this will blow you away…pull up a chair and enjoy!

I accept cash, check, credit card, travelers checks or candy :)

 A hug will also do……well actually….it depends who you are! 

I share this birthday with a few other talented folks…

• 1547 - Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist.
• 1725 - Robert Clive, founder of the British Empire in India.
• 1758 - English Admiral Horatio Nelson (Lord Nelson).
• 1858 - Rudolf Diesel, Bavarian-born engineer and inventor.
• 1901 - Enrico Fermi, Italian-born American physicist who helped create the first nuclear reactor.
• 1907 - Gene Autry, American actor, only person to have 5 Hollywood Walk of Fame stars (for film, radio, TV, stage, records).
• 1908 - Greer Garson, Academy Award-winning American actress.
• 1916 - Trevor Howard, British actor.
• 1935 - Jerry Lee Lewis, American singer and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
• 1943 - Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, president of Poland, and founder of Poland’s Solidarity Party.
• 1956 - Sebastian Coe, British Olympic champion middle-distance runner. 

So I entered into this body transformation challenge 3 months ago. The competition was open to members of the online Vegan Bodybuilding online community. I set some pretty lofty goals when I started.

Goals (not really in priority order):

1. Win the competition! (what are the point of goals if they aren’t big? )
2. Gain 1.5 pounds of lean muscle per week [+18 lbs]
3. Lose 8% bodyfat, from 15% on July 1st to 7% [-12 lbs] my previous low was 4% back in 2003
4. Finally get the six pack (…not the Miller Light variety)
5. Perform 25 pull ups nonstop (current personal best is 12)
6. Perform 75 push ups nonstop (current personal best is 54)
7. Master Yoga inversions (headstands, handstands)

Well, my goals were indeed very lofty and I did not manage to beat them…though I did make great progress and am psyched to continue with another 12 week challenge. One thing I learned is that my body will adapt, but more slowly than I previously thought. I’m willing to put the time into it. Comments on the above goals:

1. They haven’t done the voting for the contest yet. I’ll let ya’ll know how I did in a few weeks when it is decided.
2. I ended up at 155lbs at 10% bodyfat (dropping from 15%). So I gained about 10 pounds in lean muscle mass in 12 weeks. Not a bad gain considering I was on a mostly raw food diet for a couple months during the contest!
3. I lost 5% not 7% bodyfat as I planned…oh well
4. no, I did not get the six pack…this will surely take quite a while…perhaps a year to get there.
5. My personal best was 12…but at the start of the contest I could barely do 8 pull ups. Last week I cranked out 15! Almost a 100% improvement!
6. My previous personal best was 54, but at the start of the contest I could do about 45 at most. Last week I did 64!
7. I did not master yoga inversions. My overall yoga practice improved a lot, but I didn’t have time for the 1 on 1 instruction to learn headstands and handstands….I’ll keep this on my goal sheet for next time!

I’ll write another post with key learnings from the last 12 weeks, and how I will change my workout/nutrition plan going forward.

Microsoft Company Meeting

Originally uploaded by ravisraman.

Today is my sixth Microsoft Company Meeting. Each year we rent out Safeco Field and have a day long group hug. I am here for two reasons…..

1. To hear what BillG has to say

2. Get a sneak peak of Halo III (I have my fingers crossed).

After a few fits and starts…my beautiful iMac G5 is alive. The hard drive is working very well. The saga however….continues.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

I went down to the storage locker in my condo after getting a NEW key. We have had a problem with theft, so they replaced all the locks. I went to look at my locker, and see how big a pair of bolt cutters I would need. You see, when my car was broken into a few months ago, turns out the thief stole a bunch of stuff, including the keys to my storage bin! I had a big ass masterlock on the storage locker.

I opened up the door to the locker room and guess what I saw….a picture of my friends Paul and Jeff on the floor. Hmmmm, that is weird I thought. I look up and all my stuff is out of the locker and thrown in the aisle! The damn thief busted into my locker! :(

There was no way for them to map the keys they stole from my car to the locker. I assumed they just cut the lock. NO way…they actually cut through the 1/4in steel plate the lock was bolted into! Unbelievable. I’ll send a picture later. So funny I just had to laugh.

I am not entirely sure what they stole, as nothing there had tons of value. Luckily, they did NOT steal any of my hiking stuff or snowshoes. They busted into a crate of my random computer stuff, with CD’s, etc. I think that was where my iLife and OS X software was…..it was nowhere to be found. I really hope those things turn up.

On he upside, I managed to borrow an OS X CD from a friend (thanks Richard!) hey, I did pay for it after all!!! I got that installed without a problem. Now I must reinstall the dozen apps I had bought to turn my Mac into a lean, mean geeked-out machine.

C.P.R.

Next, I MUST recover the info on my old drive. My last backup was almost a year ago and I have thousands of memories and pics on that drive. I bought DiskWarrior, and ran it before swapping the drive, but it didn’t work. Next step is to buy a standalone carriage for it and try to resusitate it using my newly healed iMac. If this doesn’t work I’ll see if my brother can hook me up with some of his CalTech friends to work their magik on it.

It was just cracked opened and got a new 250GB hard drive in it to replace the one that crashed. It has been sown up and is in the ICU getting a fresh transfusion of OSX. We should know if the organ transplant is successful in about 20 minutes….stay tuned!

I just learned that someone from my high school class died in a house fire a few days ago. She past away trying to save her baby girl from the blaze. I am sorry that I didn’t get to know Dana better when I was in school, but given the small size of our town; every one of us seemed to have a connection and deep friendship. My heart, thoughts and prayers are with her, her family and her baby girl; who is currently in the ICU.

It’s natural to wonder where people will be in 10 years when you graduate high school. Who will be the professional sports player? Who will be the multi-millionaire? Who will be the college professor? Who will end up in jail? Who will stay in town? Who will have kids? Who will get married and to whom? We never think about the fact that at 10 year reunion some people won’t make it. 

When I graudated High School I didn’t have a very clear picture of where I would be 10 years into the future. I knew I was going to college. I knew I was going to get a job (business related) that would last for a couple years. Beyond that everything was a guess. Grad school was something I always assumed I’d do. Ultimately, I thought I’d be working on wall street and settled down on the East Coast near my family (but not too close!). The markets have always fascinated me. I was sure that I’d take advantage of true freedom (i.e. having money and no family of my own!) to really see the world and experience new things. I thoughts I’d know everything there is to know in 10 years.

Life has taken me in a different direction.  I’m on the opposite coast. I’m not in and haven’t gone to and have no plans to go to grad school. My career is moving further away from the financial world that captivated me as a kid. I am really far from my family. I have travelled the world, but at the same time haven’t made full use of the freedom made possible by a decent salary and a curious mind. I now realize how little I actually know about the world.

Where will I be 10 years from now?  I will be in a business-related field somewhere, and quite possibly running my own. I will be working on my own terms. I will have travelled the world and immersed myself in different cultures. I will have a family or at least have gotten started on it! I will have a dog :) I will have completed a few more crazy Ironmans just to prove that I can. 

The reality is I can only guess and hope where I will be in 10 years. You have absolutely no idea what the world has in store for you. The only thing you can really do is set clear goals and prepare for them as best you can. The better you prepare, the better you can handle any surprises thrown your way. 

Vega whole food meal replacementOriginally uploaded by ravisraman.

I am now addicted to Vega…a whole food meal replacement supplement. Available at Super Supplements and on-sale right now.

Vega was created by Brendan Brazier a vegan Pro Triathlete. It is a completely vegan product and is in-fact almost 1/3 raw.

 I take 2 full servings daily as part of my increased calorie diet. One serving in the morning (2 scoops) blended with 12 oz soy milk and one serving immediately following my workout (2 scoops shaken up with water). This provides an additional 600 calories a day (750 with the soymile) and 50-60 grams of high quality plant-based protein.

What I love about it:
1. it dissovles well in a shaker…no blender needed, not lumpy
2. doesn’t sit in your gut and feel heavy, seems to digest quickly
3. made with whole food, lots of raw stuff and micronutrients

What could be better:
1. taste is OK. I am getting used to it now, but I wouldn’t call it tasty :)
2. powder tends to settle to the bottom of glass unless you drink it quickly.
3. cost….the stuff isn’t cheap…but the ingredients are super high quality so I can’t complain too much!

…and I am not quite sure what’s wrong. Worked fine last night. This morning I booted up and  it just showed a small icon with a blinking question mark on it. I rebotted using a Tech Support CD I had and ran a doagnostic. Everything was fine EXCEPT the hard drive. It wasn’t able to repair it, and it did detect errors on it.

 Now, when I reboot, it just sits at the blank white screen with the apple logo on it. It actually looks sorta pretty like that, perhaps I can hang it on the wall as artwork?

 If any Mac gurus out there have any ideas…pls let me know! I am afraid I might have to reinstall OSX…which means I need to find my OSX DVD…which I think is in my storage shed. Problem is, someone broke into my car a few months ago and stole stuff…along with the key to the big ass lock on my storage shed! I haven’t gotten around to busting through the lock yet!

So this minor problem is turning into a multi-layered-big-ass problem. And at that, there is a chance my OSX DVD isn’t even in the shed. And even if it is, a chance that it won’t even solve my problem!

 Lessons learned:

(1) backup everything that really matters to you…often

(2) keep track of stuff and keep organized or the stuff will rule your life

(3) don’t put off the small stuff because it will turn into big stuff later on!

I’ve been educating myself more about proper nutrition for gaining lean body mass. Calories matter. Looking back over the food I was eating over the past few months, it was clear that my calories weren’t up to par.

My 60-day raw food experiment taught me a lot about what is means to eat well and feel great. Most people never know what it is like to feel really great. I’ll even argue that many people who are stellar athletes are also walking basket cases when it comes to their emotional and inner physical well-being. Ego can cover up a LOT. When you go out socializing with your friends and people are dropping like flies at the stroke of midnight…and you are not even close to yawning…you see it clear as day.

You can read about in my ealier posts about the benefits I found from making raw food a major part of my diet. I am experience driven. Reading about something rarely convinces me to make a lasting change. I need to try and see for myself. I’ve been like this ever since I was a little kid. I always wanted to do things myself!

Trying out this diet convinced me that it is for real. I’ve been a vegetarian, I’ve been a vegan, I’ve been an endurance athlete, I’ve been an injured endurance athlete :),  I’ve been hardcore into yoga, I’ve lifted for long periods of time…but this one shift in my diet caused a bigger overall change (in terms of my energy level) than all of those other “experiments.”

That said, I am going to try to carry forward what I learned into a more balanced diet with more cooked food. Why? I want to prove to myself (or disprove) that I can feel great without going to an extreme. I also have goals to increase my bodyweight and size and progress on a mostly raw food diet has been tough. I feel great, but gains are very slow.

So starting yesterday, I’ve really increased the calories. I will still be consuming a lot of raw food (much more than I ever did as a vegan), but will work in more whole grains (quinoa is my favorite), tofu, beans and steamed foods as well.

My basal metabolic rate (at rest with no activity) is 1720 calories per day. I usually consume around 2200 calories per day. When I was training for Ironman, I would take in at least 3000 and sometimes up to 5000 on days with long rides or runs. When I was raw I was consuming around 1600 per day. I exercise quite a bit; at least 1-2 hours per day doing various things like weight training, yoga and running.

I am going to maintain a 3200-3500 calorie per day diet with the goal of gaining 10 pounds of lean mass by the new year. Yesterday I was 3300. The trick is to make sure the calories come from lean sources.

I’ll post some of my daily meal logs later.

 

 

 

   

 

We face lots of decisions that are binary, YES/NO decisions. Should I workout this morning? Should I call mom? Should I drink (another) nasty green drink? Should I go to that party? Should I bother showering today :) ?

In all cases, the answer YES is the right one.

We program our brains to say NO far to often. We are guarded and afraid that other people will take advantage of us, that our time is too valuable or that we will put ourselves in a situation where we might be hurt.

I’ve found that it is far more difficult for us to say YES than to say NO. Perhaps it was all that “say no to drugs brainwashing” (good brainwashing but brainwashing nonetheless) that went on in elementary school; but for many of the hard things in life, saying NO is far too easy.

This applies for learning a new skill, getting into a new social situation, exercising, diet….or anything really.

Take this example: you are faced with the decision of a) ordering and consuming a large veggie lovers pizza from Papa John’s or b) eating a large green salad with some tofu and avacado..something I am faced with at this very moment…the ensuing mental wrestling match will entail your brain trying to “say no” to the pizza. This is a losing proposition.

Saying NO implies scarcity. It means that you are giving up something. It closes off opportunity.

Instead of saying NO to the pizza, try refocusing your brain to say YES to option B, the big less-tasty-but-much-more-nutritious salad. Ignore option A and just say YES to option B as loud as you can.

Do not focus on what your are giving up, focus on what you are getting.

It may take a while, but reprogramming your brain to say YES should result in a much more powerful cue that you can leverage to make the right decisions in your life. It should also become easier to d over time.

NOTE: I just thought about this “just say YES” technology today. I have no idea if this concept is something that is taught by other success coaches, but it makes sense to me so I’m gonna try it out in my own life! I’ll post updates about how this is going as we move along.

Bamboo Garden Vegetarian Restaurant

Originally uploaded by ravisraman.

Eating a vegan lunch at Bamboo Garden. Its right near Tower Records in lower queen anne.

full menu is veggie…with fake meat (made from veg protein) and noodle soups.

Hare Krishna Festival

Originally uploaded by ravisraman.

The seattle hare krishna temple sponsored a heritage festival on alki in west seattle today. I decided to check it out. They had some great (free) veg food ( including raw and vegan) and a prominent booth display on why being a vegetarian/vegan is good.

good to see this sort of positive outreach happening.

Great talk on raw food, the health benefits and challenges. Paul is a leading authority on raw food and a raw food chef. He’s been raw for over 14 years.

Went sailing for the second time ever with couple great friends. Luckily, they knew what the heck they were doing! We were out for 3 days, heading north in Puget Sound to Port Ludlow and then on to Port Townsend. My body is still rockin with the waves!

More pics @ my flickr album.

I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks. For the first few days I was diligent about sticking to my raw food diet. Breakfast would typically be a few pieces of fruit. I carried raw almonds with me to snack on during the days. Lunch was typically a large salad. Dinner would typically be eaten out (or should I say “ordered in” since we were conducting focus groups during dinner time) with my Microsoft teammates; usually Chinese, Thai or Italian. I was doing alright, actually feeling great; then I headed out to Philadelphia to hang out with my college buddies and go to a wedding. I fell off the bandwagon.

Luckily, my college buddies also happen to be triathletes, runners and cyclists. Which means that no matter how much alcohol, or how many burritos were consumed the night before, working out the following morning was an absolute given.

After a few days of this craziness, and a couple days back at work, I headed out this past tuesday afternoon for a multi-day sailing adventure in Puget Sound with a few friends. Even when the sun is shining, the cool wind on The Sound cuts right through you. Fortunately, someone snuck a bottle of whisky, giant bags of chips and few packs of chocolate covered cashews on board. That stuff will definitely keep you warm :)

So since last Friday, I’ve been about 10% raw at best. I’ve supplemented with more than my share of crap food. I’ve had much less sleep than normal. I’ve been over hydrating with Lionshead Pilsner, Stella Artois and Hot Whisky.

It’s hard to say if it is all the cooked food or the lack of sleep or the alcohol that has been making me irritable and totally tanking my energy level (probably all of the above); but it has been a nice comparison point to my little raw food experiment.

Besides the generally lower energy level, I find that as my diet reverted back to a more “normal” diet, many of my bad habits resurfaced. I felts like drinking coffee to wake up (and often did, including today). I slept later than normal. I overate, or just ate crap. I also wasn’t as mentally alert or pleasant to be around. Not that I turned into some raving lunatic, but the  shift was much more dramatic than I would have expected.