Last year for my 36th birthday I decided to do a fitness test. Joel Jamieson has an online assessment tool, Bioforce Testing Protocol, that he built to test the overall physical preparedness of combat athletes. While I certainly am not a combat athlete, I liked this tool as it measured the following things: strength, muscular endurance, aerobic fitness, anaerobic fitness, explosive power and gave you a total performance index, an upper body and lower body strength profile and an upper body and lower body power profile. In addition the tests were easy to implement.
Keeping with my plan I performed the same battery of tests one year later - this jived well with my eating raw vegan for 30 days plan!
-strength profile: lower body 2011 = 6; 2012 = 7 -- upper body 2011 = 4; 2012 = 6.5
-power profile: lower body 2011 = 5; 2012 = 5.5 -- upper body 2011 = 4.5; 2012 = 6.5
So, there you have it. Bodyweight went down 41 lbs and everything else improved, some better than others. While my strength certainly isn't anywhere near what it was when I was competing in powerlifting, I am happy to see that the numbers went up slightly in the squat and maintained in the bench - as these two lifts are very negatively affected by big drops in bodyweight.
Ultimately at 37 I'm happy with the results. My focus over the next year will be to maintain my lighter bodyweight and continue to build back the strength and power that I lost from my days as a fat, red-faced powerlifter and in addition keeping my new levels of health, mobility, flexibility and overall-fitness in check.
As I write this blog it's Day 22 of my Raw for 30 Days birthday plan. So far it's been an outstanding experience! This morning my body-weight was at 180 lbs. I haven't seen 180 lbs since 2002, and I'm definitely a lot leaner and carrying more muscle than I did back then, so at least something good came from being a fat and bloated 220 lbs for all those years.
#1 question I've been asked for the past 22 days - Where do you get your protein? If I had a dollar for every time, I'd have a Bugatti by now...
Despite the lack of "direct" protein consumption I have not atrophied, gotten sick, become "skinny fat", or spontaneously combusted. Yet.
If anything my body composition is changing for the positive, I'm leaning up, getting tighter and definition is improving and the cool thing is I train less than I did before. I still put effort into the workouts, but I have cut my training time down tremendously. Plus my recovery is better and overall I feel a lot better.
This cracked me up! It's funny, this is the type of crap I always used to say about vegetarians and vegans - now I'm on the receiving end. Karma I guess. Oh well - you can't argue results!
Where do I go from here?
With one more week left on my 30 day experiment I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Will I stay 100% raw vegan? Nope. That was never my intention. My goal was to improve from the 70-80% raw vegan plan I was following since September of last year. I wanted to go the 30 days for a couple of reasons, one to prove to myself I could do it since one of the biggest obstacles I see with my clients is motivation and discipline to change their nutrition habits.
Look, I'm just as busy as everyone else. I work 6 days a week, run my own business and do all the domestic stuff everyone else does. I still have time to eat healthy and workout.
I'm sick of hearing excuses from people. You are responsible for what you put into your mouth and it takes the same amount of effort to put a handful of goji berries into your mouth as it does a handful of M&Ms. More people need to take ownership of their lives and stop making excuses.
In addition my goal was to use this 30 days to detox and cleanse a bit as well as tighten up my nutrition so that I can maintain an 80-90% raw vegan plan with only 10-20% coming from cooked vegetarian foods. Basically I will continue to follow what I'm doing now with 1-2 servings of cooked food a day. However there will probably be 2 or 3 days a week that are 100% raw and I will continue to do 100% raw periods as well as periods of juice fasting throughout the year to detoxify and maintain the improved health I am experiencing now.
One reason is personal, I want to be healthy and have a very high quality of life through my twilight years and when it's time for me to trade this body in I want to make that transition as strong and healthy (mentally, physically and spiritually) as possible.
I also need to be a role model for my clients. How can people take health, weight loss, and training advice from someone who doesn't embody what they teach? One of my top rules "Don't be the fat trainer selling a fat loss program, DVD or book!"
As a side note - I recently read Dr. Gabriel Cousens' book and watched his DVD on reversing diabetes naturally, due to the fact I have relatives who are diabetics as well as knowing many people who suffer from this horrible disease. It was incredibly informative and enlightening, then my friend Antony posted a link about Dr. Cousens recently on Facebook which reminded me about this - his approach to treating diabetics and getting both Type 2's and 1's OFF insulin and medications is a raw food nutrition plan. Here's a great video intro of his program:
And here's a link to the preview for Dr. Cousens' video I purchased my father:
I'm looking forward to seeing what the last week has in store! Also, last year for my birthday 6/13/11, I conducted a personal fitness test. I repeated the test for my birthday this year and will be posting my 1-year comparisons in the upcoming week.
After two weeks of raw vegan eating I feel like I'm in the groove with it. This is good and bad. It's good from the standpoint that I can pretty much find the right kinds of foods no matter if we are going out to eat or staying home. It's bad because I can see how falling into the trap of eating the same limited menu over and over would become easy. However this was a problem before I switched to vegetarian nutrition as well.
Preparation is simple - that's one of the things I love about eating this way, nothing to cook! The foods that take the longest are things that I have to prepare in the dehydrator, but even with that it's like 10:00 of prep time to get it ready to dehydrate.
The dehydrator has really opened up some great new options for raw foods, my favorites so far have been the raw sweet bread and flax seed crackers. In addition I've made some guacamole and some awesome raw hummus to eat with them.
Guacamole!
Raw Flax Crackers!
Raw Hummus - a MUST with the Flax Crackers!
Since this was my birthday week, I loaded up on some raw desserts - raw cheesecake (macadamia nuts, sea salt and dates for the crust and cashews, honey, lemon juice, coconut oil and vanilla for the filling) and some raw chocolate (raw cacao, honey and coconut oil).
Raw Cheesecake!
Raw Chocolate! Happy Birthday to ME!
For my birthday dinner we went to R Thomas Deluxe Grill in Atlanta for dinner. R Thomas has a very healthy, diverse menu with tons of vegetarian and vegan meals and for the resident cannibals they use only free-range hormone-free meats. They have a great selection of smoothies and juices as well. I got a raw vegan entree that had flax chips, sweet potato chips, a mixed veggie salad, mixed veggies, hummus and a couple other raw spreads. I also had a green smoothie and raw apple pie for dessert. Lisa had a raw vegan entree with a veggie / fruit juice. The meal was amazing and if you are in Atlanta check out R Thomas-great food!
Birthday Dinner at R Thomas Deluxe Grill in the ATL!
As I wrap up week two I have to say the experience thus far has been great. I feel better, I recover faster after workouts, my energy is great, my body composition is changing rapidly, I'm much leaner and tighter and my weight is down to 181.5 lbs as of today (190 lbs when I weighed in on June 1).
Scary but this is probably closer to the truth than we'd like to admit!
Even though I only have two weeks of my 30 days raw plan left, I am definitely going to keep up 80-90% of my daily nutrition as raw vegan, and most likely a lot of days will be 100% raw.
I'd have to concur with legendary turn of the century strongman, George "the Russian Lion" Hackenschmidt, who in his book "The Way to Live in Health and Physical Fitness" said, "I believe I am right in asserting that our Creator has provided food and nutriment for every being for its own advantage. Man is born without frying-pan or stew-pot. The purest natural food for human beings would, therefore, be fresh, uncooked food and nuts."
Alright - today was a big day. Aside from being 12 days away from my birthday, and today being the day we pulled the trigger on a sweet new business venture, I finished my 6th 4-week strength training cycle and had PRs in all lifts and today is day 1 of my Raw for 30 Days to ring in my 37th year on this planet!
The Strength Stuff
The ECF Gym - Atlanta, GA
Basically my strength has gone down the crapper since losing 30-40 pounds last September. Truth be told I don't care about competitions anymore. All I want now is to rebuild my strength while maintaining good levels of conditioning, flexibility and mobility. My main focus lately has been on my practice of internal martial arts. However, I do love lifting weights so I wanted a good, simple strength program to rebuild the strength I'd lost due to such rapid weight loss.
I decided to follow Jim Wendler's now legendary 5/3/1 supplemented with some kettlebell work and have made good, slow, steady progress.
When I weighed a sloppy 220-225 my best lifts were a 350 squat, 255 bench, 375 deadlift and a 135 overhead press. I had considerably better lifts in powerlifting competition with the use of powerlifting gear (squat suit and bench shirt) but that isn't important. Right now just basic, raw strength development is my goal. I may or may not compete again. Meets are a blast-but it's so far off my radar of interests right now I don't even care to think about it.
Last September I made a huge nutritional change and began eating about 80% raw vegan and about 20% cooked vegetarian or pescatarian food. Basically 80% raw fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds with about 20% beans, eggs, fish and a little bit of rice and sprouted breads. This resulted in a 40 lb drop in weight in about 3 months from 220-225 to 180-185. With this drop in weight came the equivalent drop in strength. I decided that since I was going to continue eating mostly raw vegan (I'm actually gravitating towards >80% - more on that in a second) that I wanted to do the impossible and rebuild my strength even though my weight is decreasing.
So I set the initial goal of regaining the numbers I had at 220-225. On 12/23/11 & 12/24/11 I tested my gym lifts and hit the following: squat x 245, bench x 185, deadlift x 275, overhead press x 115, and bodyweight was 186 lbs. Yes these numbers sucked and I know many women who warm up with these weights but honestly I don't care. With how good and healthy my body feels from the reduction in fat and clean nutrition I'm fine with it.
The following week, using these numbers as my baseline I began Wendler's 5/3/1.
This week marked the end of my 6th 4-week cycle (I did the program as laid out, 4 days per week, 3s in week 1, 5s in week 2, 5/3/1 in week 3 and deload in week 4-and didn't alter anything). My results this week were bodyweight at 184 lbs, squat x 275 x 1 rep (30 lb increase), bench x 205 x 1 rep (20 lb increase), deadlift x 315 x 1 rep (40 lb increase) and overhead press x 120 x 2 reps (only 5 lbs over my initial max but this was for a double not a single, so it's definitely an improvement).
While these numbers are nothing spectacular, it is improvement. The program is great, it's flexible and doesn't require a ton of time in the gym-it's perfect for me considering most of my interests are outside of the gym and the gym and training / coaching people is my business which consumes a considerable amount of my time.
Day 1 of 100% Raw Vegan
Breakfast
Alright, 30 days is underway! Today was great, it wasn't much of a challenge as I had been eating this way most of the time anyway, but today starts 100% total immersion in raw vegan eating! I just finished my last meal for the day as I type this and I feel great. Energy has been great all day, despite averaging 4-5 hours sleep at night. I thought coffee would be the toughest thing to cut out, but I feel good so far.
Here's a totally awesome video of Danny Dalton, a raw vegan bodybuilder - this is what inspired me to pursue raw instead of just vegetarian nutrition. Oh, don't forget to tell this guy he needs to eat tons of meat to build muscle!
I am not going to list my daily nutrition in detail every day, but I do want to give an overview.
bodyweight - 190 lbs (okay, pigged out a bit last night! Damn sprouted grain bread and raw almond butter!)
3:30am - wheatgrass juice + 2g blue green algae and chlorella
4:00am - fresh juice: kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, carrot, apple, pear, lime & raw apple cider vinegar
7:30pm - raw oatmeal (raw oats, almond milk, 1-apple, raisons and cinnamon - made in Vitamix)
*Also drank a LOT of water throughout the day
Supplements - vitamin C, vitamin D3, chlorella, blue green algae, bee pollen / propolis, zinc, magnesium
Training - early morning - meditation, qigong, tai gong, taiji practice; mid-morning - deadlift, 45 degree back raise, sit-ups, kettlebell swings.
So that's basically it. I plan to follow a similar approach for the 30 days. I probably won't be so detailed in future blog posts but I plan to try to post daily updates or at least 4-5 a week and discuss more that I learn following the raw vegan approach as well as the effects I'm experiencing. So far, so good!
"And the times have changed my friend, I'll be here til' the bitter end, and I'm here to make my stand, with a guitar in my hand." -Social Distortion, Still Alive
