The dimensions are 4 ft by 8 ft, and the total cost to install was just around $250. The cost was definitely justifiable, but the undertaking was proven to be most adventurous. We needed a little more than a cubic yard of soil to fill the thing, which put us in a tricky situation. The local supplier of organic soil mixes would not deliver a quantity that small, so we had to pick it up.

There were a few things I underestimated when I thought of left to pick up a cubic yard of soil. First, it the company was located quite a ways up the Ortega Highway, probably about 45 minutes away from home. Second, I didn't realize how much a cubic yard of soil actually is. This was made abundantly clear when the bulldozer dropped the atomic load into the rented U-Haul truck. The F-150 quickly turned into a low rider, and I became terrified that I may become the not-so-proud owner of a broken down U-Haul. Fortunately, the Heavy-Duty did it's duty and made it home.

Finally, I underestimated the amount of time it would actually take unloading the material. It took me a solid two to three hours of digging and dragging to get all the material out of the truck and into the garden bed. Lesson learned, it's always best to outsource this work to the experts. I was grateful that I was able to clean the truck out completely and return it in one piece!

After a couple weeks, we have some growth in the garden bed with room to spare. We have pinto beans, beets, carrots, and kale. We haven't harvested it yet, but it's doing very well, and I'm fairly proud of the results.

While the initial costs of installing the Tower Garden and the garden bed was pretty steep, I believe that within a year, once we have a good rotation of veggies growing in both, we will break even and then begin saving money on produce. Additionally, our veggies will be fresher than anything we have ever purchased at a store, and we will have the satisfaction that we have benefited from our own hard work.

I don't want to sugar coat it, it's important to note that it is not easy to be self sufficient with regard to growing all our own food. On the contrary, it takes a lot of time, energy, and planning. It requires us to plan the seasons so we know what to grow when, it requires that we replace the water and nutrients in the Tower Garden multiple times per week, and that we keep those pesky varmints away. But like anything else, it's mostly a change in behavior.

It's all in the question of what's most important to you? With everything we choose to spend time on in our busy lives, what many of us choose to put at the back of the list is health. Many of us spend little or no time looking at where our food comes from, how it's prepared, or even how long it's been on the shelf (or how it's even able to stay on the shelf that long). When it comes to our health, nothing can be more important than what is going into (and thus what is affecting) our bodies. A little extra work can make a world of difference. Until next time, be in good health!

"So THAT's a Parsnip?... Do You Eat It?", and Other Dietary Considerations

The next few blog posts will basically continue some of the background information, including how I am eating, how I am training, and the effect this is having versus my previous lifestyle choices. As the title above suggests, this post will be dedicated to my diet and nutrition.

To state the obvious, I am not a doctor or a nutritionist and by no means do I have any significant expertise on the subject of nutrition aside from what I am learning now. My experience up to this point has simply been based on trust; If a restaurant, supermarket, box, can, paper bag, or creepy guy in a van classified something as food, I would eat it. Within the last few months as I have been more conscious of my diet, I've started to learn the ins and outs (figuratively and literally) of different fats, carbs, and proteins.

What have I learned thus far? There are no shortage "opinions" on the subject of how we diet. And when I say "opinions" I mean rabid and didactic blow-hardiness. Lifestyle choices we hear about, such as low-carb, low-fat, gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, fruititarian, Taco Bell and beer, etc., are often presented as the only way, and this can be frustrating to some people who aren't as convicted. The fact that many people are living healthy lifestyles under different programs leads me to believe there's merit to these lifestyles. Further it tells me that the body is an amazing thing that can adapt and thrive in many conditions and that dietary tolerances vary from person to person. For this reason I'm taking a balanced approach to nutrition. With the training I have ahead, I know I will need a proper mix of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, so going to the extreme in any direction may be unhealthy for me. As much as possible, I am cutting out all processed food, attempting to go "mostly" organic, and adopting a plant based diet. When I say plant "based" I mean the plants serve as an appropriate "base" on which to put healthy meats and eggs. Most of my dinners are colorful and have a variety of vegetables and fibers (WARNING!: Super pretentious dinner plate photos to follow)

Salmon on a bed of brown rice (that has a name I can't pronounce) with black beans, brussel sprouts, and asparagus. 

Before a few months ago, I never took into consideration any balance. I don't need to tell you what I was eating, as we all know what happens when we stop caring about what we put in our body. So what is this balance? As I said above, I believe every person is different, and so is every purpose for the diet. I am following a training program in which I am building endurance, and thus burning more fat. Therefore my balance is about 35-40% fats, 25% protein, and 35-40% carbohydrates. The diet is mainly comprised of eggs, nuts (such as almonds), olive oils, avocados, and beans for fats and proteins, For my carbohydrates I mainly try to get these from fruits and vegetables, which requires me to include vegetable portions to all my meals. I have also gone with the recommendation to eat more, smaller meals throughout the day vs. the three square alternative. It goes without saying that I abstain from drinking alcohol as that was proven to not be a healthy choice for me.

More about the veggies. We get a box of organic produce from a company that partners with local farms. Really, they just throw a bunch of vegetables in there that I've never heard of and we have fun trying to figure out how to eat it. Most of the time I just throw all of it into a salad, bear down, and dig in.

What has been the net effect of this? Naturally, I have had much more energy. My body is spending less energy breaking down the food because the food is natural and I am eating fewer calories per meal. More nutrients are getting to my body which means I am functioning more effectively. My brain (for what it's worth) is clearer now than it ever was before. I'm feeling less achy, with no headaches and pains, and I'm not winded walking up the stairs. I feel like I'm adequately fueled to work out for a lengthy time. I've also lost 15 lbs in the last couple months (exercise also played a role in this).

So here's where I'm supposed to jump on a soapbox and shout about how easy and fun it is to eat healthy, and how I have effortlessly made the transition as the food is just as enjoyable as the unhealthy alternatives, "free at last, free at last!" Indulging this idea for a second I will say that eating naturally and organically is very much more self satisfying than the alternative. I will also concede that eating this way MAY be more enjoyable depending on the individual's motivation and tolerance (I, for one, enjoyed lots of unhealthy foods, and often miss them terribly. However I have an obsessive personality). I don't want to diminish the above benefits because they are enormous and far outweigh the drawbacks. However anyone who claims that it is "easy and fun" is just not being truthful.

First let's look at the products. Buying organically severely limits your options, and significantly increases your budget. Once you get the product home you have to store it. No more prepackaged easy to fit boxes to go in the freezer for a few months. Instead you're trying to fit four different kinds of lettuce into the refrigerator. If you don't eat it within a few days it will go bad quickly, so more frequent trips to the store are necessary.

It takes a significant amount of time to prep the products (let alone figure out how to eat the produce you've never heard of before). It also takes a lot longer to eat the products, so not only am I eating more meals, I'm taking longer to eat them. While I thought that the physical training would be the most time consuming element of this adventure, by far the nutrition takes the cake (or... black bean cookies maybe? bleh). By far eating processed food is much easier and cheaper than eating healthy.

The candy bowl, ineffectively hidden from me and the kids in our broken microwave

But that is how I've been conditioned to eat throughout my life. I've become conditioned to use eating as a "comfort" mechanism, or to "grab a quick bite", or "scarf down a burrito". The appreciation is coming with time, and I am already starting to obsess less about the unhealthy foods (especially refined sugars - Ah, M&M's, you horrible temptress! I still have a huge bag of these that are calling out from my broken microwave oven... don't ask), and obsess more about the healthy diet. I simply need to be reconditioned to appreciate this new lifestyle and the grace God has given me to be able to have access to fresh and high quality food. Everything else is a first world problem, as I am blessed with an abundance of Grace. It's all about perspective.

By the way, in case you haven't noticed, I have set up my Compassion fundraiser page, so that is up and running and linked to the right of the page. If you're feeling generous please click on over and make a donation. The goal for this one is $1,000 because it is the first time I am doing this and I don't know what to expect. If that is exceeded pretty quickly I'll just increase the goal. Also, I will be adding two more fundraisers to the Cabo Ironman, and that will tie into the who "tri" theme (I didn't initially recognize the implication of "tri-fund-racing", but it makes sense). The Ironman itself will be a pretty extreme challenge, why not make the fundraisers pretty extreme as well? Once they are up I will let you know. Thank you in advance!