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!

Meat Head: Brandt's Explanation

Do you see those pictures up there? They look great, don't they. They're my meals from our trip to Miami--bone-in ribeye medium rare with cheesy, creamy potatoes and Macallan 21 from Council Oak; cheeseburger with french fries and Diet Pepsi from Casola's. Now I could write you a paragraph about where the food was sourced from, and I could tell you the fries are fried in organic oil. I could tell you the steak comes from a small farm not 10 miles from the restauraunt and I could tell you the scotch was aged for 21 years (21!). But I don't have to because when you look at those pictures the only thought your brain can put together is "Sweet Baby Jesus, that looks...DELICIOUS." If that beautiful slice of heaven found its way to a table near you, you'd know what to do. Now if on the other hand you were faced with some strange mixture of wild grains and weeds, or "vegan snacks," you would want, no you would NEED a full adjective ladden paragraph before you even considered letting it near your mouth, and you would certainly need the explicit promise of some kind of health benefit before you'd even consider investing in a bite.

I say all of this to give you an idea where I stand on the issue of veganism, lest you be confused by my presence here. I am firmly of the mind set that "I didn't climb all the way up the food chain to eat leaves."

Now frankly I don't have a good reason for why I agreed to do this. I attribute it to whatever genetic defect it is that makes me prone to random road trips, bad ideas, and a general inclination to say "sure, why not" when faced with a unique proposition. I am also so far behind a healthy lifetime level of vegetable intake that this really can't hurt. Plus it will give me a conversation topic while waiting for coffee in the village. Most importantly though, what the hell anyway, "why not."

In the beginning, there was meat...

And it was good.

Today we embarked on one blog-recorded month of meat-allowance prior to our 30-day vegan adventure.

After beginning the conversation of a "month of veganism" in April, the following questions have arisen:

• What will we ever do without cheese and yogurt? We are both skeptical about the commercial animal-free options (for health and taste reasons), so we shall see starting June 1st.
• Is alcohol vegan? To our surprise, it isn't always. Animal products sometimes are a part of processing. Here is the most comprehensive website we found for quickly gathering consumer information: http://www.vegsoc.org/info/alcohol.html
• What about honey and leather? Suzy, the less-meat-eating of the duo, will be giving up her leather bags and shoes starting June 1. As for honey, it's only a month, and since it does come from bees, it's out from June 1-July 1.
• Where will we ever get a good meal out of the house? Luckily, vegan restaurants and cafes are all the rage in NYC, so we (read: Suzy) are not too worried. Luckily, we also eat most meals from our tiny but amazing NYC apt kitchen. More to come in future postings on how we feel about these restaurants.
• Finally, "our" final question: Really, Suzy? Why the hell are we doing this?