Finding Ultra

In closing, I wish to thank each and every one of the countless unnamed who’ve found a spark of hope in my story and have taken the time to reach out and confide in me your private struggles and pain. You can’t know how much you’ve touched me. To all those out there who feel stuck, lost, in a rut, or just unable to reach escape velocity, know that I’m with you. And I honor your journey. This book is for you.

Freston, Kathy. Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World. (New York: Weinstein Books, 2011)

Nonetheless, at least once a week I cook a large amount of brown or basmati rice, black beans, and lentils and store them in the refrigerator. Then I pack a Tupperware bowl with some combination of these items and bring it with me for the day. It’s a cheap and easy regimen that keeps me on track should I find myself unable to locate healthy food options during my workday

Brazier, Brendan. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2008)

Consensus opinion states that post-exercise one should consume about .75 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight—and about 1 gram of protein for every 3 to 5 grams of carbohydrate ingested.

I simply pull out the Vitamix. I mix up dark leafy greens, like kale, spinach, and spirulina, with some lemon or apple cider vinegar to quickly alkalize my system. I add foods high in antioxidants, like strawberries, blueberries, acai, and goji berries, to fight the exercise-induced free radical damage. Also: pumpkin seeds for iron, plus fruits high in vitamin C to aid the iron absorption. I’ll also maybe add some avocado and chia and hemp seeds for omega-3s.

Again, this isn’t a license to go nuts—pun intended. Unless you’re training like me, I recommend somewhere in the range of twenty to forty grams of fat per sitting, or 10 to 20 percent of daily caloric intake, depending upon the extent to which (1) your lifestyle is active, (2) weight loss is a priority, and (3) you suffer from chronic illnesses. As a general rule, the more unhealthy and sedentary you are, the less fats you should eat

But giving up on a plant-based diet because organic is too expensive or hard to source isn’t the answer. It’s always better to eat non-organic produce than to eat no produce. Just make sure you wash your items well before eating. If budget is an issue, be selective in your organic choices, since some non-organic foods are worse than others when it comes to pesticide residue

Conversely, organic farming shuns the use of such toxins in favor of natural fertilizers and renewable resources that aim to conserve and enhance the environmental quality of farmland soil, all while reaping foods the way nature intended.

The inherent nutritional content of organic versus non-organic foods is a much-debated issue. But some studies have established that foods farmed in the conventional manner tend to lack the nutritional density of organically grown crops, the importance of which I discussed above. We don’t need to get bogged down in the empirical data. I know that when I eat a conventionally grown tomato, it’s essentially tasteless. It looks great—large, perfectly round, with a beautiful dark red hue—almost begging you to grab it off the shelf and put it in your cart. But often it has the flavor of sand. By contrast, a small runt of an oddly shaped organically grown tomato bursts with flavor. My research is over.

There’s no need for long discourse on this subject. Whenever possible, do your best to eat organic. And strive to eat produce that is locally grown. Not only is it fresher, it’s more ecologically sustainable. Becoming a locavore is an easy way to reduce your food’s carbon footprint, because locally grown produce doesn’t have to be shipped cross-country or internationally, which requires an absurd expenditure of fossil fuel

TIP: Reduce your omega-6 intake by cutting out processed foods, animal protein, and oils derived from corn, canola, soy, sunflower, and safflower. Increase your omega-3 intake with nuts, seeds, avocados, dark leafy greens, and extra virgin olive oil. To maximize omega-3 content, eating these foods raw is optimal. But if cooking, do not overheat