Improve health & performance and reduce nutritional stress with a plant-based diet

by Brendan Brazier

As a professional endurance athlete, my number one job is to create stress, then deal with it. That’s it. I stress my body, allow it to recover, and then do it again. It’s really that simple.
Where this can get problematic is in finding balance between these two synergistic extremes: Training and recovery. Training is really nothing more than taking advantage of our body’s ability to heal itself. When faced with post-exertion muscle damage, the body will surmise that it must grow stronger to perform the task more efficiently next time it is called upon. Really, the body is taking the easy way out; it’s easier for it to grow stronger to reduce the strain placed on it the next time it must perform. As soon as it demonstrates its improved strength, more demand will soon be placed upon it.
What is it that allows some athletes to improve at an unprecedented rate, while others become stagnant or make only modest gains? The answer lies in the recovery index (RI), the rate at which recovery transpires. Learn how to speed the RI by means of proper nutrition and lifestyle strategies and improve faster. The ability to speed recovery doesn’t stop there. Improved immune function, increased energy level, a reduction in body fat and signs of aging are a few other attributes to be gained by speeding up the recovery process.
If, for example, following a workout I am able to recover quickly, the amount of time I am highly stressed is considerably shortened, enabling me to train again sooner. Over the course of a few months, the extra workouts that this quick recovery has facilitated will significantly improve my fitness. The same principles that I practise to accelerate my recovery from physical stress can be applied to a wide variety of stresses, thereby reducing them as well.
An important fact to be cognizant of is this: The body’s response to stress is the same, whether it be the physical demands of sport, the environmental strains of breathing impure air, poor diet or the hectic pace at which most of us now live. A full, productive life will undoubtedly be a catalyst for an elevated stress level. Stress slows progress and therefore it must be minimized for us to reach full potential. Success at anything starts with the ability to effectively cope with stress.
Our bodies are not equipped to deal with many of the modern day requirements placed on them; they simply have not evolved to effectively cope with our increased demands. Can you believe that in the 1950s it was thought that as our technological advances continued, we wouldn’t need to work anymore? The theory was that by the ‘90s, computers would “serve” us, a romantic ideal that obviously didn’t come to fruition. As most of us know all too well, our lives are a non-stop dance from one task to another. The average North American works more now than ever before, and that amount continues to increase as we “progress.” But work is just one stressor.
Increasingly more common are people who cite demands of social life and family obligations as “more stressful than work.” This combined with diminishing air and water quality, and increasingly less nutritious food due to bad farming practices, leaves us as a culture that is chronically stressed.
There are two ways to deal with these problems. One is to reduce the amount of all-encompassing stress. A reduction in work will do this, but obviously a decline in productivity will result. Both this method and an increased recovery period are effective, but obviously not welcomed by high achievers. As you will discover, a more viable solution is to curtail the effects of stress by implementing an “uncomplimentary” stress reduction program - simply put, improving your diet.
When I first started searching for ways to enhance my athletic performance, nutrition was one area that I investigated. At the age of 15 I experimented with a plant-based diet for the first time. Told from the beginning that it was a bad idea, I decided to find out for myself. “To be successful as an athlete you must eat meat,” this was, and still is the consensus of many. Of course, as I found, there is simply no basis to support that notion. It is simply misinformation. Not only has not eating animal products for the last 14 years not stifled my athletic performance, it has significantly elevated it.
Over the course of those 14 years, I have developed a nutritional stress reduction program that has enabled me to improve at an unprecedented rate. Learn these principals, incorporate them and thrive.

Brendan Brazier is a vegan and a professional Ironman triathlete. He is the author of a soon to be released book called Thrive: A Guide to Optimal Health and Performance Through Plant-Based Whole Foods. He will be speaking on vegan performance nutrition and giving a cooking demo at Vancouver’s Taste of Health August 14 and 15 at the Chinese Cultural Centre, 50 East Pender Street. Please visit his website for more information www.brendanbrazier.com