Catching up (Day 116)

Yes, yes, I know. It has been a while since I last posted. Very, very naughty. I will try to do better.

I had a conversation with my friend Jodi in Cary recently, in which she asked me how I was doing. I replied as follows:

I guess I would say that I am doing OK but not great.

I have had a couple of major flare ups recently. One occurred at the tail end of my last trip. I was stuck in DFW airport hungry and searched in vain for something healthy. The most healthy thing I could find was a sugary smoothie and roasted, salted nuts at Smoothie King. I actually became enraged in this airport as I looked for something vegan to eat. I entered establishment after restaurant and asked what options they had for vegans, only to receive a blank look and a “what’s that?”question. The last place I tried was Bodegga Winery, supposedly a fairly high-end restaurant in Terminal D. When I got this reaction in that restaurant, I went ballistic.

Needless to say, this did not help matters much. When I told the poor, clueless woman who I spoke that DFW Airport was a miserable place for a vegan to travel she replied, “Well don’t come here then.” To which I responded: “I have no choice!”

Texas in general seems to be one of the most unfriendly states in the country for vegans. I am considering writing a letter to the president of American Airlines on the issue, though. DFW is their headquarters and supposedly they are a fairly liberal airline in this area.

By the time I got home, I was completely inflamed and had big problems. This continued through Saturday, the following day. On Sunday, I got to my yoga class and things began to resolve. I was on track for about a week, when I had another major flare up last Tuesday night. I cannot tell you what triggered this response, although it may have been stress. My wife and I had a fight that week about the amount of skin I am making and how much of a mess it is. This left me depressed with feelings of self loathing and disgust. I did not want to face the situation, but she forced me to do so. In the process I worked myself into a frenzy and my skin and joints went crazy.

By Wednesday, I was back on a stable track, and I am now doing OK as I said.

In terms of progress I seem to be stuck. My weight is hovering around the low 230s. I am not gaining, nor am I losing. I am going to yoga almost every day which does cause the psoriasis to basically shut down for several hours. Everything scales off and I feel completely terrific. It also makes me physically tired enough so that I can sleep well, which is a big win.

I have modified the diet by dramatically reducing grains. At this point, I am eating lots of green leafy vegetables, legumes, a few nuts, fruits, starchy vegetables like squash and sweet potato, and that’s about it. This seems to help with the psoriasis a lot. In that regard, I am also basically stuck. I can’t tell I am making any progress, but I am certainly not getting any worse. I have fewer symptoms like itching, and the scaling has slowed down somewhat, but the lesions are still there and they are not going away. One bright spot is that some of my nails seem to be healing.

I am aware that I need to keep doing this and not give up. You basically saw little to no progress until your situation resolved dramatically after a lengthy fast, right? If that is the case, I may not see much visible progress for a while. I do need to get my weight down, though. Short of reducing portion size dramatically (which Dr. Fuhrman seems to say is not necessary), I am not sure what else I can do about that. I am eating to satiety at this point. If I were to reduce the calories I am eating dramatically, I have no doubt that I would lose weight. (I have certainly done that before.) But I am not sure that is what we are looking for. Such dramatically calorie reduction diets for me has always been accompanied by a big rebound later when I resumed my normal caloric intake.

To bust loose the weight loss I am considering another four day fast next week. I think I need to jump start myself and it has been almost two months since I did the last one, so I should not be training my body to have a low metabolism. Let me know if you think that’s a good way to get myself off of my current plateau.

I am pushing greens pretty hard, but am not sure I am getting a full pound a day. I looked at this. A pound of greens is the amount in an entire box of salad greens in the grocery store. (In fact, it’s the amount in a very large box. The smaller box is only five ounces.) Eating an entire large box of salad greens a day is a daunting challenge. My friend Ray who is pretty gung ho on this stuff has never pulled it off. Do you actually eat a pound of greens a day? If so, how do you do it?

I am having a couple of large salads a day plus a green smoothie with about half the solid content being greens in the form of frozen spinach. I have also found that using a green food product like Natrol Factors Enhancing Greens to be helpful. I also put in a serving of wheat grass juice which I buy fresh at the health food store. That’s about a dollar a day, but it seems to help reduce inflammation and swelling. In addition, I am adding A’cai, which I am not sure you have discovered. Very similar to mangosteen which I also sometimes add. A’cai is a great anti-inflammatory, and is basically just fruit. I buy it in frozen form (the whole fruit, not the juice) from the health food store. After having my smoothie, I always feel great for a few hours. But I can’t eat that all the time. It costs a few bucks a smoothie for one thing. Salad also feels good to eat. Things that feel bad are grains, spicey foods like peppers, and sometimes legumes. Legumes can cause me to swell up. I still eat them though. I figure I need some protein in my diet, and I am not getting any from much else. I have deleted all soy-based products though. The soymilk is pretty much gone. Once in a blue moon I will have a little, but very seldom. Not daily like I was doing before.

So that’s my story at this point.

Since that conversation, things have improved a bit. I have been doing yoga most days. I am still eating a completely vegan diet, with the modifications I talk about above. My skin is clearing up a bit. The arthritis is very low. You get the idea.

I am presently traveling to Boston on a business trip and finding it a bit easier than my previous experiences. I have actually found some decent restaurants in Boston. The first is Fresh World, which is another example of what I am calling ethical fast food, a major cultural and economic shift that is happening right now. This is an outstanding restaurant for a vegan. Many, many choices. They even had acai smoothies, which as I point out above has become an important part of my diet.

Move later.

Day seventysix

I am trying to post every few days at this point. I will probably not post daily as I have in the past.

I am back from the trip to Cork, Ireland. I gained some weight on this trip. This morning I weighed 240.1. That's 2.3 pounds heavier than prior to the trip. The factors in that are probably:

1. I ate bread. They have marvelous bread in Ireland. Completely whole grain, but still. Not gluten free and very high in calories.
2. I was not completely strict on refined carbs. I ate a few desserts, which were not sugar free.
3. I may have gained some muscle. I have been doing a lot of yoga. More on this later.

On point 3, my clothes still fit the same, if not a bit looser. So it is true that I may have packed on some muscle. I have certainly been working hard. I have done Bikram yoga almost every day. I bought the book, and used an interesting technique to fit this in. Given that there are no Bikram studios in Cork, I had to do this in my hotel room. I proceeded to strip down, lock myself in the bathroom and stop up the gap at the bottom of the door with a towel. I then ran the shower on full hot until the tub was full. At this point the bathroom was very warm and steamy. I did the first 2 poses with the water running, and then shut it off. I finished the remaining poses with a full tub of extremely hot water in the room with me, with the door plugged up as I said. The result was that I sweated buckets, and got a killer workout every time I did this. And I never had to leave my hotel room to do so. Plus, since I did the whole thing in the buff, I did not generate any sweaty workout clothes. And for my final savasana, I simply got into the tub and soaked. Pretty cool, huh?

I do have some symptoms, though. I think the gluten is the main issue. My inflammation has kicked up, and I have a few IBS symptoms. I definitely need to tighten the diet back up.

I will be in California next week where eating strictly vegan is easier. I will let you know how this goes.

One interesting place I ate at in Cork was Cafe Paradiso, owned by Dennis Cotter. This is one of the finest vegetarian restaurants at which I have ever eaten. Outstanding! I ate there Thursday night, and I can still remember the details of this meal. For a starter I had a sample of vegetarian sushi. For my main course, I had pan fried tofu over a bed of braised bokchoy with a coconut milk-based Thai curry sauce. This came with a fried vegetarian wonton and udon noodles. For dessert (this is where the refined carbs came in), I had rhubarb crumble with gooseberry and soy ice cream. This was accompanied by a decaffeinated cappuccino with soy milk.


The EMC Cork folks who went out to dinner with me were kind enough to purchase for me Dennis Cotter's book, Paradiso Seasons, which I have begun to read. This is a very interesting book. I highly recommend it. It won the award for the best vegetarian book in the world in 2003, the year that it was first published. The following is a photo of me with the book while in the restaurant:



I will probably kick off a four day fast the week after I get back from this trip to recover the ground I lost in Cork. While I maintained the vegan nature of the diet (at least so far as I know, given the level of control I had), I did vary from the strict ETL guidelines, and that has caused me to lose some ground which I need to recover. I will let you know on that.

More later.

Day seventythree

OK, so I have not blogged for 12 days. Sorry about that.

I am still doing remarkably well, though.

Admittedly, I have been traveling. Last week I was in the Western suburbs of Boston. This is a desert for vegan style food. There are very few vegan options in Whole Foods, believe it or not. I have one war story on this. I hooked up with a local yoga studio called Mystic Fitness. This is a really great studio for those desiring Bikram style, hot yoga. I had a conversation with the owner of this studio that went something like this:

I was in California last week and ate very well as a vegan eater. My hotel even got it. Here, I ask for soy milk in my hotel restaurant at breakfast and they look at me like I am insane. There are very few vegan options in restaurants. What gives with that?

He laughed at me. Said he was thinking about moving to California himself. The issue, according to this gentlemen, is that California is a health-conscious, outdoors oriented culture. Also, lots of locally-produced fresh fruits and vegetables. In Boston, they have winter six to eight months. Folks are depressed most of the time. They need comfort food. Fried pork chops with cream gravy. Ice cream. 36 ounce porterhouse steaks. You get the idea.

I did manage to eat vegan in Boston with difficulty. The EMC cafeteria was pretty good. I could always get a salad, and maybe a vegan soup option. The Naked Fish in Framingham was also not too bad. My last night there I ate at Chef Orient in Framingham which I would have to say was also not bad.

This week I am in Cork, Ireland. I am staying at the Oriel House in Cork. This is a health oriented spa hotel. Still does not get it with respect to vegan dieting, though. I ordered a grilled vegetables sandwich for lunch on Monday. Asked for no cheese and salad instead of french fries. I got the sandwich with the cheese on white bread with the fries.

It took me some serious effort to resolve that one.

I have found an outstanding place in Cork, though, called Lemongrass. This is an Asian fusion place. Very good options for vegans. My only complaint is that they use white instead of brown rice. Great salad for an asian restaurant, though. Also a very good fresh fruit dessert. I have eaten dinner there the last two nights in a row. If something is working, why change?

I have also done yoga 13 times in the past 15 days. I am basically doing it everyday. I am seeing profound changes in my body as a result of this. As well as huge reductions in stress, and increased clarity of mind. I am getting so much payoff that I am strongly motivated to continue this.

My plan is to continue eating vegan in Cork this week, spend the weekend at home in NC, and then be back out in California next week.

More later.

Day sixtyone

It has been five days since my last blog. OK, must do better on this.

The last week has been amazing. Having said that, I have not lost any more weight. I weighed this morning and was 237.8. Still 21 pounds lighter than 1/1/08. But still. 8 pound more than the low of 229.9 from post-fast.

I took 5 days straight of Bikram yoga last week, on Monday through Friday. I spent the bulk of the days doing meetings with Oracle, VMware and the like. Once those meetings were done, I would knock out a yoga class, and then go have dinner, either by myself or with one of my co-workers or colleagues at Oracle and VMware.

This turned out to be a very good pattern for me to follow.

Not only did I get a lot of exercise, and the very best form of exercise, but Bikram made me tired, which helped me to sleep. Further, Bikram yoga is having an impact on my effectiveness and ability to focus. It is difficult to be stressed out and fractured in your thinking after taking yoga. It centers you and calms you down. As a result, you think clearly. I was able to be amazingly effective in several of the meetings this week, so much so that the folks keep asking for me back.

There is something great going on here. I need to maintain that energy.

I also ate very well. I was in California, which is a place that definitely gets it in the area of vegan diet. I found some excellent places to eat.

For example, La Fiesta in Mountain View, California is one of the finest Mexican food restaurants for low-fat vegan eaters I have found. I highly recommend this place. I had vegan enchiladas with grilled vegetables, verde sauce, and black beans. Amazing.

Another outstanding example was Cafe Soulstice in San Mateo. Wow! That is an incredible place.

Cafe Soulstice is part of a new wave of restaurants I call ethical fast food. This restaurant serves only organic, raw, vegan food. Nothing dairy or meat is served there, period. Everything is absolutely fantastic. I had the following:

Soulstice Salmon Breakfast Sandwich $7.50
Soulstice Salmon on our sprouted sunfl ower-almond bread with tomato, cucumber, and dairy-free cheese spread. Served open-faced, topped with fresh herbs and honey mustard dressing (Add avocado for $1)

I asked for the avocado, but they forgot it, so they gave me two of the following:

Superfood Clusters $2.25 Raw chocolate energy nuggets made with raw cacao, coconut, coconut oil, goji berries, raisins, live nuts, Inca
berries, spirulina, maca powder, agave nectar and raw honey. Try one and you’ll be addicted!

I definitely lucked out here! I got an amazing treat for a measly dollar. On top of that I had the following as well:

Raw Decadence Crème Pies $7.00 Chocolate, Pumpkin, Banana, Mango or Berry Made with organic coconut-avocado filling on a date and nut crust topped with whipped coconut crème

I had the chocolate, which is of course dairy free. This sounds like a lot of food, and it was. However, I felt great after eating this meal. Not too full, lots of energy, no swelling or inflammation. Just right.

This is an amazing restaurant. I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the San Mateo area. It deserves your consideration and support.

I hit a bit of a speed bump on the way home. I came through DFW, and found it to be a desert in terms of diet. Barbeque, fast food Chinese, Taco Bell, McDonalds, Wendy's, you get the idea. There was absolutely nothing edible there.

Contrast this to SFO where there was a wonderful soup and salad place with exceptional vegan split pea soup.

Anyway, I did the best I could in DFW. The best I could do in Terminal C was Au bon pain again. I discussed that on my last blog and ended up in a similar state by the time I got home, i.e. swollen, inflammed and with a splitting headache. I have been working this off ever since.

My plans today are to relax, get caught up on my clothes and packed for my trip tomorrow. I will be heading out tomorrow for Boston at 2 p.m.

More later.

Day fiftysix

I missed a couple of days. Sorry about that.

Saturday was a very happy day for me. I spent the bulk of the day with my wife Ruth. Since I had this trip coming up, we drank in each other's presence. We took care of financial matters in the morning, took a yoga class at noon, and then had lunch at Red Lotus. Later, I made us a light dinner and we watched the movie The Green Mile. This movie has been haunting me ever since. It was certainly Oscar-worthy but never got considered. I am not sure for the reasons for this, but the message of the movie is very apt for our current age. I will not belabor this issue, but highly recommend that you consider renting this film.

I also read much of the book In Defense of Food, an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. If you have not read this book you should do so. I agree with much of it, disagree with other parts as well, but find that in general it crystallizes many things, notably how we got to the state we are in with our pathetically dysfunctional food culture. The areas that I disagree with are the consumption of animal products (which he allows), and alcohol. Michael Pollan maintains that moderate consumption of alcohol is beneficial to your health. I am no teetotaler, as many of my friends know, but I highly suspect that the studies which correlate alcohol to improved health are subject to many of the defects of things like the Nurses Study, i.e. the sample consumed a standard American diet (or a slightly modified version of it) during the study. It has yet to be proven that consumption of alcohol has benefits in combination with a very healthy diet. I highly doubt that it does.

Otherwise, though, this book is great. It certainly helps to understand the reasons why our food culture is whacked in ways similar to how The Pleasure Trap helps you understand why you desire to eat unhealthy foods. Both books are necessary in order to understand how we got into the state we are now in.

Both of these books, by the way, were recommended by my good friend Jodi. Many thanks to her for these excellent suggestions.

I am now reading another book, The Autoimmune Epidemic by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. This book is not one which recommends the consumption of a whole foods plant based diet. It is very fascinating nonetheless, particularly for someone like me, whose body is eaten up by autoimmune disease.

Here are the numbers: 23.5 million people in America have a serious autoimmune disease. That's one in 12. This is more than double the number of people that have cancer, and more than five time the number of people who have cardiovascular disease.

The budget of the federal government for autoimmune disease for last year was $559 million. That's one tenth the budget for cancer and one twentieth the budget for heart disease.

Hmmmm.

The question is why? I haven't gotten very far in the book, but I will keep you apprised.

Looking at the WFPBD books, like Dr. Fuhrman's, Dean Ornish, John McDougall, Caldwell B. Esselstyne, and such, it is obvious that these books predominantly concern heart disease. Dr. Fuhrman claims no benefit to his program for cancer. The China Study claims a cancer prevention benefit, but not a treatment. Similarly, The China Study spends a great deal of time covering the issue of heart disease, cholesterol, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and the like.

Other than Dr. Fuhrman who has a chapter on autoimmune disease in Fasting for Health, there is almost no mention of the issue of autoimmune disease.

It would seem the the bias in favor of heart disease and cancer as the big health issues of our time has leaked into the WFPBD crowd as well.

Reading the autoimmune book (which I will hereafter refer to with the acronym TAE, for The Autoimmune Epidemic), it is very obvious that autoimmune diseases not only destroy the health and quality of life of millions of Americans (myself included), it also kills them in large numbers. Diseases like schleroderma, lupus, and MS are inevitably fatal. In fact, psoriasis alone kills a few thousand people a year, primarily from the side effects of treatment. Those folks die in terrible pain as well.

No wonder I seriously contemplated euthenizing myself when faced with the prospect of dying of this disease. I watched my father fall to pieces. By the time he died, he no longer had fingernails or toenails. They had turned to dust. Huge clouds of psoriasis flew off him whenever I touched him.

I will not do that. It pains me to know that he could have been cured. (Cancer eventually took his life before psoriasis did, mercifully). I will maintain my course. I will beat this thing eventually.

I am now in California. I am eating very well. The flight yesterday was a bit of an issue. I became swollen and inflamed during the second leg of the journey, possibly as a result of consuming wheat. I must stay away from gluten I suppose. I needed to eat and the healthiest thing that I could find in DFW airport was a humus and veggie sandwich at Au bon pain. It was a bad idea. I had very little if any pain on the first leg, but was quite bothered by arthritis pain and swelling in my second leg.

Today, though, I am feeling well. I had oatmeal for breakfast (with berries and a little soymilk). for lunch I had a huge salad and a bowl of vegan split pea soup. I feel quite strong and well rested. My plans are to attend a yoga class later and then a late dinner, possibly back at the hotel.

More later.

Day fiftythree

I have been pretty stressed out today. Work problems. I have much travel coming up, and I am not very happy about that.

I need my job to settle down. I need time to heal, time to eat healthy food. I do not need a bunch of work stress and co-workers asking me while on the road why I do not eat steak.

I am going to have to do this, it looks like. Bummer.

I am still on the diet, though. My diet today was a blended salad smoothie and then a regular salad for lunch. All vegan and very light. I worked out this afternoon, and felt good doing so.

The plan for the weekend is to continue on the diet, go to Ray and Debby's house for dinner tonight, possibly ride bikes tomorrow (or possibly yoga), and then fly to CA on Sunday.

More later.

Day fiftytwo

I am beginning to lose weight again. My weight was down to 234.6 this morning, after spiking back up to 237.

This is very cool. Especially because I am making no effort to control quantity, particularly in foods which I can have unlimited amounts of. These include beans, fruit and green vegetables. I am pigging out on this stuff. I am trying to limit the amounts of nuts, nut butter, and fatty stuff like avocado that I eat.

Apparently this is paying off.

I am still not having any pain from the vasectomy procedure of 2 days ago, although there is some bruising down there.

Psoriasis wise, I am having lots and lots of scaling. My skin is in very bad shape. I am going to yoga tonight which should scale me off and help with that.

I have no real arthritis anymore. I probably should simply stop blogging about this. I just don't have it at all, or very, very little.

Irritable bowel syndrome is also a thing of the past. I will advise you if this spikes up again. For now, assume my BMs are very nice. Nuff said?

Also, enlarged prostrate is completely resolved. Same thing. I will let you know if that changes. Otherwise, assume my prostrate feels like it did when I was in my twenties.

My BP is around 130/78, give or take a few points. Not a problem in other words.

Soooooo, I am running out of health problems. That's a good thing. The skin remains my only remaining target. That may take a while, the way things are going. But I am very persistent.

I will continue to blog on that issue, as well as diet and weight loss. The plan for now is to continue the diet until early May. At that point, I will consider my options for the next fast.

More later.