90-day plan

I'm going to try something crazy.

I want to set a goal to make it 90 days on the raw vegan diet. I also want to work out a lot during these 90 days using the principles in either my material from Pavel Tsatsouline or the stuff posted by Arnel of Men's Workout Guide (in particular, the Brad Pitt workout). I know that on a raw vegan diet, I will lose a ton of weight -- but I've never made it past 30 days.

Tonight I violated the diet at the Christmas party. I didn't really want to eat anything, but a part of me wanted to know I could. I feel fine right now after having gorged on shrimp and some pot stickers, but I rest happily knowing that my overall weight is trending downward, and the longer I can stay raw, the sooner I will arrive at the alleged detox. I only wonder if I should stay raw for 30 days before I start any real weightlifting routines (other than kettlebell workouts). Also, I get bored of completely raw foods, so I need to prepare more raw dishes.

Over break I'm going to write up a program I can follow and execute upon. Some ideas:

• Get a new iPod shuffle (lost my last one so need to buy another one, and they are like $80)
• Make a new raw dish every week using my book. Two per week if possible. Find some really good dishes to prepare.
• Have a workout plan for each week, including times I'm on the road.
• If on the road and resources are unavailable, always fall back to a high intensity interval training workout.
• Always find a Whole Foods wherever I go.

I'll need more ideas to finalize this plan, but how wonderful would it be to make 90 days at 100% raw vegan?

Day 5 at 100%

It's day 5 and I'm on the road. This is the toughest time to be raw vegan: when I'm away from Whole Foods and traveling. The thing I crave the most, as always, is carbs: bread and french fries. I would pay $100 to have a plate full of garlic french fries with a few dipping sauces.

What I'm really craving is also bread... warm bread, and a nice bisque-type soup to dip it into. I really want to make it 90 days on this diet, and then I can call it a day and go back to whatever else. There's something about those carbs that are so addictive. I don't really miss meat that much honestly! It's just bread & fries.

Amazon.com MP3 Downloads

I'm not making any money by saying this, but I just found out about Amazon.com's MP3 Download service. I've been happily using iTunes a few times for music since I bought my MacBook, but I really despise having to "authorize" using my music, or knowing that I can only play it on a certain number of machines. So as you can imagine, I was thrilled to find I can download a huge subset of the iTunes library at a reduced cost through Amazon.com's service -- and it integrates directly into iTunes, including bringing artwork. (I love the cover flow thing!) And they have the software plugin for the Mac. It's pretty painless!

Again, the best part is that the songs are MP3, i.e. DRM-free. When I buy a song, I should have complete legal right to do with it whatever the hell I want. Thank you, Amazon.

Diet Restart -- Take #42

I've failed on this diet and restarted so many times that I chuckle just thinking of it. The problem is that I feel a lot healthier when I'm eating raw foods, so I always want to return to it. I had a cheeseburger the other day and fries, and afterward I felt like I had a brick in my stomach. And I've put on probably 15 lbs again. It's that fast!

I've only made 30 days on a 100% raw vegan diet (well, I'm sure it was something like 98% but who's counting?). I can maintain raw vegan when I'm in California, but when I'm traveling and meeting with customers, it's damn near impossible. I was in London two weeks ago and I don't think I had a single vegetable while I was there -- it was legitimately tough to find them!

So today I am returning to California and I get two full weeks at home! I'm so excited to be in Palo Alto where I can control my dietary intake, I can go out and hang out with friends, and I can enjoy the lovely sunshine we enjoy in Silicon Valley. After that I'm off to Costa Rica with the family! Who knows, if I can maintain raw vegan for two weeks, work out regularly, and swing my kettlebell every day, I might make a nice dent! How wonderful would it be if I could maintain 95% raw for the next six months? I could finally prove to myself if the benefits of raw vegan were in fact true.

Diet Update

I'm on day 3 of my raw vegan diet. I've had to make exceptions due to certain situations where I am starving and unable to obtain raw food. The exceptions are:

• sushi is OK at most once per day, at most 3 times per week
• for customer engagements, all bets are off
• wine is OK ... to drown out the hunger :)
  

In all cases, of course, keep things in moderation.

I like this diet -- it will allow me to enjoy most of the benefits of the raw diet without feeling too deprived. Also, when I'm well into this, I can switch over to 100% raw without much effort.

Onward!

New Macbook, New Playlists

I'm totally an Apple whore. I personally own a new black Macbook, an iPod nano (black), and an iPod shuffle (purple). At work I am now using a new Mac Pro for video editing, and I await the day I can get an iPhone for work. (awaiting security in the phone... this might take a while)

With the new Macbook, I've decided to clean up my music list to utilize Cover Flow. This is also a great opportunity to triage my uber music collection and throw away stuff I don't care for anymore.

I'm up to 305 songs! It's taking me a while but I really like the visuals of having artwork for each album, and also having as much metadata as possible completed for each song. It's quite exciting, as you can tell. I've been buying a few more songs as well from iTunes (unfortunately all the songs I bought are not the iTunes "plus" songs, so sadly each song I'm buying is DRM-protected).

At this rate, some time in 2011 I'll have complete album art!

Returning to the Raw Vegan Diet...

I've been on it, off it, and now I want to commit to it until Christmas... and maybe longer. All I know is that I feel like crap eating normal SAD food. So tomorrow I will have an apple for breakfast followed by a green smoothie for lunch, or second breakfast. Lunch will most likely be a light salad, and I might throw in some raw chocolate as well.

The goal: make it until the beginning of my winter break to eat cooked food again... assuming I go back to cooked food. I don't know if I'll stay 100% raw forever, but I think eating a diet that is highly raw is a good idea.

I ordered a second kettlebell for work so if I feel tired, I can just go and do a quick workout. Sweeeeet. So I'm hoping to be swinging that 26lb kettlebell every day or so now.