My new plant-based diet – the birth of Squeeganism.

My new plant-based diet – the birth of Squeeganism.

Let me tell you about my new diet.  I have been working with it for just about a month.  The questions I have mostly been asked are “What exactly is your diet?”  and “Why are you doing it?”

This week I’ll do my best to get through these two questions so I can tell you about my other experiences and nuance and results.

Let me address the ‘what first.

What are the tenants of my new regime?  I’m refusing the V-word label.  I’ve made up my own brand. I’m a Sqeegan.  I just like the way it sounds.

1. I don’t eat meat or dairy if I can help it.
2. I do eat one or two big helpings of green-leafy vegetables per day.
3. I continue to eat a lot of fresh fruit during the day.
4. I continue to eat a lot of nuts.
5. I try not to eat fried food.
6. I don’t drink any soda.
7. I eat whole grain breads and pastas and rice.
8. I stopped drinking beer over a decade ago, so that’s not an issue for me.
9. I never really cared for candy and sweets.
10. I will eat an occasional piece of fish.
11. I don’t beat myself up over the little things and I avoid hunger.

This is not a huge leap for me.  I already eat lots of fruit and nuts and salad.  I don’t smoke or drink. My last bad habit is/was dinner.  I will routinely eat a large steak or chicken or fried stuff or an entire large pepperoni pizza for dinner.  Especially when I’m travelling I tend to make poor nutritional choices.

Essentially my diet over the last decade has been to eat healthy 90 percent of the time and ruin it all with dinner and late night snacking.

I have certain things in my life like travel that I have to work around.  I find that an occasional piece of fish allows me to not call attention to myself at client dinners and fish seems to have neutral research.  I still take a dash of skim milk in my morning coffee because I haven’t found an acceptable accessible alternative.

One of my rules or constraints is to avoid a feeling of scarcity.  I don’t feel like I’m giving up anything and I don’t want to be hungry.  At the same time I‘d like to eat healthier and have a diet that supports my lifestyle.  It’s really not a big leap for me.

That’s the ‘What’, now the ‘Why’.

I embraced for three main reasons.  First I want to eat healthier to live longer and my nutrition, for all my success in endurance sports, has always included fried food and lots of meat and other things that I know are suspect.  . Second I like to learn and I consider my body an experiment of one.  Third, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wanting to control my weight, especially as I work through my current injury cycle.

My change in behavior then is not that great a change for me.  It is changing one last late meal that has routinely nullified all of my other good eating and exercise habits.

I’m not doing it for any political, environmental or animal rights reasons.  If there is some positive sustainability in those areas great, but that’s not my personal driver.

I’m particularly interested in whether there is any discernable impact in a person like me, who is not overweight, who is already exercising vigorously 5-6 times a week and who does not have any other overtly bad habits. Most of the folks I talk to started from a different, perhaps more challenged place in their lives.  In that respect I’m a bit of a control group of one.

What I’d like to see, my squretch goal would be that stubborn 10-20 pounds that I’ve always carried somehow melt away.  I’m also curious as to how my energy levels and recovery go when I get in to the dark place of marathon training.

We’ll see.  I’ll keep you informed and I’ll see you out there.