Increasing the Calories, eating more cooked food

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.