Going green...

More than anything else food has had the biggest impact on my recovery from Lyme disease.

Minimising sugars and processed foods and maximising vegetables had the biggest positive impact on maximising my energy and minimising my pain. About a year ago, during a 2 week holiday, I took a break from eating clean and ate whatever I wanted. Which back then was a pile of sugar or fat laden yummy food and lots of beer and wine. What really struck me was that after a week or two of this my energy levels dropped right down and the nerve pain in my feet returned.

For me this was enough motivation to get 'back on the food wagon' so to speak, for good.

Since then I've experimented a bit but generally stuck to the basics: oats for breakfast, beans, brocoli, lentils and chicken for lunch, fruit or vegetables for snacks, and usually a delicious meal cooked by my wife for dinner. Although I generally ate fairly clean I wasn't 100% monk like in my dedication. I enjoyed a glass or two of wine and/or whiskey most evenings and sometimes had the occasional pizza, pasta dish, sneaky ice-cream etc.

With this diet I managed to slowly bring my weight down from 103kg to around 95kg at which point it seemed that the scales stuck and I reached a glass floor I couldn't break down through.

That was the case for most of 2012. In early Jan 2013 I made a decision to really eat clean and try and shed some serious weight (I'll talk about that more in another post). Long story short, in the 6 weeks since then I've slimmed down from 95kg (210lbs) to 87kg (192lbs). One aspect of my diet which has a huge effect on my energy and mood levels has been adopting more of a plant based diet. I first got onto this idea after reading 'Finding Ultra' by Rich Roll (photo below) and listening to some of his pod-casts (which I highly recommend)



A week ago I notched it up a level and headed down to the local health food shop and bought up the ingredients I needed for some healthy bars, green smoothies and fruit smoothies. Sunday was my first full day on this regime. That night I slept super soundly and the next morning I woke up with an incredible amount of energy. That whole day I had energy to burn. Normally I get to about 2:00pm and need a diet coke or two to keep me going to home time. But on that day I didn't think once about needing a diet coke. It was brilliant.

I've now been a week on the diet and am still feeling great. One very positive benefit is that I feel a lot more chilled out, a lot more relaxed about things. Last weekend in my mad plant based diet reading frenzy I began reading the book 'Thrive' by plant based diet athlete Brendan Brazier (photo below). One concept he talks about is food stress. He talks about the stress the body has to go through to get the nutrients out of processed food and how having a plant based whole food diet can really minimize this stress.



My results so far have really validated this idea. I also feel way fitter and am getting much more cut.

I'm looking forward to starting some recumbent and tower running races this year and seeing how I do.....

If you have any questions about starting with a plant based diet I'm happy to help out if I can.