The green smoothie recipe I’ve become hooked on is quite simple:

1. Two cups water

2. One cup apple juice (juice or concentrate)

3. Several large handfuls of raw, fresh, washed spinach leaves (we buy the large bags from Costco)

4. A healthy helping of frozen blueberries (again, we buy the large bags from Costco)

5. A few large, frozen strawberries

6. Other frozen mixed berries

7. Some pineapple if you like (fresh pineapple or fresh frozen taste best)

Blend.

It’s almost as important to know what to leave out as what to include. Don’t include bananas, carrots, nuts, or wheat germ. Well, include them if you like, but if the taste doesn’t work for you, leave it out. I’m not sure exactly what was making me gag before, but it was one of those above ingredients. I suspect the bananas. I love bananas, but somehow combined with the other green smoothie ingredients it made drinking the smoothie every day unsustainable.

Another note, I think the smoothie tastes better once it sits and thaws a little. When it’s really frozen the cold numbs certain of your tastebuds and the taste is quite bland. But if it thaws a bit then it becomes very sweet and tastes as good as anything from Jamba Juice or any other smoothie joint.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is one of the more entertaining books I’ve read on health. The author explores where our food comes from (answer: corn) and how to eat better (answer: grown your own food or buy your food from people you know). His journey takes him, and us, through the vast workings of the industrial food system, teaches us the history of so-called “organic” food, and shows us why we should never eat at McDonalds ever again, although of course we will. The book is not just the musings of the author, however, it is fraught with lessons about the science and history of food and nutrition, and Pollan, being an investigative journalist, is an excellent writer and storyteller, making the journey quite interesting and fun.

It has now become one of my favorite books, and a life-changing one. My wife and I are already exploring how we can plant our own garden and start raising chickens in our backyard. We’ve started buying produce from a local farmer. In other words yes, this book may mess up your life.

In 2010, I ran my first marathon. I did my second half-Ironman. I worked out a LOT. And yet I barely lost any weight. Why? Because I was eating tons of nuts, protein shakes, and not doing a lot to restrict the rest of my diet. I felt pretty good, but I weighed around 210 lbs most of that time. Although better than my peak at 236 lbs, I really should be at 170-180 lbs.

In October of 2010 I got sick with a minor cold that didn’t go away. I stopped working out, thinking “Next week I’ll start again.” But it seemed like I would get better for a day, start working out again, and get sick again. This went on for months. During those months came Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that means pie. I gained 13 lbs in between the two holidays. I had gotten down to just under 200 lbs at the beginning of October, but when I stepped on the new, digital scale my wife bought me for Christmas, I was at 213 lbs. How depressing. And I was still sick, so I didn’t feel like working out.

About a year before, my parents had bought us a book called Original Fast Foods. It advocates what is more or less a vegetarian/vegan diet. My wife started reading it, and in January we tried it out. In a nutshell, the diet is lots of fruits and vegetables, virtually no meat, no dairy, etc.

Within a month of starting this, the weight started dropping off rather fast. Then something else serendipitous happened–I developed some sort of food allergy. I didn’t know what it was, but it made my stomach hurt quite a bit, and since I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t want to eat much of anything. I thought it might be all the nuts I was chowing down on, so I cut those out. I also decided I wouldn’t eat sweets until I got down to 190 lbs.

In other words, between January and February I moved to a mostly vegetarian diet, and cut out nuts, a high-calorie snack. No dairy, no meat, no nuts, no sweets, and lots of spinach, fruits, and other vegetables. As of today, I weighed in at 188 lbs, or 25 lbs down from where I was on Christmas. I haven’t weighed less than 190 lbs since around 1997. And I feel great.

Now, given how much I was exercising before, and that I stopped, you might suppose that I’ve lost 20 lbs of muscle mass, and only 5 lbs of fat. That would seem to be a reasonable conclusion, but I did start working out again a few weeks ago, and the weight has kept coming off as steadily as before, if not more so. Also, if I were merely losing muscle, I don’t think my face/neck would change much, but I look a lot thinner, and it doesn’t seem to me that losing muscle mass would do that. My pants are looser in the waist area, my shirts are looser around my tummy, and generally I seem to have lost mostly fat, not muscle, as near as I can tell.

Tangent: As of today my food allergy appears to be triggered by once-cooked beans, or refried black beans. Refried pinto beans I do fine with, but whole beans of any type or refried black beans kill my stomach. A whole banana can cause a little stomach pain as well, it appears.

Conclusions

1. If you want to lose weight, focus on diet, not exercise.

2. Your diet should be entirely or mostly vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong, I cheat all the time. I’m more of a flexitarian. I get bean and cheese burritos, pork salads, and sushi. I could go for a steak right now. I do eat this stuff, but not as much as before. Perhaps the biggest difference is that we don’t buy much meat to eat at home, and no milk or cheese, which used to be staples. It’s all almond milk now.

I’m not just convinced that vegetarian is the way to go to lose weight, but I’m also convinced it’s the way to go in terms of general health, even for endurance athletes.

The book Original Fast Foods is $20. Don’t get it on Amazon, get it from the Daniel’s Challenge website. It’s full of recipes–enough to give you plenty of variety. One warning–it is more expensive to eat this way, unless you have a garden. Our grocery bills went way, way up at first, although we’re still learning and perhaps they’ll settle back down eventually. But I couldn’t recommend the book more highly. It’s changed my entire life when it comes to health and nutrition.

When I started triathlons, I knew next to nothing about health, nutrition, physical fitness, or basic human biology. I didn’t know the differences between carbs and protein, what you should eat when, or much of anything else related to food and exercise. I was next to completely ignorant. Not only was I ignorant, but I didn’t really want to learn. I was already overwhelmed trying to figure out all the names for the different parts of my new bike.

Over time, what was once overwhelming became manageable, and then became common sense to me. In other words, triathlon became fairly easy from the knowledge/vocabulary/conceptual point of view. But knowing something and applying that knowledge are two different things, and I always avoided getting scientific about my weight. I knew I was eating mostly good things, but quantity was not something I focused on. I figured I couldn’t help but lose weight. I mean, I’m training for an Ironman, how could I not lose weight?

I have, in fact, lost weight from my peak at 236 lbs. I now weigh 208 lbs. But what’s depressing is that two months ago I weighed 198 lbs. What happened during the past two months? First, I hurt my back and took some time off. Then I had a 10-day trip to DC during which I didn’t work out, and then I came home and got sick. I used to work out more in a week than I’ve worked out in the past two months. But did I change my eating habits? Not much. And I packed on 10 lbs in short order, after promising myself I would never go over 200 lbs again–ever.

Now, I know that health and weight are not one and the same thing. But at 208 lbs and 6 feet I’m easily 20-30 lbs overweight. Not only would losing weight help me achieve my dream career of being a male model, but it would reduce wear and tear on my joints and produce some other health benefits. And of course I’d be a much faster triathlete. My target weight is 170 lbs.

So healthful weight loss is important to me for various reasons. But I’ve consistently ignore the intake side of the equation, opting to lose weight by expending calories through exercise. That works ok while I’m training for an Ironman, but it doesn’t work so well if I take a break or cut back on the workouts, as proved by the past two months.

So here I am, finally up against the wall, but this time, rather than working out more, or trying to train my body to burn fat instead of carbs, I’m doings things the hard way–I’m going to eat less, and eat better. I’m going to track what I eat, and count calories. I have never done this before, and to be honest, I’m enthused.

What I’m doing is fairly simple. I created a spreadsheet with the meals, snacks, etc. that I generally eat, and I’ve listed how many calories are in each thing (not adjusting for fiber content or any of that which affects the “net” calories–I’m just keeping it simple). The plan is to target 2,500 calories per day for the next month, and see what happens. I don’t know what my intake has been, but as near as I can guess I think it has been between 3,500-4,500 calories per day. Based on my workout schedule, height, weight, etc., 2,500 seems to be a good amount, and if it’s really 1,000-1,500 calories less than what I’ve been eating I think I should see some pounds coming off.

I do not plan on being very hungry. Part of what I’m doing is just cutting out things that don’t matter much. For example, I like butter in my cream of wheat, but a tablespoon of butter or margerine is 100 calories. I don’t like butter that much. A tablespoon of brown sugar is 50 calories, and I usually put in two. But I can probably do fine with one, and maybe I’ll adjust to none. I’m going to keep the raisins in, because I’m a big believer in raisins and the 125 calories is worth it to me. But by cutting out brown sugar and butter, which provide little if any health benefits, I can cut 200 calories out of my breakfast without cutting down much on the pure mass of what I’m taking in.

Much of my plan hinges on self-education. That is, just getting a good idea of how many calories are in certain things. I think once I know, I’ll eat differently. For example, Costco has these great raw tortillas that I like to eat (after cooking them). But I had no idea they had 140 calories apiece. They’re not that big. I can easily make five little burritos with them and eat them all for dinner and not feel stuffed. But that’s 700 calories just in tortillas. Add in some meat and beans and cheese and I’ve got a 1,500+ calorie meal! I don’t need that many calories for dinner, and I especially don’t need them from refined white flour, cheese, and greasy red meat.

Nuts were also a big surprise. I knew nuts had lots of calories, but I didn’t realize a mere 1/4 cup of walnuts was 200 calories. There are times when I would eat what probably was a full cup of nuts, plus some raisins as a snack. That may have easily been a 1,000 calorie snack! Of course nuts and raisins are good for you, but if you’re having cream of wheat with butter and sugar for breakfast, five little burritos for dinner, and a cup of nuts for a snack, right there you’re up to around 3,500 calories, and I didn’t even count my lunch, which was probably 1,000 calories. Is it any wonder I gained 10 lbs in the past two months?

Having moved from ignorance to knowledge, and now to the application of that knowledge, I hope to see great results. If it works, I may have to publish a new diet book. I’m not sure how well it will sell though, since it will only contain two words–”eat less”.

I tried peanut butter and other ingredients, but always the taste of spinach was there. But I stumbled onto an absolute cure. One day I poured in a scoop of fruit punch flavored Accelerade, and the spinach taste was gone. I don’t mean that it was just masked or overwhelmed, I mean it was totally, 100%, gone. I could not detect the slightest taste or aftertaste of spinach. My green smoothies went from tasting like…well, a green smoothie, to tasting like something I paid $6 for at Jamba Juice with a fraction of the nutritional value.

I haven’t tried any other drink mix yet, so I don’t know if fruit punch Accelerade is the only thing that will do it, or if Heed’s Subtle Strawberry or Gatorade Lemon-Lime will have the same effect, but at least I’ve found one cure, and maybe there are more out there.

Back in 1998 I was starting my second year of college. I was fresh off a two-year stint as a missionary for the LDS Church in Brazil, and had been following a strict schedule of waking up at 6:30 am and getting into bed at 10:30 pm. I probably couldn’t point to more than five occasions on which I violated this schedule, and during those two years I felt great. I carried this lifestyle into my post-mission life at college where it served me quite well, although I adjusted my schedule so that I went to bed at 8 pm and got up at 4 am. I couldn’t have done this without the cooperation of my roommate, who had a custodial job and had to be up at 3 am in order to go mop hallways. I have never felt more healthy in my life than those 8-9 months I was able to keep this up. Then I discovered girls, and it all went downhill from there.

I started dating a girl and instead of going to bed at 8 pm, I was online chatting until 4 am, and then I would sleep until 9 am. I stopped working out consistently. I stopped eating consistently. And when that girl dumped me three weeks later I felt like I had been run over by a semi-truck, not only emotionally but physically as well. I shaped up some after that, but never fully regained my sleeping regimen, despite repeated attempts.

Last weekend, I was listening to a show on NPR (which I have searched high and low for in vain) profiling a filmmaker with a sleeping disorder. The guy is unable to go to sleep until he crashes, which means he goes days at a time without sleep until he finally passes out, sleeps for two hours, and then wakes up, still wanting to sleep, but unable to because his mind is racing. That was interesting in and of itself, but what was really interesting to me was when he spoke about all the different treatments he had tried.

He mentioned that the #1 rule of good sleep is to get up at the same time every day, regardless of when you went to bed. The #2 rule of good sleep is to go to sleep at the same time every day. Finally, I had a “scientific” source for what I learned over ten years ago on my own. Coming on the heels of my breakdown due to a lack of sleep, I decided to get on a strict schedule of sleeping from 9 pm to 5 am, and I have noticed an immediate improvement. Not only do I feel better rested throughout the day, but I find it easier to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. I’m already at the point where I instinctively wake up at 5 am even if my alarm clock doesn’t go off, and I’m not tired. I feel ready to take on the day. They say it takes three weeks for your body/brain to adjust to a new sleep schedule, but for me it took three days.

It is a challenge to get to bed by 9 pm every night. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve pulled it off more than once or twice since I started. But I have gotten to sleep before 10 pm almost every night, which is a great improvement over my previous schedule wherein I got to sleep between 11 and midnight, but was still getting up at 5 am. I’m still shooting for 9 pm every night, which means I have to start getting ready at about 8 pm right after we put my daughter down to bed, but it’s certainly worth it, and if I’m going to make it to Ironman I don’t see how I’ll be able to succeed without doing it.

You see, my mom is a bit of a health nut. Growing up she was always making dishes like cabbage casserole, carrot casserole, etc. And when I stopped eating her cooking and started making my own meals, which generally involved lots of cheese, or when my dad and I would be eating ice cream, she would be eating something healthful and would say things like “I really like what I’m eating better than what you’re eating!” Naturally, I assumed she was lying, and was just trying to trick me into eating some cabbage casserole, but I wasn’t about to fall for it.

Then, after I got married, my wife would say similar things. I assumed she was also lying, and that perhaps it was some sort of conspiracy. I mean, what type of deranged person would prefer to eat an apple instead of a half gallon of ice cream? Crazy.

But out of respect for others who don’t like to see a grown man throwing caution to the wind, or perhaps out of a heavily muffled sense of shame, I have tried in the past to not binge on ice cream in front of others. So when my wife would go out of town, then things could get a little bit out of hand. Late nights, movies, ice cream, candy, you name it. Yeah, some guys would have all their friends over, get drunk, and trash the place, but my way of partying is alone with movies and food.

Well, my wife went out of town this weekend. Yesterday, actually. So I made a batch of cupcakes and some pudding to go on top. But that’s when the strangeness occurred. After I made them, I didn’t feel like eating any. I forced myself to eat a few mini-cupcakes I had made, but it was hard going. I went the rest of the day without touching the other ones, because every time I went towards them I felt a little sick to my stomach and they just weren’t appetizing. Finally, right before bed, I forced myself to eat one, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Today, I woke up and had a green smoothie for breakfast. I went to open the bag of cupcakes to have one, but again, it just didn’t seem appetizing, so I didn’t. This afternoon I forced myself to eat two, but again, it was hard work and almost thoroughly without satisfaction. I’d much rather have a Jamba juice.

Am I forsaking all sweets forever? No, I haven’t said any such thing. I’m just saying that something strange is occurring, and that maybe my mom and wife weren’t lying after all. Maybe they really are crazy, and maybe I’m starting to get a little crazy myself.

Last night, as I was going to bed, I could feel a little tickle in the back of my throat and some minor pain when I swallowed. I also felt a bit “thick-headed” (my friends say I’ve always been that way), and more tired than normal. I was still planning on doing my workout this morning, but when I woke up at 5 am I knew I wouldn’t be doing much today. My throat hurt a lot, my head hurt, I had body aches, chills, hot flashes, and I didn’t feel AT ALL like getting out of bed. So I slept in until 9 am. I got up for an hour, and then went back to bed from 10 am to 2 pm. It’s now 4:30 pm and I was ready to go back to bed an hour and a half ago, but the work must go on, right?

In an attempt to nip this in the bud I had a large green smoothie for breakfast (foregoing the much more appetizing French toast my wife had made), and a bowl of chicken soup for lunch when I woke up at 2. I don’t feel much better yet, though.

What caused this? Well, here’s the email I sent to my coach:

Hi David, as I was going to bed last night I started to feel a little bit of a sore throat, some body aches, and other minor symptoms of something coming on. When I woke up they were in full force. I slept in until 9 am, got up for an hour, and went back to bed until 2 pm. And I already feel like going to bed again. I don’t feel terrible, per se, but I know I’m sick and I know enough to not push it. I’m keeping full of liquids and just taking it easy today in the hope I can kill this thing off fast, but of course I have no idea how long it will last.

I would guess there’s no point in revising my schedule until we know when I’m going to be able to get back in there. Do you have any recommendations on care or future prevention in the future? Part of me thinks the whole reason I came down with this is due to not enough sleep. I’ve been averaging six hours per night, and I feel tired pretty much every day, although I’ve felt great in every other way at the same time.

David’s response was:

Josh,

I’m so sorry!

You’re right, we would want to hold off on scheduling until we find out how bad this is, and hoe long before you recover.

For future prevention and care, sleep, vitamin C daily (which is probably enough in your smoothies) and 50mg Zinc the moment you start to feel sick.

The intensity you performed on Saturday probably lowered your immune system. After a big workout or race, sleep becomes even more important than normal.

Let me know how you feel tomorrow.

David

On top of a general lack of sleep, during my horrible, terrible, no-good bike ride yesterday (I make it sound like I have a negative attitude, but I was smiling the whole time, I enjoy challenges most of the time, I’m even smiling right now) I only consumed 200 calories of Gu, and maybe another 20 calories of Gatorade. I had a small, chocolate cupcake for breakfast, and a Gu before my bike, and maybe a Shot Blok or two (not two packages, two bloks). In all, I’m guessing that from 5 am to 4 pm I got perhaps 350 calories into my system. By the time I ate a protein bar at around 4 pm I was exhausted, and I probably hadn’t had enough liquids either.

Add up general fatigue for several weeks, the race on Saturday, and yesterdays events, and perhaps my body is telling me I need to take better care of it, which I’ve known for a while, but man, I have trouble with my transitions. Sure, I had a 1:05 transition in my last triathlon, but when it comes to transitioning from being awake, doing normal stuff, to being in bed at night it seems like it takes me 2:00:00 to make that transition. The biggest problem is I start reading WSJ articles on my Blackberry. Maybe I need to apply some triathlon transition discipline to the rest of my life.

The ground flax seed has less Omega oils per gram, and that is what we really want out of that oil. Taking in Omega oils for several weeks will significantly reduce inflammation.

If you look on the back of the nutrition guide for both the ground and oil, how much ground would you have to put in to get the same amount of Omega oils? AS long as you can get a similar amount, I don’t see a problem, but my guess is that you will have to put in a bunch of ground flax to equal 1 Tsp of oil.

However, if you read that article I linked to above, there are some claims out there that the ground flaxseed does indeed cause problems. It would seem to me that for my purposes, the oil is the safe bet, so I’ll be sticking with the oil from now on, once I finish this bag of ground flaxseed that I bought…

1. Breakfast, green smoothie – Immediately after I get home from my morning workout.

2. Lunch, spinach salad, or something else healthful.

3. Afternoon snack. Something healthful.

4. Sensible dinner with plenty of protein. I’m focusing on fish (mostly salmon) and ground turkey.

Overall I’m trying to include more fruits and vegetables, unprocessed, whole grains, less fat, less red meat, and less sugar. Oh, and definitely less dairy.

Over the past month I’ve been hovering between 215-220 lbs. After going on a strenuous three-day hike in the Uintas of Utah with my family I dropped down to around 210, and now I’m hovering between 210-215 lbs. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes from here. The first shipment of spinach is coming in today, so tomorrow morning will be my first green smoothie.