Vegan Diet Guy

Been thinking about your New Year resolutions?

Perhaps you’re considering going on a vegan diet, but can’t see how you’ll ever get there. Maybe you’ve dreamed about running a marathon, too, but abandoned it as impossible?

If so, just think of the expression by William Arthur Ward:

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”

Five short years ago, I had not begun a vegan diet, nor had I run more than an occasional 1-2 miles on the running machine (staring at the wall at the fitness club, it felt like a death sentence). Growing up, I had been a miserable athlete, skipping all PE classes from the 9th grade to save myself embarrassment.

Just as a plant-based diet often begins with small steps, such as avoiding meat one meal a day (or one day a week) or eliminating a single kind of meat from your diet, until you’ve actually begun running, it’s totally natural for you to believe you’re not capable of getting in shape to run a marathon. (more…)

While some visitors to this site come searching for first-hand vegan diet advice and easy and delicious vegan recipes, others wind up here simply curious about how vegans can live without consuming any animal products, including dairy or eggs.

A vegan diet is widely described as a “strict vegetarian diet”, and apparently even vegetarians see it as too difficult to follow. On the other hand, many long-term vegans cannot identify with the challenges of those trying to go vegan.

All the hyperbole over a vegan diet can be overwhelming to someone just considering beginning one. To ease the journey, I recommend the term “plant-based diet”–focusing on the vast number and variety of plant foods available, instead of what you perceive you’ll be giving up.

When I first read “The China Study” and decided I was ready to take author Colin Campbell’s One-Month Challenge (“You’ve eaten cheeseburgers your whole life; a month without them won’t kill you.”), I wondered why the publisher didn’t commission a China Study diet plan and recipe book to aid the transition to a plant-based diet.

Well, Rip Esselstyn’s “The Engine 2 Diet” is about as close as you can come. (more…)

Being away from home can make business travel and vacation challenging and stressful for anyone who’s trying to eat healthily. This is particularly so for new vegans who are still trying to adjust to a diet without animal products but may have fewer alternatives than usual.

However, given the fact that business travel is often necessary for our jobs, and most people enjoy going somewhere new for vacation–at least occasionally–how does the vegan or aspiring vegan deal with eating away from home?

Below are some tips for business and vacation situations:

1. Business travel–Eat as much healthy (whole-grain, low-fat and minimal refined sugar) vegan foods you can at those meals where you have the most control over the venue. For me that’s breakfast, because lunch and dinner are often spent with colleagues or clients, and you’re less likely to have a say over the restaurant chosen or the menu.

Breakfast buffets at hotels are quite vegan-friendly, and as a result they are probably the safest places to eat while away from home (provided you don’t give in to temptation to eat 80 percent of the food that is non-vegan!). (more…)

By William Santoro

A few weeks ago, I was becoming frustrated at the fact I had been exercising more frequently and eating healthier than ever–even cutting back on alcohol (mostly wine) to just a couple times a week–with little results to show for my efforts. If anything, it appeared that my weight and body fat had increased slightly!

Then a friend suggested that I may actually be eating too few calories. That didn’t make any sense to me at all, so he recommended I try out an online meal planning system, called Vitabot. Vitabot is offered by many health clubs as an added benefit for its members, and is recently being offered in an online subscription service by a small number of internet resellers. According to Vitabot’s website, their system has received critical acclaim from top nutritionists and trainers. (more…)