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Brendan Brazier Knows Fitness

Thrive Fitness is another book Brenden Brazier has written about his prescription for vitality, following Thrive: the Vegan Nutrition Guide. Using a few simple ideas about health and nutrition, Brazier offers a new prescription for stress, optimal wellness, sleep, and nutritional replenishment.  Since Ironman competitions combine a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle, and marathon (26.2 miles of running), the training and physical demands on the athlete are tremendous. Brazier’s own journey is well profiled in this book on fitness. He relates that he was not particularly gifted for speed or endurance, but with persistence and tenacity, he overcame all odds to be the athlete he is today.  He has examined all the ways his training was ineffective, his diet was undernourishing, and his exhaustion was, in part, self-inflicted.   He share the four components of vitality: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress reduction.  But these components are not the usual hum-drum variety, but are amped up to the next level.  Exercise should be high-return, nutrition should be high net-gain, sleep should be efficient and limited, and stress should be accepted only when complementary.  I only wish I had discovered this plan when I was doing a lot of competitive road racing, bicycling and swimming. I learned the hard way – with injury – that overtraining does not pay!

Stress and Nutrition

Stress is seen as stemming nutritional deficiencies, improper or inadequate sleep, noncomplementary stressors, overtraining, overworking, overthinking.  While Brazier will help you eliminate the wrong kind of stressors (including some  you probably did not realize you had), do not think this is a laid-back fitness plan. Quite the contrary, he includes how to sharpen your focus, train your weakness, and sustain your health.  Included is an entire section of performance-building exercises, how to maintain Thrive Fitness while traveling, how to use a mobile gym, and becoming efficient at exercising.  This book is tremendously motivating as Brazier’s own stories of failures and lost experiments are revealed in order to save you the time. This is what he has learned, and most people will find some good solid suggestions for an improvement in how they spend their time, how they nourish their body, and how they replenish themselves.  Given the current state of ill health in our nation, it could not come at a better time.

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That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things (Hardcover) by Ruby Roth

Ms. Roth’s books will be released oon May 26, 2009, but it is worthy of an early pre-purchase peek. Ms. Roth was teaching art in an elementary school when she was kept busy answering questions posed to her by her curious students about her veganism.  To help answer their many questions as well as to help other children understand this lifestyle choice, Ms. Roth developed her soon-to-be-published book.   Her book discusses the emotional lives of animals, the conditions under which animals must live when they are reduced to commodities in factory farming, the connection between what we eat and how the planet fares, and the interconnectedness of life on our planet.   Endorsements by Ingrid Newkirk, Ed Begley, Jr., Jane Goodall and others grace the back cover.  The illustrations have also been created by Ms. Roth; they do not gloss over the serious subject, but they do offer a beautiful and safe way to discuss the subject with young children.

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Right in Austin, Texas, the heart of cattle country, barbecue, and obesity,* have come these five fire guys with their new vegan diet plan. Rip Esselstyn, the author of The Engine 2 Diet, had been a vegan for over twenty years when his co-fire guy James Rae (JR) tested 344 on a routine cholesterol screening.  That news, coupled with a family history of early heart disease for JR, led the  other four men to support his quest for health and go vegan in the firehouse.  In the process, JR lowered his cholesterol 150 points while the rest of the crew lost weight – some as much as 20 pounds! Esselstyn had been a pro tirathlete and swimmer before joining the firefighters; his father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of Cleveland, had been doing research for over a decade with heart disease and had noted that a very-low-fat, plant-based diet along with cholesterol-lowering medicine could bring striking improvement in what otherwise would be considered terminally ill patients. Rip is aptly name – he is one ripped, healthy, athletic looking guy.

Specialist Rae tried eating vegan at the firehouse and then flexing to other foods on the outside. This failed to lower his cholesterol, so he expanded his veganism to a global eating plan which lowered his cholesterol under 200.   Matt Moore, Derick Zwerneman and Scott Walters are the other three firemen who go vegan at work.  Check out the  Engine 2 website here, which allows you to register, get diet and exercise tips, and join a community of other health-conscious folks. Rip Esselstyn takes all the hoopla in stride and admits some folks thing he is daft.  ”For compassion reasons and for environmental reasons, it’s the best way to go,” Esselstyn said of eating a vegan diet. The vegan firemen of Austin’s Firehouse 2 won the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA)  Animal-Friendly Firehouse of the Year Award in 2005.  These five men have demonstrated that firemen can indeed be heroes to the entire community, including the four-legged kind!

*   Nearly two-thirds (64.1 percent) of the state’s adult population is overweight (Texas).  See state report for more information.

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