Can’t sleep? You’re probably not eating enough

Of course there are many factors that contribute to how well we sleep – stress levels, or how light- and sound-tight your bedroom is, for example. However, a big contributing factor is whether you have eaten enough both throughout the day and for dinner. I know that linking how much we eat to how well we sleep seems farfetched, but here me out.

One of the  best things about the high-carb, low-fat, raw till 4 vegan lifestyle is that you quickly realise exactly what you’re body needs once you start giving it the right fuel. Once you stop trying to live off toast and coffee for breakfast; sandwiches, tea and biscuits for lunch, you begin to realise just what your body needs; that is sugar, water, sleep.

I’ve been doing this for nearly two months now and it’s got to the point where I really notice it if I don’t stick to eating fruit until 4pm and drinking at least 2 litres of water daily – I literally can’t function. Example: just the other day, instead of my usual breakfast routine of drinking a litre of water followed by about ten bananas (or whatever fruit I have to hand), I instead skipped the water and had just cereal. It doesn’t sound like a big deal but the fact that I had gone so long beforehand eating uncooked, unprocessed food during the day – and by definition cereals are cooked and processed – I felt sluggish and tired, I had a headache and couldn’t concentrate on my work. This is because cooked food is slower to digest and in fact slows your whole metabolism, something I’ll get back to later. If you want top-rate fuel, fruit is the way to go.

Another good example was just last night; me and a friend were attempting to make some home-made vegan pizza, and suffice to say it didn’t really go well:

FYI: this is not pizza

I used far too much dough and the thing turned out like a pizza cake, which sounds awesome if it wasn’t for the fact that the base tasted like I was biting into a chalk duster. Anyway, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that because most of it was inedible, I went to bed pretty under-carbed, which given that I had been for a two hour bike ride earlier that day wasn’t a good thing. Although I felt full, I wasn’t nearly full enough calorie-wise. That’s a mistake people often make – there’s a difference between feeling full and having enough calories in you to ensure you’ve replenished your energy stores which have been depleted either throughout the the day or through exercise.

That’s why I, like a lot of people on the high-carb-low-fat vegan lifestyle, am a strong advocate for calorie counting. And I’m not talking calorie counting to check whether I’ve gone over the ‘government recommendation,’ whatever that is; I’m talking counting calories to make sure that I’ve eaten enough. As I’ve said in previous posts, I aim for a net intake of at least 3,000+ calories a day, regardless of whether I’m exercising. Sure this might mean carrying on eating past the “I feel full” point, but that’s what you have to do to ensure you have enough calories to do the things you want and not feel like a slug. Seriously: go eat a cooked meal clocking in at 1,000+ calories and you’ll want to do nothing but sit down and fall asleep; eat 1,000+ calories of fruits or vegetables and you’ll have boundless energy. And that’s not because of the old wives’ tale of ‘the sugar rush’, it’s simply because of the high water content of said fruits and vegetables. High water content means peak digestion speed, and peak digestion means peak energy!

But I digress, and back to the matter at hand: last night I went to bed simply not having eaten enough. And guess what happened… I couldn’t sleep. Bearing in mind that since going raw till 4 vegan I have enjoyed some of the best nights’ sleep I can remember – I’m talking 8-10 hours uninterrupted – I didn’t even consider it to be a coincidence, and when it got to 2am and all I could think about was what food was in the fridge downstairs I was proven right.

You might recall the term ‘fight or flight’ from your GCSE Biology lessons. Well, going hungry triggers that same response, meaning that you are sharper, more alert, and ready to move at any moment – all terrible things when trying to sleep. So as a result of last night’s lack of sleep – I don’t think I got away until about 4am – today has been pretty terrible. I woke up late, not eating ‘breakfast’ until about 11am, meaning that I was essentially a meal down for the whole day. I was obviously tired and so had no desire to exercise and concentrating on work was difficult, even after downing as much water and fruit as possible. All in all it kind of sucked.

So how am I combating this? Well, I just smashed half a kilo of risotto rice, various vegetables and a whole romaine lettuce heart. Tonight I’m going to sleep like the proverbial baby.

You see, as the quantity of food you eat increases, so too does the amount of insulin released as a normal part of the body’s digestion. The insulin then increases the amount of serotonin and melatonin that flood the brain, two chemicals associated with drowsiness (and, for that matter, happiness). It’s precisely the reason why, after every Christmas dinner, grandma and grandpa are comatosed on the sofa. But people will often see this as a bad thing – “oh no,” they fret, “I’ve eaten too much, I’m going to give up carbs as a new year resolution!”

Well I say: Eat like that every damned night! I’m not talking turkey and bone juice gravy, mind you, I’m talking lean, low-fat carbohydrates like rice, potato and pasta (plus lots of vegetables). Don’t worry, you won’t get fat (just Google high-carb, low fat vegan and you’ll see for yourself). Or, for those that know me personally, they can testify that I’m a string bean. Stuff yourself at least 2-3 hours before going to bed and you’ll drop off no questions asked. Plus you’ll feel happier and have the energy to smash out another high-energy day tomorrow!

Why humans aren’t designed to eat meat

Things I’ve already covered: Protein.

Humans have no killer instincts

This is pretty much the bottom line before heading into ethics. I was at a family gathering this weekend, my first being vegan, and so the inevitable happened. Whilst helping ourselves to some classic British bonfire-night fayre of jacket potatoes and chilli con carne  (for me, beluga lentils and kidney bean chilli), I was rounded with the familiar statement of “if we were meant to be vegetarian we would all be out in the fields eating grass.” Fine. I calmly pointed towards a family pet, a lovely little dog called Evie, and said: “if we were meant to eat meat you would be taking a chunk out of Evie’s neck right now.” If you want to prove to me that we are meant to eat meat, go grab Fluffy the cat and bite its head the f***k off. You won’t do it! We simply have no carnivorous instincts whatsoever. Period. Needless to say their wasn’t much of a comeback to that. There was no animosity in the exchange, we are family after all, and the night descended into drunken shenanigans and the questionable practice of handling explosives whilst half-cut. It got me thinking, though, about the widespread misconception that humans are ‘meant’ to eat meat, like the presence of an enlarged frontal lobe and opposable thumbs decrees it.

I used to be in that camp too, but think about it for a second; just stop and really think hard about whether you feel naturally obliged to eat the blood, flesh, veins, and tendons of other beings, not to mention the puss-filled secretion (milk and cheese), menstrual cycle from a chicken’s ass (eggs), and vomit (honey). And you think I’m the freak for eating a plant-based diet? Seriously, I was ‘jokingly’ called a freak for eating a vegan chilli that night. People have got so caught up in the meat and dairy industries’ lies – “you need the protein to survive,” “milk grows strong bones,” “this animal was raised and slaughtered ethically” – that they’ve forgotten that the way that they are consuming this flesh is via the most unnatural means possible: cooked, seasoned and disguised in cellophane-wrapped euphemisms. Bacon? Pig flesh and fat. Steak? Cow muscle and tendon. Leather? Cow skin. Chops? Pig back. Shanks? The leg of a baby sheep. Honey? Bee puke. Sausages? F***k knows what. The list goes on and on with industry-standard word games literally pulling the wool over people’s eyes.

“But Sam, lions, sharks and hyenas eat meat. That’s natural.” Sure, and it’s also natural that lions sniff each other’s asses when greeting each other, it’s natural that they often commit infanticide, and it’s natural that they live in the African savanna without a supermarket in site. Justifying meat-eating with one aspect of a thoroughbred carnivore’s behaviour is simply an unfair comparison, not to mention the obvious anatomical differences – teeth, claws, speed, and the fact our jaws move side-to-side, like a herbivores, not up and down.

Paleo

Nah.

I originally left this section blank with just this meme, but decided that that was lazy, and after a brief yet firm discussion with a friend on Facebook about whether or not eating meat lead us to the top of the food chain, I decided to update this.

I could probably just wrap this up by saying that research in to the Paleo diet fad – whereby we should eat mainly meat supplemented by some raw fruits and vegetables and presumably plenty of Ex-Lax – has virtually no basis in archeological record. Studies have in fact shown that paleolithic diets were in fact rich in carbohydrates such as acorns, nuts, seeds, berries and even barley. For those who did eat meat it would most likely have been in last-ditch situations for those living in extreme climates, which was basically everywhere, where regular droughts or frozen landscapes limited the supply of fresh produce, the far easier option for food then going bare-chested against a frigging Smilodon.

The paleo diet does get some things right: it eschews artificial and refined foods and encourages people to eat only foods that would have been available to the Paleolithic person. The only problem is that there are virtually no species of plant or animal alive today that existed back then. Everything we see in the supermarkets today, including fruits and vegetables, have been bred and to a certain degree manufactured by humans. Carrots have been bred to be sweeter and bigger; broccoli wasn’t even a thing until agriculture came along and made it into what it looks like today. This is wild broccoli:

Doesn’t look too appetising. My point with all this is that we cannot simply use the ‘paleo excuse’ to commit mass killings, waste grain that could be feeding other poorer humans, and destroy the environment with the ridiculous amounts of CO2 the meat and dairy industry puts out. This is the 21st Century; right now we have zero natural predators and supermarkets that stock varieties of fruits and vegetables and meats that never even existed in the Paleolithic era. So eat what’s widely available, abundant, cheap, and healthy: carbohydrates in the form human-bred fruits, vegetables, potatoes, rice and pasta.

Rape, murder, infanticide and slavery

Convinced yet? Let’s move on to the ethical side of things. I’m no longer afraid to admit to family, friends and, by default with this site, the world that I don’t agree with the meat and dairy industries. Not after seeing what goes on in there. Seriously, all it takes is a quick Google search, a harmless YouTube trawl. But people won’t do it because they’re afraid that what they might see will be too “shocking”, too graphic and make them feel guilty. You know what it means when you feel guilty, right? It means you’ve done something wrong. Male chicks being ground into pulp because they can’t lay eggs, cows and sheep having their throats cut and decapitated, calves being separated from their mothers before they get to taste the milk that was made for them so that humans can eat the calf and drink the milk.

To paraphrase Gary Yourofsky, we have victimised animals to such a degree that they are no longer considered victims; they aren’t even considered at all. We have turned animals into inanimate objects – sandwiches and shoes. Go out in to the street and start burning a flag or the Bible and there would be quite literally hell to pay. Throw a barbecue party? Well crack open the beers! Let’s celebrate the murder of this animal and the chef throwing body parts onto the grill.

Inequality, slavery, genocide. These aren’t terms exclusive to human beings, just as they aren’t terms exclusive to women, black people, or Jews. So why do we overlook these terms when considering the genocide of pigs, chickens, cows, turkeys, sheep, lambs, calves, ducks, fish; the enslavement of animals in circuses for our entertainment and the forced production of eggs and milk. Replace animals with humans inside an abattoir  and what do you have? Load them into tightly packed trucks where they’re scared and don’t know what’s going to happen to them. Brand them for easier identification. March humans into designated facilities where they will be man-handled and then killed in mass and what do you have? I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.

More than 150 billion animals are killed every year, yet no-one bats an eyelid at this continuous genocide.Why? Because they don’t want to hear it; they like “their” meat.  They prefer instead to worry about starving children in Africa – which is of course a massive problem – but guess where all those billions of tonnes of wheat and grain could go if not being forced down the throats of animals being made fat for slaughter?

Five things I’ve realised since going HCLF, Raw Till 4 vegan

HCLF = High-Carb, Low-Fat
Raw Till 4 = raw fruits and vegetables only until 4pm

1. Cravings for any kind of junk food have completely gone

Quite simply, eating nothing but fruit (and veg, but mostly fruit) until 4pm every day gives the body the essential sugars it requires in order to function. If you are someone who thinks that the reason they are craving something sweet after dinner – and more often than not reaches for the chocolate – is because you are weak-willed, you’re not; you’re only human. It’s a strange phenomenon, but merely the idea of sweet or savory  junk food totally goes out of the window once you fuel yourself properly and naturally. Give your body what it desires – sugar!

2. Caffeine-dependency is virtually non-existent

I haven’t had a single cup of coffee in about a month. Not because of the fact that it isn’t good for you – although it isn’t – but because I simply don’t feel that I need it. I still like the idea of coffee, but I simply haven’t felt like I’ve needed to stimulate myself unnaturally. Drink a litre of water before each meal and you’ll have more energy than anything coffee could do for you.

3. I don’t give a sh*t about my weight

This is the biggest surprise to me as someone who for a long time has kept a close eye on their weight, weighing myself in every other day. Now? I’ve done away with the scales happy in the knowledge that whatever I eat will never do my body any harm and, so long as I keep up with regular exercise, I will never ‘get fat’, which is a virtual impossibility with this diet anyway. Hell, I may have even put on a bit of weight since going high-carb, low-fat vegan, but I just don’t care. And neither should you; be more worried about what you are eating, not how much (or rather, how little) you are eating. That’s the best thing about this lifestyle – it’s pig out time every day! Eat more, exercise more, do more. Forget the scales as they just lead to anxiety and calorie restriction – the reason why people get into a mess in the first place!

4. My weight goals have changed to fitness goals

As I mentioned, I no longer care about my weight (although I do like to stay lean) but I am now more concerned with whether I am eating enough to have the energy to do the things I want to do, i.e. run, cycle and complete a degree in journalism! As I have mentioned before, at least 3,000 net calories a day is enough for me to function, even if I’m not exercising daily (currently I haven’t done anything for 3 days, but still hit 3,000 cals a day. Do I care? Nope). If I am doing heavy amounts of cycling or running it will sometimes be 4,000+ calories a day.

5. I don’t give a f**ck what people think

I’ve had many comments from various people since going Raw Till 4 vegan: “get a girlfriend,” “I’m going to block you from my timeline if this ball-baggery continues” (my own brother, love you man). But I’ve also had genuine interest from other active people and, in one case, gratitude from someone who had been vegan for years, went back to being omnivorous, but is now considering returning to being vegan because of this blog. To me that makes it worthwhile and inspiring. I try not to preach – that is part of the reason why I started this site, so people had a choice to expand their minds – but if you want to do something then just do it. Be who you want to be without feeling persecuted, and if you want to go vegan then don’t be afraid; at the end of it all you’ll only live longer than the people who doubt you!

That’s about it, short and sweet. Just to end on one note: This, as they say, is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle, and it starts with being kinder to the planet and kinder to animals who have done nothing to us and yet we slaughter them in literal droves. The thing you have to remember is that this lifestyle is for the long-term; for long-term health, long-term fitness, and long-term lean muscle mass. It’s not going to happen overnight! So relax, have fun, carb-up, hydrate-up, and get out and see some of the world!

WV

A word on calories

You might be surprised to know that a calorie isn’t a tangible ‘thing’, it is instead a unit of measurement. Although the term calorie is used most often in the lexicon of food and nutrition, it could be applied to many other things; the amount of energy required to heat water, for example, or as a unit of heat itself equal to 4.1840 joules. It can in fact be used to describe anything that carries energy – in case you ever wondered, one ton of coal contains the equivalent in energy of 7,004,684,512 calories. This is the best place to start when considering calories as it removes  notions of calories being in any way related to what we eat (for more information see).

So, a calorie is unit of energy, and our bodies need this caloric energy in order to function. But understanding how the body uses those calories is another matter. The best place to start here is to look at the body’s primary source of energy, glycogen. Glycogen is the storage form of glucose and is what every single cell in our body requires in order to work. As a macro-molecule, glycogen is not as as energy-rich as fatty acids, meaning they hold less calories.

• 1g carbohydrate = 4 calories
• 1g protein = 4 calories
• 1g fat = 9 calories

“Sounds great, I’ll just go it a cheese toastie then as that’ll give me lots of energy!” Not so fast. When drawing upon energy for sudden bursts of strenuous movement it is glycogen that your body turns to as it is readily available and metabolised by your body very efficiently. And lo-and-behold the best sources of glycogen are fruits and vegetables and starches like rice, potato, and gluten-free pasta.

The biggest myth in the business is that carbs make you fat. Of course the supermarket and fast-food corporations would like you to think that, how else would everyone queue up like good little citizens to pour money into their coffers? Sure the body can chose to store glycogen as fat, but it won’t because it is an incredibly inefficient process using nearly twice as many calories to do so. Fat, on the other hand, has no problem getting itself in there. If you have 100 extra calories in fat (about 11 grams) floating in your bloodstream, fat cells can store it using only 2.5 calories of energy; if you have 100 extra calories in glucose (about 25 grams) floating in your bloodstream, it takes 23 calories of energy to convert the glucose into fat and then store it. Given a choice, a fat cell will grab the fat rather than the carbohydrates because fat is so much easier to store.

It is true that your body has a limit of how much glycogen it can store, around 2,000 calories worth, with any extra being stored in the body’s fat cells. Which in broscience means “carbs make you fat”. However, if you are exercising regularly and eating carbs regularly this will not happen as your body is constantly needing the glycogen for fuel. But people hear the line “excess glycogen is stored as fat” and simply use that as an excuse to eat meat and cheese without taking responsibility. Fill those glycogen tanks and get the hell outside! And you don’t just need carbs to exercise; glycogen is the only source of energy for the brain and the central nervous system, which is why when you’re hungry and undercarbed you are irritable and weak. So when you’re teacher at school tells you that oily fish is healthy ‘brain food’ feel free to educate them.

Those who take part in the high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet – whereby you force your body to rely on fat as its energy source – sing it’s praises for fat loss, which is fine, but it isn’t natural as every scrap of science says that glycogen is your body’s energy source. If you return to my previous post about carb restriction you will see that cutting your carbs can lead to dehydration as, for every gram of carbohydrate consumed, the body needs three grams of water to store it. Lose the carbs, you lose the water, resulting in unhealthy weight loss. You can also say goodbye to strenuous exercise or simply anything that is going to result in the formation of lean muscle mass.

On a high-carb, low-fat diet you’ll have so much energy that not exercising – or not just getting out and being productive – won’t be an option as you’ll have too much energy not too! You’ll be thinking clearer, moving faster, and getting healthier. What could be better than that?

WV

Why calorie restriction needs to stop

How many people who have ever wanted to lose weight, get fit, or generally feel better  come across someone telling them to restrict their calories? Probably quite often. Even if it’s not from an advertisement, ‘nutritionist’ or YouTube video, it’s from a friend or family member who has bought into those ideals.

Calorie restriction is dangerous, and it needs to stop, because when you restrict your calories (particularly your intake of carbohydrate, both complex and simple sugars) your body goes into starvation mode. The human brain is a clever sucker and it knows that you don’t want to die and that it doesn’t want you to die. So when you put it into a state of starvation, which according to the United Nations is when 20% of the adult population can’t access at least 2,100 calories a day, your body becomes an incredibly efficient fat storage unit. Sure you might have an initial weight loss when you restrict your carbohydrates, but that’s just water loss. There’s a reason why they’re called carbo-hydrates: it’s carbon and water, or at least they are the only waste products produced when your body uses them. For every gram of carbohydrate consumed the body needs three grams of water to store it. Lose the carbs, you lose the water.

Bananas: nature’s fast food

But that’s not the kind of weight you want to lose, you want to lose fat and other toxic fluid build-ups, not water as that’s hydration that is meant to be there and which helps the body function. So you follow this low carbohydrate diet for a few weeks and you’ve lost a kilo or so (of water) and think – “hey this is great.” Then the inevitable happens: the binge. When you’re that undercarbed any old scrap of junk food seems like a good idea; people get super hungry and they eat things they then regret and which causes them harm. I know this because I used to do it.

A while ago there was a period of time where I was off the bike for several months for various reasons and so, in order to ‘not gain weight’, I cut my calories and especially my intake of carbs. As prescribed I initially lost weight – at the time I stupidly had no idea about the water weight factor – and loved it. Then I started craving high-sugar junk food like biscuits, chocolate and ice-cream. Why? Because I was starving my body of it’s daily need for sugar. As I mentioned earlier, when you go into starvation mode your body becomes very efficient at storing the fat contained within such food because it is preparing for its next state of famine, which will be the next day when you realise how much you binged and want to ‘make up for it’ by not eating.

It’s a common misconception that (natural) sugar gives you diabetes. Diabetes is either genetic or a fat-related problem.

Being undercarbed is also the main cause of so-called ’emotional eating’. It’s like people use it as an excuse to eat junk food, when really all they need to do is eat more in the first place. Your brain does strange things to you when you’re hungry, putting your hormones out of balance and making you emotional and stressed. Cut it out! Eat when you’re hungry, eat low-fat, high-carb meals and get the fruit inside you. If you’re craving something sweet after your evening meal you either haven’t eaten enough or you haven’t had enough sugar earlier in the day.

If you remember one thing from this it is that carbs do not make you fat. People often place the blame on things like rice, pasta and potato for making them gain weight, but it’s the fat they put on top of those carbs that does that. Cheese on pizza, chicken and bacon in pasta, mayonnaise on potatoes, fish with rice. The fat you eat is the fat you wear.

As you can see I eat a lot. I aim to have a net intake of at least 3,000 calories a day, regardless of whether I’m exercising. If I’m riding or running the next morning I’ll have up to 4,000 or more calories. Net intake of calories is important to consider; it’s not simply a case of ‘calories in calories out’, that’s just sports nutrition marketing BS 101. You need to replace those calories you’ve just burnt because you’re body needs them to a) repair broken muscle tissue, b) have enough energy to function, and c) have enough fuel to do it all again the next day. As an active person you should effectively be eating for three. It sounds like a lot of food but forget everything you’ve ever been told. How can you have the energy to exercise and be a productive human being when you’re on some ridiculous 1,500-calorie-a-day diet that leaves you hungry and pissed off. It’s impossible and you’ll end up knackered and binging on a litre of ice-cream.

I can already hear some people saying: “but Sam, there are so many starving people in this world that it’s ethically wrong for us in the West to consume so much food.” Well if you want to go down that route, I’ll calmly point you towards the fact that more than two-thirds of all agricultural land is devoted to growing feed for the livestock that people in the West so love to eat, while only 8 percent is used to grow food for direct human consumption.

So there you have it. I’m sorry that this writing has been slightly more ‘passionate’ than usual, but it’s probably the one thing I feel strongest about and it’s what is so great about the Raw Till 4 or simply normal vegan lifestyle – you can eat as much as you want. It’s an unrestricted, unlimited calories, pig-out every day diet. Of course if you do that and still choose to sit on your arse things aren’t going to go well, but I guarantee you won’t want to do that because you’ll have so much energy you won’t know what to do with it! What I’m saying is that if you restrict your calories you restrict life. Now excuse me whilst I go eat a kilo of rice.

WV

Eerie and beautiful Cornwall

Why go vegan?

Disclaimer: I am very happy being vegan, just as people are happy being omnivorous. I am not questioning people’s right to lead a happy life, simply pointing out a few flaws in the accepted system of how human beings survive on this planet.

People have many reasons for going vegan, be it for health or ethical choices. For me, it was a bit of both. Quite simply I really went off the thought of eating dead animals and consuming their metabolic byproducts. That may sound like a crude way of putting it, but it’s exactly what it is. I asked myself something which I had long since been happy neglecting: Does this feel natural? And to tell you the truth, no it didn’t. Because if it was natural I would be salivating at the thought of rotting flesh, as carnivores do; I would be going to a pet store not for a fluffy companion but for my evening meal; and perhaps most obviously I would have the necessary anatomical tools to cut through muscle and tendons, not a steak knife and a fork.

Some might argue that humans, as self-aware, intelligent organisms, we have the right to exploit our environment as we see fit, placing ourselves at the top of the food chain via technological (unnatural) means. And for a long time I believed that – we’ve earned the right to destroy ecosystems and torture animals on a mass scale because, you know, we’re smart, right? Now I see that to be an incredibly self-centered notion. Now, I’m not arguing the fact that we are the dominant species on this planet – we seriously kick ass when it comes to damaging the environment. But, to paraphrase Ben Parker,with such a great amount of power comes an even greater responsibility to make our cosmically irrelevant time as the dominant species of this planet as unaffecting as possible.

It is also a common misconception that the production of milk doesn’t harm cows. For starters the veal industry wouldn’t be able to survive without the dairy industry to provide them with calves. As such, farmers need to artificially inseminate cows every year; then, growth hormones and milking schedules cause the cows udders to swell to unnatural and painful sizes, sometimes resulting in infection and the need for antibiotic administration. Luckily the potentially harmful Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone has been banned in Europe under the grounds that they “have the right to restrict the importation and sale of products that may have serious health consequences”. America isn’t quite so fortunate.

Even organically-raised cows’ milk is full of naturally-occurring growth hormones designed to double a calf’s weight not a humans. Cows, like all female mammals, lactate in order to care for their young. The last time I checked I didn’t have hooves or an overwhelming need to double my body weight, support a bovine skeleton or develop enormous muscle groups.

That’s all on dairy for now, but I plan to return to it with a dedicated post as it was probably the single most influential factor in my transition from vegetarianism to veganism.

That is my aunt’s dog, Raffi. And yes he is standing on the bottom of a swimming pool. He is an incredible animal, a loyal pet, socially aware and especially loving. Would I eat him? Absolutely not, and neither would my aunt or any omnivore (living in the West). So what’s the difference between him and a chicken or a cow or a cat or a rat or a horse or a fish? Absolutely nothing. We anthropomorphise certain animals because that’s what we’ve always been told, always grown up believing, and yet we fail to recognise that there is no difference besides anatomy and biology.

I think the most saddening part for me is that it took twenty-one years for me to acknowledge this to such a degree that it would physically force me to stop eating them. I know it’s a bit of a cheap guilt trip, but at least stop and think about it. Or, as they say, ignorance is bliss.

WV

How do you get your protein?

Seriously though, how do I get my protein? It’s a legitimate question and I would like to answer it. As a vegan who spends a lot of time exercising and most of my time eating fruits and vegetables, you’d think that my diet would be protein deficient. I was going to do this scientifically, with references and links to the relating articles from which I get my information, but that just sounded boring as hell. I’m not going to patronise you, but  instead allow you to do some simple researching as I have done. I will however link to some important information if I feel it necessary.

So. Protein. The question as to how I get it is without a doubt the most frequent question I’ve been asked since going vegetarian, let alone vegan. I certainly wouldn’t be the only herbivore to have ever been asked this either, which leads to the more appropriate question: why are people so obsessed with protein? Nobody ever asked me how I got it before, because meat, right?

Protein is big business; it’s estimated that the world will be chewing and gulping down £8bn a year of bars, drinks, and other supplements by 2017. It’s a simple connection that the marketers have made, but it is obviously effective:

perhaps more appropriate if named ‘brotein’

Note the ‘advance weight gainer’ bullet point there. Without going in to too much detail, excessive amount of animal protein inflames your muscles and puffs you up. It literally makes you puffy, hence all the Puff Daddy wannabes wearing their low-cut singlets and flat-caps whilst doing some ‘lifting’ in the local gym. People in the adverts like the ones above only look the way they do because they have dehydrated themselves for about two days prior to the shoot.

And then there’s the meat and dairy industry. People have been brainwashed into thinking that the human body needs large quantities of dead animal to live, and the sports industry into thinking that, in order to make gains on muscularity, you need to be sucking down bovine lactate like a baby cow during happy hour. This is all thanks to marketing campaigns such as Got Milk?

Here are two truths: a) plants have all the protein you need, b) there is no such thing as protein deficiency. There is literally no medical term to describe it, because it doesn’t exist. Sure there is marasmus and kwashiorkor, but they both stem from literal starvation. The body in fact cycles about 100g of protein a day by itself from used digestive enzymes. There are 20 amino acids (what strands of protein are made of), 8-11 of which (it’s debated) are essential, meaning we can’t produce it and so need to get them from the food we eat. So how much protein do we need? Well only about 5% of our daily caloric intake needs to be from protein, even for people who exercise regularly.

Moreover, the highly acidic nature of animal protein (because of the amino acids) – in particular from the sulfur-containing amino acid methionine found in meat and dairy products – means that when you do eat meat and dairy you’ll be passing calcium in your urine for the next few hours whilst your body draws upon the alkaline calcium to neutralise that acid. Got milk? Got osteoporosis.

the irony

So back to plants. Plants don’t have any protein right? Wrong. All plants contain all the amino acids (i.e. protein) that you need. Nature proves this to be true: elephants, buffalo, horses, even gorillas are vegan!

If that’s not enough, here’s some more proof. I use the calorie-tracking website Cronometer to log all of my calorie intake and expenditure. If you’re interested in such nerdy (some may say sad) information I highly recommend it as the level of detail it goes into is pretty amazing, and best of all the browser version is free. You can also buy the app for Android or iPhone for about £2, which is well worth it for on-the-go logging.

Here’s what I ate today:

Breakfast (following a 10km run): 15 medjool dates, 2 bananas, 250ml coconut water, 1L water – blended

Snack: 5 small bananas

Lunch: 4 large bananas, 1 mango (it’s under there) topped with some raw cane sugar, just because

OMG so much sugar (I’ll get to that another time). But for now, highlighted in the screenshot below is my food intake for half of today, 100% fruit.

And below is the protein from all of that carbohydrate-rich fuel.

(other health apps are available)

Well whaddayaknow. Pretty good right? All amino acids in check, but not too high, and no meat or dairy in site. This doesn’t even take into account my solid evening meal of potato gnocchi and various vegetables.

Tip: combining a raw leafy green salad with cooked meals aides digestion

So there you have it. Now if anyone else asks me where I get my protein I’ll ask them why they get so much of theirs…

WV

The Wheelin’ Vegan

I’ve been working on this first blog post for a while now, putting off publishing for fear of becoming ‘one  of those vegans’ or simply a ‘vegan’. The term has almost become a pejorative byword for snobs pushing their diets in your face. And at first I thought, yeah: “I don’t want to become one of those people.”So I won’t. Instead I’ve decided to combine three of my passions to make something (hopefully) far more interesting and useful: writing, cycling (plus running) and eating. Well, why shouldn’t I? Sure a lot of people probably won’t care or will get annoyed, and that’s fine, comment is free as they say. But it’s something that I’ve come to feel passionate about and as a journalism student I feel obliged to write about it.

Disclaimer: if you are interested in either A) exercise, or B) food, then keep reading.

I live in Cornwall, England, which never fails to present stunning scenery (and food)

I made the decision to go vegetarian back in June this year, and immediately felt the differences in terms of energy on and off the bike. For the those three months over summer I became more and more aware of what I was eating. I had been careful with what I ate a long time prior to going vegetarian, but this was different. I began trying foods that I had never even thought to try before, mainly at family events like barbecues when I was forced to to actually think about what I was going to cook instead of simply plumping for some burgers and sausages. Of course my family all thought I was mad, especially my dad and brother who I think have been worried about me since I started prancing about in lycra and shaving my legs.

Then I began researching how best to combine a veggie life with the heavy amounts of exercise that I was doing (being a student out of term-time with zero money, cycling several thousand kilometers over summer seemed like the best option). That was when I discovered Durianrider and Freelee the Banana Girl, or more specifically the high-carb, low-fat, Raw Till 4 vegan lifestyle they so animatedly advocate. Some of you may already know them, some of you may hate them and you wouldn’t be the only ones. In terms of polarised opinions on health, the debate surrounding their lifestyle is pretty high up there. Until March of this year their website, 30bananasasaday.com, came with its very own hate site, 30bananasadaysucks.com. Imaginative. About as imaginative as the site’s creator, Sean Dunaway, who got arrested for selling subscribers’ emails to spammers.

Anywho, the lifestyle Freelee and Durianrider promote is high-carb, low-fat, Raw Till 4 vegan. No calorie restriction, no draconian schedules, just pure and simple, natural eating.  The below video sums it up pretty well.

Got the gist? Animals don’t calorie restrict, so why should we? Because it’s fashionable? Sure you can fast and get thin, but you won’t be healthy. Try running/cycling up a hill in a respectable time when you’ve got no energy reserves. It’s impossible, and after about an hour of exercise you’ll bonk (go into glycogen debt). I know because I used to do it. I’m ashamed to say it, but I used to be in the ‘carbs make you fat’ camp. Even when cycling regularly I used to limit my carbohydrate intake because I was afraid of gaining weight. And then I used to wonder why I  ran out of energy after a few hours riding, even when I was eating on the go. The ‘glycogen tanks’, as Durianrider puts it, were empty.

After enlightening myself with some high-carb therapy, I was riding for 5 hours in a day without ever feeling like I was about to topple off my bike. I was also getting leaner, even though I’ve never really had to worry about my weight. However, I never had the courage to go full vegan, partly because I was afraid of what people would say, and partly because of the ‘inconvenience’ of it. Well, after two weeks of taking the plunge, I can confidently report that it is not inconvenient at all. Sure it might make Christmas dinner (or any dinner for that matter) with the family a little extra work, but I’m willing to take that.

Sugar: don’t be afraid of it!

So why did I decide to go vegan? Because I felt that, even after making improvements with my cycling as a vegetarian, it was still holding me back. Meals out would always result in something which contained hellish amounts of cheese, the go-to option for restaurants with no better ideas. In fact, my consumption of dairy in general was what tipped me over the edge. I won’t go into detail about dairy products just now, this post is already far too long, but it will be something that I return to with a vengeance.

So here I am, two weeks gone a vegan and just starting the Raw Till 4 lifestyle. I’ve still got some things to learn – I’ve already made a few noob errors – but I’m excited to be combining these passions and channeling them through this blog. Expect some recipes and a few videos too, just to shake things up (and you never know, YouTube might give me some money for them). As a student, I’m going to be pushing how to do this (admittedly expensive-sounding) diet at first, proving in fact that it isn’t expensive as long as you do it right. That’s if you want to do it of course, if you don’t that’s fine. If, however, you do wish to give it a try then I will feel like I’ve achieved something.

I’m sorry that I have nothing of actual interest or importance to share right now, but this is just one of those awkward, first-date, laying down the rules posts which I presume every fledgling blog has to go through. I’m going to be working on my online presence over the next few weeks, but for now you can find me on Instagram as the_wheelin_vegan, which I pretty much update daily (whether this is as a public service or an addiction, I’m not quite sure yet) where you can see other such delights as the photographic masterpieces seen already.

WV