nomeatathlete

I'm vegan because I don't feel right about eating animals, especially with the way they're treated. I've noticed that I feel great eating this way, but that's not the main reason I do it.

No, I'm really not trying to convert people. I don't like telling people what they should do. I'd rather be an example that you can be healthy with a diet like this, and if that or anything else I write helps people to make it happen, that's great.

I'm a big fan of extremely gradual change. When I went vegetarian, I first went a year without beef or pork, just chicken and fish for meat. Then phased the other two out over a period of 2-3 months.

Vegan was the same. After I went vegetarian, I tried a month-long vegan challenge, but didn't like it because I wasn't ready. After that I gradually lessened the amount of cheese I ate until one day I just decided I was done with it.

I guess you might call the all-or-nothing challenge a setback, since I ended up not sticking with it. But I like things like that that immerse you in what you are thinking about doing. Usually when I do something extreme and then slide back, I only slide back halfway, so I make progress that way and then gradually approach it again.

I hated running as a kid, and didn't really pay attention to fitness at all. In college I started lifting weights with my roommates. We were idiots and one day one of us decided he was going to run a marathon, so the others said we would too. Most painful day of my life, way worse than the 100!

I finally stopped getting injured and starting improving when I did two things:

1. Slow down. 1-2 minutes slower per mile than I could complete whatever run I was doing in.

2. Take 180 steps per minute (3/second). It makes the rest of your form fall into place.

Once I had those down, I could put in lots more miles, mostly easy but with hard workouts about 2 days per week. But on the easy days, go really, really slow. Most people go way too fast when they think they're going easy and recovering.

It's hard for me to say. I've noticed that I don't get injured nearly as much nowadays, even running much longer distances. But my workouts aren't as hard now, much slower ... so it's hard to say.

Going vegetarian and then vegan got me to eat so many more plants, when I used to just ignore vegetables. I think that (adding fruits and vegetables), more than getting rid of the meat, is what has made the difference in my fitness and running.

I think some people really do have sensitivities to it (and many obviously have real allergies to it), and of course they should avoid it.

But I don't think gluten affects everyone, and that there's not much reason to avoid it. Wheat isn't a super-high nutrients-per-calorie food, so I limit it for that reason and because I think eating the same food (any food) for three meals a day is weird.

Brendan Brazier, the vegan triathlete and author of Thrive, has suggested doing a 10-day gluten-free trial to gauge how it affects you, both when you remove it and when you bring it back. I like this idea.