Getting Enough Nutrition

Tofu Kebab, one of my culinary creations

After starting exercise with weights, I worried about the adequacy of my nutrition. I am a lifelong vegetarian, and though I have lived healthy for decades on a vegetarian diet, I wasn't sure I was getting enough protein to build muscles. I got a few books on vegetarian nutrition. One was too technical and tedious, another a marketing ploy for nutritional products. Ultimately, however, one book really changed my life.

No Meat Athlete by Matt Frazier was a curious but interesting and most practically useful guide. Half the book was about down to earth vegetarian nutritional advice, the other half about running. This is the book that got me started running, at age 41.

I learned that my biggest concern with a vegetarian diet was not protein, but the dependence on processed food. I followed the book's advice and switched my diet nearly completely to whole foods, while eliminating much junk food. I ended up cooking more myself, to guarantee the ingredients. Thankfully, the book has many features to help with that, like advice on shopping, how to work around the kitchen, and recipes.

The book also taught me another key nutritional advice: to lose weight, one has to actually eat more - enough to have the energy to exercise and burn those extra calories. By means of healthy eating and consistent exercise, I was losing pounds while eating over 3000 calories a day, and as much as 5000 calories on race days and after long bike rides.

The most useful parts of the book are the sections on goal-setting and on making exercise and good nutrition a habit. I applied the technique to running. Inspired by all the running advice in the second half of the book, I picked one of the training plans at the back - for a 5k race. I not only persisted to finish the training and run a 5k race, but kept running to complete my first half-Marathon within a year. In the process, I lost pounds, built muscles, and improved my shape.

This is truly an informative and inspiring book.

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