I decided to do a little research on this whole plant-based thing after seeing the movie “Forks Over Knives”. One book that caught my attention was Brendan Brazier’s Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life. The big attraction to this book was mainly that Brendan had been a professional triathlete and endurance athlete. After reading the book, I realized that this book provided much more information than just a triathlete’s experience of a whole foods, plant-based diet. This book has found a home in the kitchen alongside our food processor and other kitchen appliances. The pages are now stained and dog-eared.
The book provides an great amount of information about the types of foods that are important to eat and why their benefits are. Brendan breaks down the different types of stress that we deal with on a regular basis and how a Thrive diet can assist in alleviating those stressors, mostly nutritional stress. He dissects each type of food or nutrient and explains what each thing provides you nutritionally and how much you need. He has obviously done a lot of research which is clearly evident when reading the in-depth information he provides in a clear and concise manner.
The book gives many examples of why it is beneficial. Some of those ways surprised me and are not that obvious to most people. After a while though it became a bit repetitive and I found myself saying “OK, I sold!” I was sold on the fact that he was a professional triathlete. Although his triathlon resume is not extremely lengthy. But ok, he was still more than fat age-grouper like me.
The other part of the book provides a 12 week meal plan to get you started. All the meals are defined in recipe section. The recipes were very tasty, but a bit off-the-wall. I would have never thought of using some of the ingredients in those ways. He really must have spent a lot time coming up with those. One thing we noticed(my wife started out trying it too) was that the recipes were very heavy in nuts and seeds, which are also have a lot of calories. I was in the middle of my triathlon training season, so it didn’t affect me too much but my wife ended up putting on a couple pounds. So be careful with those if you are not training heavily.
I picked up a copy of Brendan’s other recipe book Thrive Foods: 200 Plant-Based Recipes for Peak Health. The recipes in this book are much more “normal” and for the most part less calorie intense. Most, if not all recipes are from different restaurants and other places, which is listed with each recipe. My favorite is the Red Lentil Daal. Together these two books had formed the basis for my inception of a whole foods, plant-based diet and I think are a must-have in the kitchen for anyone eating this way.
