Suck it Thrive

We chose Thrive because, as far as I know, it's the only documented vegetarian based diet with sports performance in mind.  What we ignored was that we already eat a pretty healthy, well balanced diet and are getting great results.  We have stopped the Thrive diet.  We got over the 'carb withdraws' that Thrive/Paleo talks about and got into the core of the diet that was easy enough.  Here's my main complaint, not enough calories.

Both Jenni and I had a hard time getting in more than 1500 calories a day.  Simply not enough to sustain at CrossFit or any solid form of working out.  Hell, you can't even maintain weight @ 1500 calories a day.  We both had extreme fatigue during the day and I can't help but worry about getting too thin on such a dainty diet.

We are back on our normal diet, which we have seen amazing results with.  It's a basic Lacto Vegetarian diet, which basically means no meat/fish of any kind, however we eat all forms of dairy.  I've done a million tweaks to this diet everything from super protein heavy, low carb to high fat, medium carb, low protein to a 33/33/33 split.

Honestly, I've found a lot more results from how I'm working out than how I change my diet.  The only consistent thing I've found I need to watch out for, is when I go below around 1800 calories a day I start to lose muscle.  Not cool.

In my opinion, for my body.  Here is what I've found...

Eat well, cook food, stick with whole grain breads/pastas.  Be wary of processed soy products and processed products in general, really anything that comes in a box.  Eat lots of veggies, fruit, nuts.  Eggs and milk are awesome.  Use high quality vitamins, yes spend the money on good ones.  Chlorella, Spirulina, Flax and Hemp are gifts from God and it's a shame meat eaters tend to ignore them.  Don't eat too much taco bell or pizza.  Eat as much as you can.
That's basically what we've found works best for us.

To end this one, here are a couple of before/after shots.  These shots are after 11 weeks of CrossFit.  My weight has remained at 148lbs, my bodyfat has dropped from 15% to 12.4%.

The last pictures are of me when I was 25. I ate poorly, I didn't work out, I ate meat, my cholesterol was high and I was well on my way to being fat and unhealthy... wait no, I was already there...