running: the dawn

Ok, so I’ve been skirting around the issue of nutrition lately.  Dropping little hints that I’m interested in improving my diet.  It’s time for me to fess up.  Honesty, I’m a little embarrassed.  Maybe a lot embarrassed.  I tend to shy away from people who are overboard healthy.  I guess I assume that they are judge-y or controlling and will look down on me because of my junk-food ways.  Now here I am, shopping in the organic/raw aisles making shopping lists of things I can’t pronounce.  Its weird.  I feel like I don’t belong.

Let me back up a second.  I started by reading a book called The China Study. It was a really interesting book that contained a LOT of medical information (most of which I didn’t understand) and talked about animal-based protein vs. plant-based protein.  Through reading this and discussions with Mr. Dawn we are on the brink of going vegan.  I have to admit, he is much closer to currently living dairy-free than I am.  I love me some cheese!  Oh, and ice cream.  And I must give a shout out to sour cream.  Those are probably the top three things I will miss.

I say “will” because instead of just going cold-turkey with our non-dairy non-egg lifestyle, we have been doing a countdown.  We will not both be home for good until mid-August.  It is too crazy hard for either of us to be too dramatic in our eating patterns while on the road or staying with friends and family.

As a part of the countdown, I wanted to do some additional reading specifically about vegan sports nutrition.  Enter Brendan Brazier. He has written a book called Thrive.  Initially I thought it would be more about making suggestions and replacements for how to still get all the nutrients that you need when you are no longer eating animal products.  Instead it is an entire philosophy of sports nutrition complete with shopping lists, recipes, and a 12-week meal plan.  And, he doesn’t just leave it at meat free and dairy free.  He builds his diet on nutrient-dense, plant-based, and as non processed as possible.  He talks about and elevates the importance of foods I’ve never heard of like Amaranth and Dulse flakes.

My experience reading Thrive was very similar to reading Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger.  I’m almost completely sold on the ideas that he talks about but I’m very hesitant to implement them into my life.  However, I ended up LOVING having the training plan for each week.  I knew what I needed to get done and loved being able to just go an do it.  I’m hoping that I will have the same experience with this book.  I plan on roughly following his 12-week plan.  I may not do it exactly like he lays it out, but honestly, the idea of having someone else decide what I make for dinner is somewhat exciting to me.

I may occasionally share from my journey to improving my nutritional intake.  Now you know the background information when that happens