Pythagorean


jump down to: Exercise and The Vegan Diet"

LITTLE SOMETHING:

_______ Contrary to popular belief the term vegetarian is not derived from the word 'vegetable', but comes from the Latin Vegetus meaning whole, sound, fresh, or lively.

_______ English vegetarians who coined the term intended it to convey what they regarded as wholesome philosophical and moral attitudes in their way of living, rather than simply to promote vegetables in the diet.


_______ The ancient religions of India, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, condemned the taking of animal life to obtain food because of belief in transmigration of the soul, or rebirth of the soul in animal bodies. In Janism, it was believed that avoiding flesh foods promoted non-violence. In modern times, this philosophy was used effectively by Mohandas Gandhi in the struggle for independence from Britian.
_______ In ancient Greece, Pythagoras founded a vegetarian movement in reaction to the gross excess of diet in the prospering nation. *Pythagoras was more famous in antiquity for having taught a certain way of life. Central to his teachings was his belief in reincarnation, which presupposes the ability of the soul to survive death of the body, and hence some sort of belief in its immortality. Because the soul may be reincarnated in the body of an animal, Pythagoras opposed the taking of life, the eating of animal flesh, or even the association with those businesses it was to kill or dress animals*. The Roman poets Horace, Ovid, and Virgil also promoted moderation in diet. At the beginning of the Christian era, Plutarch, the Greek essayist and biographer, gave orations against gluttony and flesh-eating.
_______ The modern vegetarian movement in England began in the 18th century with John Wesley, co-founder of Methodism, who believed in the health aspects of vegetarianism. Famous vegetarians of the English literary scene included Percy Bysshe Shelly, and, later, George Bernard Shaw. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was also a practicing vegetarian and a pacifist during the last years of his life.
_______ In America, the best-known vegetarian of the 18th century was Benjamin Franklin, a proponent of simplicity in living. In the 19th century, Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister, became famous for promoting a vegetarian diet emphasizing use of unrefined whole wheat flour, or "Graham" flour.**

By Eleanor R. Williams, Colliers' Encyclopedia 1995 Vol. 23 pg. 59-59
*" "*By John Robbinson, Colliers' Encyclopedia 1995 Vol. 19 pg. 547


Exercise and The Vegan Diet
-by Scott J. Dalgleish


"I have written this article to help those who are pure beginners, to the competitive sports people - with the mild assumption that they have already been introduced to healthy eating habits - using my accumulated knowledge derived from my research and personal experience."

_______ I am continually surprised at the number of unfit vegetarian bodies I see. Either these people are eating a very high in fat vegan diet, somehow, and/or they just don't exercise enough. I think the latter is usually the more obvious. That's not to say everyone, but a lot. Many people seem to forget all about the need for exercise when the notion of being vegetarian seems to solve all health problems. By not exercising you could set yourself up for a whole slough of problems down the road not to mention all that your missing such as less stress; increased: energy, stamina, physical strength, mental capability, bone strength, fat metabolism, ability to store and conserve glycogen, number and density of capillaries, ability to remove lactic acid from muscle tissue; etc. That is, to name a few obvious benifits to exercise alone. You combine a good vegan diet with exercise and the result will be far greater than either on its own.

Excess Stored Fat

_______ Any foods eaten can be converted into excess stored energy (fat), even if you're vegetarian. It's the amount of calories expended in one day compared to how much is taken in that determines fat storage for the most part. Not necessarily the amount of fat eaten. I have met many a person who were vegan for the better part of two decades and they still have excess fat.
_______ The truth is, you don't need to worry so much about eating things such as nuts and other foods that contain oil. One of my vegetarian friends is too concerned about fat and won't even eat nuts due to their oil content. That's nuts! I'd be more worried about the additional chemical content of non-orgainc nuts. Besides, the key is moderation, but in all honesty - you'd have to be eating a lot of nutty or oily food to over do it.
_______ Unlike most non-vegetarian people assume, I have not been vegan all my life. Only since around 1990. Previous to that I ate the typical high in fat "Canadian" diet in large amounts, but my body fat content was the same as today (notice I didn't say 'weight'). How? Exercise. I've been bicycle racing and training since fourteen and was very active beforehand too. I have yet to see an 'overweight' racer no matter how often they visit "McD's", but I saw a lot of my friends around me start to round out over the years while I stayed the same. If it wasn't for my high level of exercise combating my high fat and calorie intake I'd be like them. Not to mention the fact that it's harder for cholesterol to settle and stick when there's a rush of blood going through my body at least a few times a week.
_______ So how many of you vegetarians, or anyone else, out there are still having trouble with your weight and or fitness? I should say, with the position of your weight. You, like me, probably find no hardship in finding information about what are good eating habits. There is almost always at least one vegetarian periodical in any given book store now a days and each endorses that you should have a good healthy balance of food in your meals and exercise, but I find there are never any real specifics about physical activity, especially the high-caliber kind, in combination with a vegan diet. This ailed me for some time because, I would say 99% of nutrition/sports-nutrition books that I've read contain contradictory information within themselves. Purely written to sell, not educate. Plus the fact that you can't run, and I mean run, on the typically tooted low-calorie vegan diet without additional fiber and carbohydrates.

So How Do I Get Started?

_______ One need not be afraid of exercise. Once you get out there and start, you'll never want to stop. Although I live for high endurance sports, it's not everyone's' cup of tea. The best exercise is the one you will do. Make it fun.
_______ You can do any kind of cardiovascular (breathing hard) exercise and it's as easy as going for a walk. Everyone knows that, but what does walking actually do for you compared to other kinds of exercise? It's been known for many years that if you do low effort cardiovascular exercise to slowly change your weight distribution and metabolism thus becoming fit, that it will stay that way longer than pushing yourself harder for a shorter period of time. Wrong! Read on.

Metabolism

(process in which food is built up into protoplasm then broken down into smaller substances or waste matter, with the release of energy for all vital functions)

_______ If you haven't already conformed to a healthy vegan way of life, without exercise the excess pounds - if you have any - come off very slowly. Unless, you do something such as put yourself on a reduced-calorie-intake diet where the body is forced to take energy from stored places to meet your body's daily requirements. And who better than Oprah Winfrey to demonstrate how that doesn't work. When reducing your food or calorie intake your metabolism thus "rises", as they say, storing more energy when your brain senses the lack of food - or the seemingly lack of it compared to the much higher intake previous to the diet. The thing with these diets is that you'll have to stay on them for as long as you want to look that way or you'll be right back where you started - plus another twenty pounds - when going back to your previous way of eating. The food storing process has gone up, remember. That's how Jenny Craig keeps 'em coming back. Oh, Oprah hasn't gone veggie, but she's now taken to exercise. Running. She's doing better, but you can imagine if Oprah was vegan or at least balancing her intake with her calorie expenditure, she'd be where she wants to be within months instead of years/decades.
_______ For example, if someone is unfit and 'overweight' and they start (with no diet change) walking for exercise on a regular basis: first it will be easy for them to get their heart rate up to speed for a cardiovascular workout without going very fast at all; second, slowly over time they'll burn a certain amount of fat as calories off; third, they'll then reach a point where their body is "used to" the amount of effort so they'll walk faster to maintain the same level of effort. You can only walk so fast, then the only way to continue progressing from then on is through walking longer and further.
_______ This is not to say that walking is useless. It's positively good and a lot better than nothing. Just that you'll have to walk further and further to keep your metabolism and fitness level up. Instead of walking across the country, it would be a lot easier to up your effort and shorten the distance. Even better, is to use an exercise that utilizes more muscle. Then, to top it off, you can change eating habits to better ones. The next paragraphs explain further about fitness.

Fitness Level

_______ On this simple chart you can see that ones' effort starts high as the their fitness level is low then it levels off continuing up gradually. This is exactly why people think that when I go for a regular 120 km training (bicycle) ride through the hills and back that it must be hard, but for me it's normal. I only carry a small amount of food and bottles of water; people at a lower fitness level could never make it on a small amount of food and water.

This all depends on how: Hard?; Long?; Often? + Intensity.

Add "Too" to any of these then you've achieved "overdoing" it.

Heart Rate

(100% = max. = max. rate @ highest effort)

Set level

_______ Is the level of fitness that you would reach easily with minimum effort or go back to when stopping regular exercise. You can raise your set level over time. For a very active person with a high set level who stopped exercising completely, it could take years for it to drop back to their original set level.

Average Person

_______ Is broad range of people who make a moderate effort in their regular cardio. exercise.

High Effort

_______ Is typically a person in competitive amateur or professional cardio. sport. The difference between these people and the average person, in fitness level terms, doesn't seem like much, but reaching and maintaining a high level of fitness takes many more times the effort, ability, and diligence. A high level of fitness requires full time attention. Two weeks off easily means two months of training to get back to where you were before. That's no exaggeration

Raising Fitness

_______ To start, do at least two fun exercises to keep your muscle groups varied a little (at least 1 aerobic). That's cross training. It helps balance your strength, reduces injury potential, prevents over training or "staleness", and helps in maintaining your motivation.
_______ About 3 times a week do something that raises your heart rate to 65% - 80% for at least 15 minutes. Once a week, at first, do Win Sprints. A Win Sprint consists of doing fast bursts then slow-back-down and repeating, if so desired, in the middle of your normal routine. If jogging, for example: you could decide in the middle of your jog to run four telephone poles as fast as you can, 80% - 100% effort, then continue jogging. You could opt to do less distance on that day because of the extra effort. Then in the future you can increase the number of sprints on Win Sprint day. Then you can increase Win Sprint days to 2 or 3 days a week if your exercising 5 or 6 days for example. These sprints will raise your level of fitness.
_______ Don't forget the basic routine: stretch, warm up, exercise, cool down, stretch.
_______ The best exercises are the ones that use more of the larger muscle groups for extended periods at an aerobic level (can still talk whole exercising) because more energy is burned. The more muscles you use at the same time also decreases the minimum duration required to get a good workout. As cross-country skiing would only require maybe 12 minutes at a minimum effort to get the fat cells working compared to walking at about 40 minutes. So with this information you can see that becoming fit only takes about 10-15 minutes per day a few days for each week. Keep in mind though that (generally) 80% of how your body looks has to do with what you eat; 20% on how (or if) you exercise .
_______ Can't decide on an exercise? An easy way is: if you want to look like a runner, do as the runner does. Run. Join a running club.
_______ Note: Don't use a scale to monitor fat reduction, the easiest way is to look in the mirror because muscle weighs more that twice as much as fat. That's why I prefer the phrase "weight placement" to "weight loss". Some (stupid) people have been known to stop exercising because they started to gain weight again, but failed to notice they actually had become thinner while growing muscle. How do you know if you're improving your fitness? Performance. If it's good or getting better, there you go!

Weight Training
(A series of exercises utilizing weights to increase strength.)

_______ Want to increase power, weight lift. Wanna lose fat faster, weight lift; a bigger motor burns more gas. Want to change your body shape, weight lift. Want to increase performance, weight lift. Weight lifting can help in so many ways. I use it to improve my strength, overall fitness, back problems, knee support, and so many other areas.
_______ Contrary to popular belief by many woman (and some men), you will not balloon up in big horse-size muscles by weight training. The ones who do usually take steroids and/or are in the gym hours a day. Top male bodybuilders spend up to eight hours in the gym a day in some instances. You'll never achieve that look without working out the same way they do. A more realistic image of a someone who weight trains would be of a person with a toned well shaped body. Every performance athlete weight trains and you can too.
_______ Most people know how building and firming muscle affects shape by example of many famous male athletes, but most women don't know that it also pertains to them. When a guy wants bigger arms or chest, he works out on those areas. No guy with large muscles doesn't do some form of lifting be it in the gym or at work. Most commonly seen shape "problems" can be improved this way. Including broader shoulders, flatter stomach, larger pectoral/breast size, etc.
_______ A pragmatic goal would fully depend on individual needs. Usually if your sport is a summer deal, winter off-season weight training is your thing. If you're exercising all year around then light weight training once or twice a week at the most is recommended as to avoid any muscle or joint strain. It's always best to start using light weights and gradually work your way up to heavier ones because change is the biggest cause of injury.
_______ For me, ideally, I like to weight train 2 hours a day 6 days a week (three on, one off, three on). Endurance athletes will do light weight and high repetitions and for bigger muscles the opposite is done.

_______ I cannot stress enough that "change" is the biggest cause of injury. Going back and forth from badminton to cycling in Jr. High gave me a knee problem. It was quite painful at times and my knee support would give out without warning. I've also 'pulled' some muscles (the most common problem pertaining to exercise: muscle strain). I have since fixed my knee through strengthening the muscles around it. Keep transitions smooth, not sudden, between different exercises/sports. Ease into it. My friend's girlfriend has the same knee problem now, and her doctor of course suggests $$$urgery. That's not an option in my book.
_______ What about bulk training? Well, when it comes to bulk training for vegetarians there just isn't a lot of information out there in one source, so I've compiled some material for you in another article titled "Muscle Building and the Vegan Diet" [Coming Soon!].

Advanced Level Fitness Training

_______ On chart one, after the "Average Person" is the small space for the highly conditioned athlete. Top athletes are so conditioned that it's easy to drop back down and it's not much further till they go over the top to ill health. That's why it's such an art form to juggle diet, fitness level, conditioning, and mental stamina. Not to mention fundage.
_______ Switching to a vegan diet, over a period of a year increased my performance a lot. I experienced instant stamina betterment by just leaving the beef out of my pasta sauce in one pre-training race meal and I haven't looked back since. But don't take my word for it.
_______ I shudder to think what Dave Scott, of Davis California, would have been like as a full-time cyclist. I read his 1986 book that he wrote when he had won 5 Iron Man Triathlons until that point and he advocated dropping red meat, simple sugars, and excess fats. He consumed a little meat (turkey, at Thanks Giving and X-mas to please the family) and still had some dairy in his diet at that time.
_______ There are so many details on advanced training in print on endurance sport that I recommend starting with Dave's book, hopefully he's published a more up-dated one now, but it's definitely a starting point whether your a triathlete or anyone. There's lots of basic fundamentals on food and fitness. From then on you'll have to use your common sense when to believe something or not. Only your accumulated knowledge and experience can help you with that. I will add, though, that I have found that so many of the top meat eating athletes are put on a strict vegetarian diet for the weeks prior to competition. I wonder why...?

...and The Vegan Diet

_______ If your already vegan; you're already ahead.
_______ Dr. J. Ioteyko (Academie de Medicine of Paris) "...compared the endurance of vegetarians and meat-eaters from all walks of life in a variety of tests. The vegetarians averaged two to three times more stamina than the meat-eaters. Even more remarkably, they took only one-fifth of the time to recover from exhaustion compared to their meat-eating rivals.
_______ In 1968, a Danish team of researchers tested a group of men on a variety of diets, using a stationary bicycle to measure their strength and endurance. The men were fed a mixed diet of meat and vegetables for a period of time, then tested on the bicycle. The average time they could pedal before muscle failure was 114 minutes. These same men at a later date were fed a diet high in meat, milk, and eggs for a similar period and then re-tested on the bicycles. On the high meat diet, their pedaling time before muscle failure dropped dramatically - to an average of only 57 minutes. Later, these same men were switched to a strictly vegetarian diet, composed of grains, vegetables and fruits, and then tested on the bicycles. The lack of animal products didn't seem to hurt their performance - they peddled an average of 167 minutes.
_______ Doctors in Belgium systematically compared the number of times vegetarians and meat-eaters could squeeze a grip-meter. The vegetarians won handily with an average of 69, wilst the meat-eaters averaged only 38...here, too, the vegetarians bounced back from fatigue far more rapidly than did the meat-eaters."

"So, sure you can be thin and healthy on a vegan diet, but exercise will only add to an already bountiful lifestyle. Plus you can kick butt on those who aren't, in a sportsman/woman-ly manner of course. There is no set formula to all this. You have to find what works for you and don't believe me, do your own research, but be careful of all the B.S. out there." *

References

Barbra Rosen, "Beef?", Muscle & Fitness, p. ????, Oct. 1992, p. 95-96, p.???-???
John Robbins, "Diet For New America", Stillpoint, p. 157,158
Ellington Darden, Ph.D., "The Nautilus Nutrition Book", Contemporary Books, inc., 1981
Covert Bailey, "Fit or Fat For the 90's", PBS Video, 1991
Dave Scott, "Dave Scott's Triathlon Training", Simon and Shuster, inc., 1986, P. 211, 226-227

Recommended reading:

The above.


More on the subject:

Pro Athletes Are Turning Vegetarian

Dr. Spock says...


Copyright (C) 1998-2000+ S. J. Dalgleish
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