Nutrition Tips from Brendan Brazier

From "In A Vegetarian Kitchen"


The High Performance Vegan Athlete: It is Possible!

This is some good stuff. Brendan answers one of my most common issues: I'm always hungry.

Energy and Intent

"Energy and Intent" is one of my favorite articles by Adam Myerson.

I think at one time or another we all tend toward trying to live up to our ideals in such a way that might not be sustainable. What Adam reminds us is that our ethical choices are about intent rather than purity.

Keeping A Food Log

One of the things that has made the biggest difference in helping me to be mindful of what I eat is keeping a food log. This is pretty much standard practice if you see a nutritionist or dietician. Initially, I started keeping a food log a few years back to get a handle on my caloric intake when I was trying to lose weight. These days, I log somewhat frequently to make sure I'm eating enough to keep up with training, and that I'm getting enough nutrients.

What you can learn from logging you food, assuming you are honest and fairly accurate, is a whole lot.

Logging your food allows you to get a sense of portions, caloric density in various foods, the diversity in your diet, and the general nutritional soundness of your diet.

I find it particularly useful for tracking trends in nutrient deficiencies in my diet and correcting them. For example, I tended to be a little light on zinc and vitamin E over the course of several weeks, so I was able to alter my diet to include more foods rich in zinc and vitamin E.

Also, during peak training periods, the log helps me to understand just how much I'm eating versus how much I need to eat. Sometimes I find it too easy to not eat enough when I'm already fatigued from hard blocks of training and the log reminds me, yes, I need about 5,000 calories (!) on those hard days.

I like fitday.com a lot. It's free. It allows you to add custom foods. It's pretty user friendly.

Fitday also allows you to keep track of your exercise... one caveat... it grossly overestimates calories burned during exercise. This is true for most online exercise calculators. I train with a PowerTap and use the Kj expended as my guide to calories burned (because of our body's efficiency 1 Kj equals roughly 1 Cal) .

Some folks don't log their exercise in fitday for this reason. I still like to keep it all together so I can get a sense of calories in and calories out. I end up tweaking the average speed of my rides when I enter them to get a more accurate caloric expenditure number. It looks like I'm doing a lot of 12-13 MPH rides, but I'm not. I'm just a whole lot more efficient than the calculator assumes I am.

My log lives here. I've been bad about keeping it updated, but I'm working on it:

Mark's food log

It may be tempting if you think you need to lose weight to use the food log as a means of restricting calories but don't do that. If the whole point of training and eating well is to make yourself faster, why risk your health and fitness by overly restricting (over 500 calories a day) your caloric intake?

Vegan Freak Radio Health Show

This is a great, and pretty damn impressively executed, podcast about vegan health from the folks at Vegan Freak Radio. I'd never listened to it before, but it's a weekly podcast and last week's episode was on vegan health and nutrition.

The Vegan Health Show

I like it because it throws down the gauntlet to junk food veganism and reminds us that just because you don't eat animal products, it doesn't mean you're healthy.

It gets bonus points for citing Stuart Hall.

Eat Your Veggies. Ride Your Bike. Be Awesome.

This blog is intended to be a resource for veggie cyclists. The more time I spent writing about vegan food and nutrition in my personal blog, the more questions I got asked about what to eat and how to prepare it. I also found myself talking about veganism and vegan issues to other bike racers more than I'd ever talked about veganism in my previous life as an animal rights activist.

I've sort of felt like the veggie stuff has outgrown my blog and this is my attempt to make room for it.

In many ways, this is a project that doesn't need to exist. Now, more than ever, there are so many resources for vegetarian and vegan athletes that I feel a little funny about throwing in my .02. Still further, there's really nothing unique or special about being vegetarian or vegan and racing your bike.

Seriously, choosing not to eat meat or animal products doesn't pose any particular difficulties or disadvantages to a cyclist over any other dietary choice. In this way, I feel sort of funny about saying there is something special or unique about being veggie and being a cyclist by creating a project aimed at veggie cyclists.

Still, I've heard stories from juniors whose coaches have told them they can't be vegan if they want to race. I get questions from long time vegans about grocery shopping and meal planning. Recently, I've seen multiple threads on cycling message boards by people looking for information on vegetarianism and cycling. Clearly, there's a desire for more resources and information.

So, the plan is this: I'm going to try less to focus on original content and more on collecting cool resources I've found. What I can offer is suggestions from spending half my life as a vegetarian, the past eight years as a vegan, and the past four as a cyclist. I'm not a doctor, a coach, or a nutritionist.

I'm not interesting in converting people or propaghandizing. I don't think veganism is necessarily morally or nutritionally superior to other diet choices. It's just different.

Mostly, I know about cooking good food, and I want to share that. There'll be lot of good food, shopping tips, meal planning, and general awesomeness.