veginator

After a several year hiatus following having my bike stolen a few years ago, I'm getting back into it and need a decent but not terribly expensive road bike. In addition to using it for errands some to save a bit on gas, I'll be doing some long rides as part of my cardio routine. I had been running exclusively last summer, but I just seem to constantly have nagging injuries--currently a sore Achilles--so I need to vary my training if I'm going to reach a high level of fitness and stay relatively injury-free. Anyway, today at a local bike shop I was looking at a lower-end Giant with aluminum frame. Seemed like a very nice bike, but I'd really rather not pay $625 if I can get something decent for cheaper. Does anyone have any suggestions for good road bikes to look at for under, say, $650? Also, I'm wondering about frame size. I'm 5'7" with about a 29-30" inseam. Thanks for any suggestions! Jeff

Wish I could be in Portland to give you a game, but alas, I'm lacking the time and money right now. Everybody I know around here that I used to play with has stopped playing, so I've been so hard up for a partner that this week I resorted to playing my son (who's great at soccer but sucks at racquet sports) left-handed. Guess I'll have to try a little harder to find new people to play around here. Anyway, if you're ever in Bloomington, Indiana (or anywhere else that I happen to be at the time), I'd love to go at it. Jeff

Sure. Jeff

There aren't any vegan restaurants that I know of. The co-ops (Lovey's and Tidal Creek) have quite a few vegan options in their deli departments, but I guess that doesn't really count. There are a large number of restaurants for that size town, though, so it's not very hard to find vegan fare if you go ethnic and avoid the seafood places. I didn't find the Indian place (India Mahal) all that great, but it's okay. I don't go to Wilmington very much any more so I'm sure there are better sources of information about the restaurants than me. There are a fair number of bike paths, especially on or near Wrightsville Beach. If you like hills, of course, you're out of luck because the coastal plain is flat as a pancake. But as far as finding places to ride where you're not stuck in the middle of heavy car traffic (a big consideration to me considering how idiotic a lot of drivers are), it's pretty good. Better than Bloomington where I live, which has an undeserved reputation as a bike-friendly place as a result of the movie Breaking Away. I went a number of times to a gym that seemed pretty decent with a friend who liked it a lot when I lived there, but I don't remember the name of it and I'm not even sure if it's still there. My mom goes to a place called O2 that she likes, but the fact that a 69-year-old woman likes it may not be all that relevant to whether you would. Sorry I can't be more help on that one.

... Thanks! I'm vegan and have celiac disease, or at least gluten intolerance of some sort--the tests for celiac disease are kind of expensive so I haven't bothered. There are quite a few grains that are problematic for me and most celiacs--barley (so beer is out), wheat, oats, rye, spelt...but also quite a few that are fine, so as long as you're at home, it's pretty easy. A nice cookbook I recently picked up is The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O'Brien. It's also fairly easy to find gluten-free recipes on the Internet, and many cuisines are mostly gluten-free anyway. It's very important to watch out for processed foods, many of which have hidden gluten-containing ingredients. Most forms of caramel coloring, for example. Be aware of what the ingredients to watch out for and read all labels if you're going to eat processed foods. Eating out can be a real pain in the ass. Options: Mexican is generally okay, Indian usually works although vegan options can be limited in Indian restaurants, Thai is great, but if you're stuck at a Chinese restaurant, be prepared to douse your steamed, unspiced tofu and vegetables with chili sauce so it isn't totally boring! (You can get wheat-free soy sauce at many stores, but it's rare in Chinese restaurants.) I recently found out that injera (the yummy bread served at Ethiopean restaurants) is usually gluten-free. Not always, though, as my stomach has informed me on some occasions. I used to have enormous problems with soy, and gave it up for a long time, but recently haven't had many problems on the occasions I've eaten tofu and the like. I don't eat it nearly as much as I used to, though. Jeff

... Thanks! I'm vegan and have celiac disease, or at least gluten intolerance of some sort--the tests for celiac disease are kind of expensive so I haven't bothered. There are quite a few grains that are problematic for me and most celiacs--barley (so beer is out), wheat, oats, rye, spelt...but also quite a few that are fine, so as long as you're at home, it's pretty easy. A nice cookbook I recently picked up is The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O'Brien. It's also fairly easy to find gluten-free recipes on the Internet, and many cuisines are mostly gluten-free anyway. It's very important to watch out for processed foods, many of which have hidden gluten-containing ingredients. Most forms of caramel coloring, for example. Be aware of what the ingredients to watch out for and read all labels if you're going to eat processed foods. Eating out can be a real pain in the ass. Options: Mexican is generally okay, Indian usually works although vegan options can be limited in Indian restaurants, Thai is great, but if you're stuck at a Chinese restaurant, be prepared to douse your steamed, unspiced tofu and vegetables with chili sauce so it isn't totally boring! (You can get wheat-free soy sauce at many stores, but it's rare in Chinese restaurants.) I recently found out that injera (the yummy bread served at Ethiopean restaurants) is usually gluten-free. Not always, though, as my stomach has informed me on some occasions. I used to have enormous problems with soy, and gave it up for a long time, but recently haven't had many problems on the occasions I've eaten tofu and the like. I don't eat it nearly as much as I used to, though. Jeff

Well, 105 pounds (now 120 with 2 reps) is actually pretty good, then, considering how recently you started out. I did 115 the other day (6 reps) on the incline press machine, so I guess you're close to where I am on chest stuff. I know what you mean; the football team at the university here sometimes works out in the rec. center's weight room instead of their own private one, and it's easy to get discouraged watching how much weight they can throw around. But we should probably stick to comparing ourselves to people with comparable amounts of weightlifting experience, and then we'll be okay! Good luck with the new program. Jeff

Welcome!

I'm certainly no seasoned weightlifter--I've lifted off and on for years but never stuck with it for more than a few months at a time. BUT, based on everything I've read including the good advice of experienced bodybuilders here, a couple of things jumped out at me when I saw your program. First, as others have pointed out, it appears you're doing way too many exercises involving the same muscle groups within a short period of time. My understanding is that if you do a workout where you push yourself enough to have a shot at building strength (which you can do without doing three sets of half a dozen exercises that all work the same muscles), you need to give your muscles at least two days to recover before you work the same ones again. Also, for any exercises where you're able to do more than a dozen reps at a given weight, it's time to up the weight. You're able to do I think it was 30 reps of biceps dumbbell curls with 15 pounds, so 15 pounds is too light to be helping you build strength at this point and you need to try 20 or perhaps 25 (I think you said you were doing 20 on some sets). My gym has intermediate dumbell weights such as 22.5, so maybe that would be the right weight for now? And it looks like you're weakest on the chest exercises judging from the weights you've posted--I can't imagine too many people would be able to handle almost as much weight on biceps curls as on presses, so I wonder if maybe you're fatigued by the time you get to the chest stuff? Maybe the best approach for working on this area would be to 1) make sure you're well-rested (at least a couple of days) from the last time you did anything that worked your chest, 2) do your usual quick cardio warmup, and then do, say, a bench press set with 35 instead of the 25 you usually start with. Try to get as many more than the 6 reps you have been doing with 35 as you can. Keep upping the reps with each chest workout, and then when you can do 12 or more with 35 on the first set, it will be time to move on to 40. Lean and Green's advice to switch up which exercises you're doing for each body area makes a lot of sense to me so that you're not always working the muscles exactly the same way, but at the same time you'd want to be consistent enough with which ones you do to be able to track your progress. At least that's what I think. Good luck! Jeff

What kind of shoes are you looking for? The materials usually used depend a lot on the type of shoe. PayLess has a variety of shoes that are completely synthetic. Their shoes clearly identify on the tag in the tongue whether they contain leather or are made of "all man-made materials" (actually probably made by young Chinese female sweatshop laborers making 20 cents an hour). However, they're inexpensive shoes and although they're a great buy for those on a budget, you do to some extent get what you pay for. I wouldn't recommend, for instance, a pair of their running shoes to someone training for a marathon. Still, you can't beat $20 for a pair of shoes to just wear around, especially if you don't subject them to heavy use. My experience has been that the dress shoes I got from them have lasted for years precisely because I hardly ever dress up, but a pair of cross-trainers from them will last me 2-3 months if I wear them a lot and play a lot of sports in them. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the uppers of almost all running shoes these days vegan since nylon mesh is lighter and more breathable than leather? As Hayley points out, though, that may not be the case with the glue, so I guess it's important to look into that. Jeff

I had Windows desktops and laptops for years, and started dual-booting Windows and Linux around 6 years ago (Red Hat was the first of many distros I tried out). What a breath of fresh air! There were still a few things I wanted to do but couldn't in Linux--for example, I play chess and the strongest computer programs only run on Windows unless you want to fool around with WINE--so I usually kept a copy of XP on my machines. But on a day-to-day basis I became a Linux user, mostly Ubuntu the last couple of years. Linux has a bit of a learning curve, but it's well worth it to do away with the viruses, crashes, and generally unfriendly user experience that Windows entails. Currently I have an iBook G4 laptop, and aside from not having enough memory for some applications to run as fast as I'd like, I love it. OSX is a great operating system, with a Unix-ish core like Linux and the best graphical user interface I've seen--and, like Linux, rock-solid stability and essentially zero chance of viruses. I have no desire whatsoever to ever use Windows again, although I have to at one of my workplaces (the other workplace is home! ). I'd probably still be using Ubuntu most of the time, as it's on my Mac along with OSX, but unfortunately I've never been able to get my wireless card to work with Ubuntu. After several days of trying about everything to get it to work a few months ago, I gave up. Not worth it to waste time trying to get Airport to work with Linux when I'm pretty happy with OSX. Unfortunately, the downside of Linux is that there are still some things (e.g., the brand of wireless cards they put in Macs) that don't "just work" right out of the box or just don't at all, but those are fewer as time goes by. I'm sure I'll come back to Linux eventually, as the idea of a fully open-source system and the infinite control the Linux OS gives users is very appealing. Jeff

Thanks! Where can I find more info. on some of these moves? I'm not sure what a Superman or a Bicycle Maneuver are, though I suppose I can make an educated guess about the latter. I find that lower back machines help a lot, too. Jeff

I actually was born and grew up there, and manage to visit every year or two (mom and brother still live there), so there's a lot I could tell you. Just let me know what you want to know. It has its good and bad points like any other place--and some things that have both good and bad aspects, such as its roughly doubling in population the past 20 years. But it's definitely worth considering if you like the beach and water sports, which I miss very much living here in Indiana. Fort Fisher beach is a relatively undiscovered treasure as far as that goes, several miles of unspoiled, pristine, undeveloped (it's a state park) beach, dunes and marsh. We love to take our dogs there when we visit--dogs aren't allowed any more, not even on leash, on the other beaches. Not (usually) freezing your ass off in the winter like I do here is kind of nice, too. Little-known fun facts about the area: it's the northernmost place in the U.S. where alligators live in the wild, the only place in the world where Venus Flytraps grow, and Wilmington is where Michael Jordan grew up. Lots of insanely rich people have moved there the past 20 years or so, so unless you have a lot of money or can somehow find a cheap rental, living on the beach is pretty much out of the question. To give you an idea of what real estate prices are like, my mom and stepfather built a place on Wrightsville Beach for around $200k back in the 80s. They sold it around 2000 for $800k, and it wasn't even that huge a place, maybe a little over 2000 square feet. The person who bought it also bought their next-door neighbor's place (it was a duplex) for around the same price, then promptly tore the whole thing down and built a mansion worth around $6 million. Just out of curiosity, I looked through the real estate section last time I was down there, and had trouble finding anything under $1 million that was on or near a beach. But I think housing costs are relatively normal in the rest of New Hanover County, and except during rush hour there's no place that's more than about 15-20 minutes from the water. And restaurant selection is pretty good, there are at least two coop-type grocery stores in town, and there's a fair amount to do for a city that size. And, despite the influx of "snowbirds," there's still plenty of that Southern friendliness and charm about the place. I generally like living here in Bloomington, but one thing I can't stand about the Midwest is that people here aren't nearly as friendly as they are down South. You say "hi" to someone on the street and they look at you like you're from Mars. I have to get back to work here, but as I said, I'm happy to share more information about my hometown. As you can tell, I like to talk about it! Whether it's a good place for you depends on what you're looking for, though, like anywhere else. Jeff

Like others have said, vegans are human and humans are, well, human. Vegans are individuals with a wide variety of traits, quirks, and interests, and yes, some of us are (probably most of us sometimes are ) assholes. That said, vegans aren't "just like everyone else." We're smart and open-minded enough to see through the b.s. that says eating meat and dairy products is "healthy" and whitewashes the ethical issues involved. We're informed at least about the ethical and health implications of humans' diets, which is something that can't be said about the vast majority of people. And those of us at least who are sincere about our veganism (which is the majority of us) rather than doing it to feel like we're superior to others or whatever care a lot more about animals than most people and don't think of them as "things" just because they're not people. That at least makes it more likely that we'll care about other stuff that matters (i.e., how humans treat other humans, both individually and on a societal level) than most people.

I've lived in that Bloomington, too.

I was looking around the other day for good advice on building lean body mass, and a very large percentage of sites I encountered recommended consuming lots and lots of animal protein. Intuitively I knew this was b.s.--aren't most large (and therefore big-muscled) land mammals vegan? So I Googled vegan body-building and here I am. I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years now, and a vegan for (I think) about 12. I was always pretty physically active growing up and as a young adult; played lots of tennis and did some weight lifting (never for long enough to build much muscle), among other things. As I approached middle age, though I went through periods where I ran or played sports a lot, more often than not I spent a lot of time sitting on my butt. As a result, I managed to defy the conventional wisdom among vegans that eating this way helps keep people thin. I was a svelte 140 lb. and probably < 10% body fat when I first became vegetarian at age 25. Twenty years later, I topped out at well over 190 lb., roughly 35 pounds overweight for my height (I'm 5'7"), and most of the extra weight was, I'm afraid, not muscle. Enough was enough, I decided, so last summer I ran a lot, working up to about 30-40 miles a week by September. Body weight was down to 175, and I ran a 5k in a respectable though not speedy 28:56. Over the winter, inactivity due to a nagging injury resulted in my putting about 15 pounds back on. With renewed determination, I started running again in the spring...and developed Achilles tendinitis! Since then I've been going to the gym, mostly doing the elliptical machines but dabbling in some lifting--mainly machines--as well. Managed to get down to 185, and it occurred to me that if I was going to get the body I wanted, I needed to get more serious about the weight training, especially if the heel was going to keep preventing me from running much. One hitch: due to a slipped disc (spondylolisthesis is the medical term) acquired a few years back from who-knows-what of the many physical activities that could have done the trick, I have to be pretty careful. As I realized the other day when I gave myself a renewed bout of back pain with a free weight workout, a lot of the main exercises folks do with free weights are probably not a good idea for me. Still, I'm determined to find a way around these issues; my ultimate goal is to get in the best shape I've been in since my 20s, when I thought playing "only" 3 sets of tennis in 90 degree heat was for weenies, add muscle and lose fat and get down to a respectable 160 or so. Anyway, it's great to find this site and be among like-minded people who care about both eating ethically and healthily and being fit. So, hello fellow vegetarians and vegans!