I'm a winner!

I've been listening to the podcasts from the Brilliant Body Summit in the afternoons lately.  It's a really interesting take on the raw vegan approach to healthy, weight loss, and fitness.  It's a great way to hear from raw food life coaches, nutritionalists, and people who have changed their lives in ways that they are very passionate about.  It is very interesting to me to hear other people talk about their passion the same way I might talk about Upper Cervical Chiropractic care or triathlon. 

Chris Kendall has to be one of my favorite speakers there.  He's really fun to watch and listen to.  Freelee and lots of the people from 30 Bananas a Day are on there.  Today's speaker is DurianRider, a controversial activist who's incredibly passionate about the 80/10/10 lifestyle.  These people all give away books or promote their products at the end of the podcast.

Yesterday's speaker was Drew McCall Burke, the Sexy Raw Vegan herself.  At the end, I won a copy of her book "Be a Sexy Raw Vegan in 30 Days" and it looks really interesting.  She promotes a combination of juicing, smoothies, and whole fruit.  The book has menu's, shopping lists, and lays out the whole plan very clearly.  It's a good read, and the authors (including Mitzi Mager) have been through some really impressive transformations.

I've been really digging the Fruit Detox Mondays' and I'm thinking about stepping that up a little bit.  Instead of doing just a full day of fruit on Monday I'm going to start increasing the fruit consumption throughout the week. It's the kind of thing that you can't eat too much of, if anything you can't get enough calories from raw fruits.  I'm leaning towards doing more green smoothies for breakfast and fruit/melon smoothies for lunch.  Then whatever Kelley cooks for dinner (which is usually sensible anyway).  I did look up more details on yesterdays food.

Breakfast green smoothie:
2 baby bok choy
handful of spinach
4 bananas
2 small apples
handful of blueberries
3 dates
2 cups of Orange Juice

1009 calories, 249 g carbs, 4g fat, 16g protein

Lunch melon smoothie:
half a Canary Melon (found at local farmer's market, any melon will do)
1 banana
handful of blueberries
2 cups OJ

878 calories, 211g carbs, 1g fat, 17g protein

So I'm up to almost 1900 calories by lunch.  The target is to get between 2000 and 3000 calories a day just from the smoothies like that, so that's pretty close.  But if all you eat is raw fruits and veg you don't get enough protein, right?  33 grams is enough for a full day.  and I still had dinner to go.  It's 91% carbs, 7% protein, and 1% fat.

For dinner last night, Kelley made red beans and rice, and some cabbage with carraway seeds that is really tasty when it's all mixed together.  Vegan, yes, but not raw.  Delish?  absolutely.  I also had a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch as a late night snack.  The beans and the milk also had plenty of protein.

But you can't fuel Ironman training workouts like that, right?  Well, actually I think maybe you can.   Yesterday I did my Ashtanga Primary series routine both in the morning and late at night. Over lunch I hit the weights for a quick circuit and did running intervals on the treadmill.  8 x half a mile each at 9.0 speed (6:39 pace) with recovery in between.  6 miles total.  The last time I tried that workout I could only do 4 intervals, so I was really pleased.  And I still had energy at the end, but instead of doing 2 more intervals I had to go back to work. 

So if I can get in yoga, strength training, and 6 miles of interval running on nothing but smoothie power, I think it will work. 

I made the smoothies on Sunday night and kept them in the fridge overnight.  Everything held it's consistency and texture overnight, and was still quite tasty all through the day.  With my new job, the plan is to make these the night before so I can drink the breakfast smoothie on my drive into work and keep the melon smoothie in the office fridge until I want to drink it at my desk.  After yesterday's performance, I feel pretty optimistic about this plan.

The final theory is that if you consume enough food that contains less than 5% fat, you will also end up with less than 5% fat because you are what you eat.  Yesterday's monday morning naked weight (MMNW) was 178.8 with 19.8% body fat.  Today's weigh in was 176.2 lbs with 19.1% body fat.  So the scale shows a 2.6 lb loss overall with 1.8 lbs of that being melted bodyfat.  My "safe" zone (or what Drew would call the Sexy range) is under 180 lbs and under 20% bodyfat.  So I'm totally in the safe zone.  But the last time I was getting this close to 175 lbs was in the middle of an Ironman build phase where I was working out 20 hours a week.

This is not an Ironman build phase.  This is the very beginning of an endurance base phase leading up to the half ironman/marathon/ultra set coming in the winter.  You may remember that last year, to get ready for Ironman training, I went totally vegetarian and restricted to only 1800 calories a day and it got me down to about this weight.  With this plan I get to eat more than 1800 calories just before lunch, and I still get to melt bodyfat?  I don't need to drop any more pounds, but the reduction in bodyfat is something I never could do last year.  This is going to be fun.

This Week's Fruit

Monday's fruit detox day went pretty well.  I went with mostly bananas, eating about 20 on the day.  I also had a bowl of cut fruit like canteloupe and whatever that green melon is, and downed 2 apples.  Plenty of calories for the day, I stayed full the whole time.  Monday night I went to the gym and did some strength training and rode 20 miles on the stationary bike.  I also did yoga that morning.  And I had plenty of energy for all of those workouts.

Monday's weight was 182.6 lbs at 21.7% body fat, which is up slightly from last tuesday's 181.4 lbs and 20.8% bf.  But that's normal, I would still consider the effects from last week's fruit detox day to be still there.  I didn't go straight back to 185+ lbs like I was last monday.  So how did it go this week?   Tuesday morning's weight was 179.6 lbs and 20.2% bf.  That's the first time since Jan 13 that I've come in under 180 so I'm very happy about that.  I'm also very close now to getting under 20% body fat, which is another goal.  At the peak of my Ironman build last year I was around 175 lbs with 18% body fat, and if I can get close to that by just adding more fruit to my meals instead of adding another 20 hours a week of training then I'll do that and be happy about it.

I'll call these Fruit Detox Monday's a huge success.  Others are starting to agree with me too.  Several people at the swim practice last night remarked how thin I was looking.  Plus others are starting to catch on.  My friends Jeff and Christina are going all fruit today.  Christina also has another friend that is giving it a try.  Even Kelley is getting on the bandwagon. So that's pretty cool.

Workouts are also going great this week.  Saturday was a fun 1800 yard swim with a 20 mile bike ride for a new brick.  Then sunday was Bigun's birthday so I squeezed in a time crunched 18 mile ride/3 mile run brick.  Monday had the 20 mile bike ride, and yesterday was a fast 4 mile tempo run in 29:52 over lunch followed by 2700 yards in the pool for a RAM practice. The most interesting thing about the RAM practice was seeing Erica there.  Erica qualified for the olympic trials in the 50m freestyle, so I thought she was going to be in Omaha this week.  I have really enjoyed watching the swim trials on tv and looking for her.

The end of June is almost here!  Have a great week!