I've been thinking of switching over to a vegetarian diet.
For those runners who were past meat eaters and became vegetarians, have you noticed benefits?
Is it difficult to maintain it and a balanced diet?
I've been thinking of switching over to a vegetarian diet.
For those runners who were past meat eaters and became vegetarians, have you noticed benefits?
Is it difficult to maintain it and a balanced diet?
It's been a LONG time since I've eaten meat (1989), but I actually found the transition to be pretty easy. The main thing is to not change the nutritional makeup of your current diet. If you currently eat 3k calories a day with 80 grams of protein, stick to that. Everybody needs something different, so go with what works for you.
Some definite benefits: Veggie food digests a LOT quicker than meat, so you can expect to be able to run a lot sooner after meals with more quick energy. Also, you're taking yourself out of the drug game.... with all of the subclinical doses of antibiotics, hormones, steroids, etc that are currently found in meat, by eliminating that, you'll probably see your immune system get stronger. In my experience, vegetarians get sick less often than meat eaters, and vegans almost never get sick (speaking from personal experience... I haven't had even a cold in years). I'm not entirely sure whether this is a correlative or causal relationship, I just know what I've observed over the last 20 years.
Good luck!
My guess is that anyone eating more veggies is less likely to get sick...I would correlate the lack of sickness with that more than I would intaking less meat...that is just a pure guess though.
I've been a vegetarian my whole running career, just make sure you're getting the nutrients that you would be getting from meet. Make sure to get some protein in your diet, and supplement that with a Multi-V.
I would go COLD TURKEY.
After you eat that for a couple months, you will realize how ridiculous vegetarianism is and just go back to eating a healthy, well balanced diet.