damdaman

No, you don't need to eat grains to survive, but brown rice is an awesome food for energy and nutrition and, as far as I'm concerned, should be a staple of all vegan diets, especially vegan athletes. I'm not surprised that you saw a drop off in energy after cutting brown rice out of your diet. There are many ways to spice up brown rice so it's not so bland. Cook with vegetable broth instead of water. Add salsa, guacamole, or hummus to your rice. Or hot sauce, or many other things, or some combination of the above. Adding 1 part millet per two parts rice when cooking makes it taste better, in my opinion, and more nutritious to boot. For REALLY flavorful rice, try this: 2 cups brown rice 1 cup millet Lightly sautee uncooked grains in earth balance for about 3 minutes, then add 3 cups vegetable broth, 3 cups water, and a little olive oil and salt. Bring to a boil, cover, and then simmer until all the water is absorbed. Slap a big serving on your plate, then cover it with half salsa and half guacamole. Delicious, nutritious, and energy-packed.

A better question is why would fish NOT feel pain? Pain is an essential survival mechanism for all mobile creatures that have a nervous system and a brain. Pain serves as an incentive for the animal to flee or fight, without it, the animal does not know that it is in danger. Plants, for example, have no need to feel pain, because they can't fight or flee from an attacker. However, if you have a mobile creature that has a nervous system and brain, and we know that evolution has provided this basic mechanism to let a creature know that it is in danger, and for all intents and purposes we can see that an animal reacts when something painful is done to it, it seems to me that the burden is on those who claim that the animal does NOT feel pain to prove that they don't, not the other way around.

I ate there once. The food was average and way overpriced. The atmosphere was horrible.

I've recently figured out that quality and length of rest, combined with not drinking caffeine and eating less processed/more whole foods makes all the difference. For quality of rest, I mean uninterrupted sleep, that doesn't come after having a couple beers or anything like that. Length of rest I find that at least 9 hours is required by my body to feel recovered from the previous day. Not drinking coffee in the mornings I've also discovered is key for me. If you regularly drink coffee, you will feel LESS energy for a little while as your body adjusts, but ultimately, coffee does not give you "real" energy and if you require it to feel energized, then something is wrong. Finally, more whole foods, less processed foods, speaks for itself.

I agree about the hemp overload. It does seem quite high in fat too, for instance the pizza bases call for a 1/4 cup of oil! That's 450-500 calories from that one ingredient alone. And then a tomato-based sauce for part of the topping adds another 3 tablespoons of hemp oil. Weirdly, Dr Fuhrman gives the book an excellent review, despite the fact that elsewhere he recommends no more than one teaspoon of oil per day. A couple things to bear in mind is that Brendan Brazier is a professional triathlete, and the thrive diet was originally developed as a diet for serious athletes, especially endurance athletes. This type of training calls for a LOT of calories. Personally I can't gain at all unless I'm eating tons of fat. My impression is that he has adapted the diet to also market it as a "lose weight" diet, which it can be, but he subscribes to the theory that going ultra-low-fat is not necessarily a good idea if you want to lose weight, which I also agree with. You need to eat at least moderate amounts of the *right* fat rather than just cutting to virtually no fat at all, to lose weight in a healthy manner. Eating fat helps you burn fat, and your body needs essential fatty acids to be healthy. You can't starve your body of an essential macronutrient like fat and expect to remain healthy, nor will simply calorie-counting help you lose weight while remaining healthy (which he does an excellent job of explaining why, re: net-gain foods).

Hmm, this might explain what Dumars has in mind. It's an interesting take on the trade. I didn't know AI and Lebron had the same agent. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AmeA92z46pxuQkPARuvdy1y8vLYF?slug=aw-dumarslebron110308&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

This is a horrible deal for the Pistons, I can't imagine what Joe Dumars could possibly be thinking with this. AI is a gifted athlete and scorer but he is not a franchise player. He can't run a team like Billups, he can't be a leader. In fact, his attitude and selfishness with the ball tends to make him the exact opposite of a leader. He can score a lot but he needs a lot of shots to get those points. Billups is an efficient leader who distributes the ball, knows when to take the shot, and can nail the 3. AI is a washed up ball hog on the downside of his career. Not to mention you also lose McDyess in this deal, who is a solid low-post scorer and rebounder.

Thanks Robert, great point. There's no need for discussion to be quashed on a discussion board. If people don't like a discussion, they can ignore it. Personally I love politics and politics is my full-time job, but I don't comment on many political threads, simply because the stress level isn't worth the energy, but other people clearly enjoy posting on them, and I'm glad that people are engaged in this election.

Nuts and seeds. I make my own trail mix with almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, dates, apricots, raisins, and ginger and snack on it whenever I'm hungry. Sometimes I eat a lot of it as a small meal. If you want more calcium, add sesame seeds to your diet and eat more leafy greens and broccoli. But, eating too much protein will do more to weaken your bones than not eating enough calcium. Too much protein is a huge contributor to acidosis, which requires your body to pull calcium from your bones to keep your blood neutral. If he/she (OP) is eating Raw, Organic, nothing processed, whole foods... I think it would be virtually impossible for her to get TOO MUCH protein, don't you? No, I don't. Harder, yes, but not virtually impossible. Although it is true that the protein that they're eating would be a lot less acid-forming and thus less harmful, I think that lack of dietary calcium is usually the least likely reason why people develop bone problems.

Nuts and seeds. I make my own trail mix with almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, dates, apricots, raisins, and ginger and snack on it whenever I'm hungry. Sometimes I eat a lot of it as a small meal. If you want more calcium, add sesame seeds to your diet and eat more leafy greens and broccoli. But, eating too much protein will do more to weaken your bones than not eating enough calcium. Too much protein is a huge contributor to acidosis, which requires your body to pull calcium from your bones to keep your blood neutral.

Are you sure that you're cooking it long enough? Under cooked grains are probably a lot harder to digest. Do you rinse it before cooking it? That helps too.

The only vegan source of creatine is synthetic supplements.

Interesting. There have been a few people on here reporting serious and repeated shoulder problems. I wonder if this could be a factor in that.

No problem. While I don't necessarily follow his ideas completely, I'm a big fan of Brendan Brazier, and I think he does an excellent job of explaining about why/how you should eat "net gain" foods instead counting calories, how to avoid dietary stress and deal with the stress you do have in your life better, how to train your body to burn more fat while training, etc, than I can, so I suggest reading his book. That being said, the goal is to eat more alkaline-forming, easily digested foods. This often means more raw foods, but not necessarily entirely. The energy your body puts into digesting food, and the stress that this can create, and also the acidic environment that is usually left behind, are major factors in how much nourishment you actually get from the food, and how much that food is actually helping your body, rather than harming it. Refined foods are the biggest culprit, flours and fried foods, stimulants (caffeine), alcohol, foods containing unnatural ingredients (flavors, colors, fortified with things), etc. Metabolic acidosis can occur from creating an environment in your body that is too acidic from these kinds of foods and from sources of stress. Metabolic acidosis, among other health issues, causes a reduction in growth hormone and an increase in cortisol (stress hormone), leading to retention of body fat and loss of muscle. Additionally, eating too little and not providing your body with the nutrients it needs is also stressful to your body, and can lead to the same hormonal response, thus causing you to lose muscle/bone density (your body will pull calcium from your bones to buffer your blood from the acidic environment) while dieting, instead of fat. As for exercise, your body will burn mostly glucose for the first 90 minutes of exercise. To burn more fat, you want to aim for longer stretches of lower-intensity exercise. Working out for 30 minutes, even if it's a really high-intensity workout, does not burn much fat. As for sleep, that certainly varies from person to person. But the goal should be to wake up naturally and feel replenished when you do, rather than tired and needing coffee. I hope this is helpful. Again, I'm not nearly as good at explaining some of these things as others, but they're sound concepts that have been studied, and I recommend reading Brazier's book yourself if you want to hear more detail from a more authoritive source.

It's still an oversimplification. It implies that if you eat less and work out more, that's the ticket to losing weight. That's not always the case, and a lot of the times when it *is* the case, it's not healthy weight loss. And it's also not the case that just because you're losing weight, that you're burning fat. Then there's also that your body doesn't use 100% of what you put in it, and certain types of foods/calories will make you retain fat while a higher number of calories from another type may help you burn it. Simple calorie-counting does not factor these kinds of things in. Simply saying put in less than you take out is an oversimplification that confuses people, and I think, should be avoided. The goal should be health, energy, and vibrancy, not counting calories and steps on your daily walk and trying to formulate an "am I taking in less than I'm expending" way to eat and exercise. Just my $.02.

I'd first like to say that I disagree with the oft-repeated mantra that if you "eat less than you burn" you'll lose weight. While this is kind of true to an extent, it is often much more complicated in practice for many reasons. Your body is a complicated machine, and everyone is different. That being said, I do agree that it's not witchcraft. Eating well, and exercising often, will help your body achieve the balance that is most natural for it. But for some people that natural, healthy balance is not what they think they should look like. Some people are naturally heavier than others, or naturally thinner than others (which can be just as frustrating if you're a man trying to build muscle). Many other environmental factors go into how your body looks, including stress levels and how you cope with stress. This includes dietary stress, so I would agree with the advice to not each as much seitan. The amount of sleep you get, and the quality of it also affects how your body reacts to diet and exercise, as does the type of exercise. You can eat/exercise in a way that trains your body to use fat as a fuel more than other types of eating/training, thus burning more fat with the same amount of food/exercise. But I also agree that it would be helpful to hear what seitan_man's exercise/diet plan is like before passing judgment. I just think that it's a little too simplistic to simply say "eat less than you burn," as this type of approach to dieting can be harmful to the body, and sometimes lead to the retention of fat, as in some cases when your body does not have enough high-quality fuel to fuel work outs, it will attempt to retain fat as a survival mechanism.

That'll do it I imagine. I stopped taking Vega for the same reason.

I don't intend to be hating on judo, I like judo, but it's hard to think that someone from a strictly judo background would be able to be as effective as they are in a judo fight in an MMA fight. It's a lot harder to take someone down when they can throw strikes and aren't necessarily going to just let you grapple with them.

Are you eating much chlorella as he recommends? I hear that is usually the culprit.

In my experience the type of knee pain you describe is usually associated with overtraining the quads, and the hamstrings are unable to counter balance them. This puts a strain on your knee as the quads, even while resting, pull harder on your knee than the hamstrings, thus pulling your knee parts out of alignment. Try working your hams more. Lunges are good, running backwards, whatever you can think of that strengthens your hams rather than your quads. Over time, you might see an improvement. But bear in mind if it's a muscular imbalance you'll need to give yourself time to let your hams build up strength. Don't expect results overnight if you're been overtraining your quads for years.

Mac is in "complete shape." Do you realize how well conditioned you have to be to go three rounds with Clay Guida? The guy could wear out a horse. Mac looked good I thought, he lost to a really good fighter in a close fight. He threw an awesome front thrust kick that almost ended the fight at one point, I'm not sure if he just missed the kick (it looked like it landed) or what. And I'm sure he'll go back to training and work on whatever he feels he needs to work on and be even better next time he steps into the cage. I hope he fights again soon.

For a while now, studies and articles have been published in various places claiming to prove that alcohol isn't bad for you, or that it may even be good for you. It seems that this article draws on a lot of those studies. My personal opinion, speaking as someone fully qualified to say that he likes the sauce, is that alcohol is not good for you. If you're going to drink it, great, I certainly do, but going around claiming that it's healthy, even in moderate amounts, is disingenuous. Just admit that it's a vice, but you like to do it anyway. What's the big deal? Everyone likes to do some things that are bad for them. Own up to it! I also do not believe that drinking two drinks a day does not impair recovery from workouts. As someone who likes to drink, and likes to work out, I notice a HUUUUUGE difference in recovery on nights that I don't drink after a workout. I wake up feeling rested, clear-headed, and full of energy. On nights that I drink after a workout, even if it's only one or two drinks, I wake up feeling grumpy, tired, and sore. Anecdotal, yes, but I have heard that alcohol has a negative effect on your ability to fall into the deep sleep needed to recover well.

I'm not an expert on rehabbing injuries, but my advice would be to stop seeing the doctors (they've already basically said they can't help you), and find a physical therapist to work with. Preferably, find one that is an advanced martial arts practitioner themselves, or at least has a history of treating martial artists. They can suggest exercises and stretches that should rebuild the injured parts, and ideally strengthening the surrounding/synergistic muscles/tendons/etc to give your shoulder more support. Acupuncture and chiropractors can help with these kind of things, too. My gut says that a recurring injury like this may mean you have a muscular imbalance or something needs to be focused on and build up to keep the injury from repeating. Also try pilates and yoga for awhile before going back into weight training and martial arts - I keep hearing stories of professional athletes who have a recurring back/shoulder/groin injury and then start doing pilates/yoga to strengthen smaller, synergistic muscles that support those areas (often in places you would never guess, i.e. back problems can be solved by focusing on legs and knee problems by focusing on hips, etc).

I agree. My only guess is that they want Mac to prove himself in the big leagues a little more with this fight before giving him too much spotlight.

tomorrow (wednesday) UFC Fight Night, Spike TV (8pm ET/PT)! I believe Mac and Clay are scheduled to be the second-to-last fight. This is a huge fight for Mac, the UFC is giving him one of the best lightweights in an already stacked division as his second UFC fight. A lot of people don't think he's ready for Guida yet, but he's got a long (and mostly victorious) record in other fight leagues. If Mac beats Guida, consensus is that he'll be in line for a title fight (how cool would it be to have a vegan as the lightweight UFC champion?). If he loses, it'll be a step back, but certainly not the end of his career in the UFC. Who's going to watch? What are your thoughts?