The Vegan Countdown

Month of veganism complete!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Performance-enhancing veganism

Running performance, that is. I (Suzy) have noticed quite a difference in my running abilities since starting what I'm sure Brandt will refer to for the rest of his life as "the vegan incident." I on the other hand feel adjusted; my body feels cleaner (even my sweat is cleaner!), and I've noticed a significant improvement in my endurance. I am not one to jump to causative claims. But I couldn't help but notice the correlation of this diet to dramatically improved frequency and distance in my running.

One performance of mine that has not been enhanced, however, is drinking performance. As someone who enjoys the occasional (ahem...weekly...ok, maybe sometimes more than that) wine/gin martini indulgence, I can no longer drink from the bottomless glass that I've enjoyed since college. Some of this is due to lack of vegan food at cocktail parties, no doubt. Curious to see if I was an outlier, I entered the vegan blog realm. It seems others have experienced this same reduction in alcohol tolerance (clearly not a bad thing as I now am learning to be much more careful with my portions and pacing of beverages). There are also claims that this is due to increased absorption efficiency, something that seems pretty likely since my calorie-intake and the macronutrient composition of my diet has not been drastically altered.

We'll see how running and alcohol tolerance, 2 things dear to my heart, play out for the rest of the month. Halfway there!

1 comment:

  1. Hm. My alcohol tolerance went way down (from very low to almost zero) as I gradually ate less and less meat. I never thought about a link, but that's really interesting.

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