Discussion Board

I also think diet is more important than exercise.
To quote Jack LaLane by memory, "Exercise is king, diet is queen. Put them together and you have a kingdom". Now I would reverse the order, but both are necessary for optimal health.

Another aspect I think is important for someone with high blood pressure or cholesterol embarking on a lifestyle change including exercise is to adhere to a 100% healthy diet for 3 weeks to enable enough healing of the endothelium to dramatically reduce your chance of a heart attack before starting the exercise, based on Dr Esselstyn's book on heart disease.

I'm 100% on board with that, Spiral. I've noticed over the years that Dr. McDougall has been closing a lot of lectures with the phrase, "I'd eat cardboard if that's what it took to get to spend a few more years with my grandchildren." (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but I'm confident that he expressed this sentiment in some way.) Health is important; long life is great; but I think having something to live for is equally great, perhaps, even greater. And exercise & sport, with it's easy path to accomplishment, provides an accessible reason to live. Whenever I hear someone minimizing the place of exercise in our health regimen, I remind myself that our choices in life are made along a continuum. Some people will not give up their quarter pounders and fries for their health. As so much testimony in these forums indicates, one of our the greatest impediments to adopting this lifestyle, no matter how certain you are intellectually of its effectiveness, is the loss of the socialization spent among friends at meals, and that becomes the point at which some people forfeit their health. Exercise seems like one, "extravagance," that does not need to be forfeited to be healthy in accordance with this program. And it feeds the enthusiasm for healthy adoption of the plan, as you begin to eat to support your exercise regimen, and the nominal calorie expenditure contributes to weight loss, which is the main reason that many people choose to adopt this way of life in the first place. I guess I found my running before I found this lifestyle. I began to explore eating to support the running and it led me to Pritikin and, ultimately here. Now I am more interested in getting every possible moment out. I think it accompanies my increasing atheism with age. As I look back over the many places I've lived, I often remember daily jogs I used to take in those places and they seemed to have an influence on my impression of those places that is well beyond what I'd expect. It seems like people that have not experienced the same effects from some kind of aerobic exercise have missed something worth knowing. And the symbiosis between diet and exercise makes the the latter take an even greater role in attaining and maintaining health.

Anyway, from things you've expressed here as well as in our PMs, I don't think you're going to be one of those people I feel sorry for.

Mark

For me, the reverse was true. I adopted a Colin Campbell-Esselstyn-McDougall eating plan after being exposed to their views on diet and health. Although I was not seriously overweight, getting below 25 BMI seemed like an impossible dream. A few months after adopting this way of eating the dream came true.

When my aunt and uncle, who had completed several olympic distance triathalons, suggested that our family run a 5 kilometer race for the hungry on Thanksgiving morning, I was immediately interested in running the race.

My wife was surprised because I had always said that my bowed legs, my pronated feet and my mild asthma made running uncomfortable. But having been on a whole foods plant based diet for 2 months, I thought that I was superman. I also thought that my performance in the 5k race would "prove" to my skeptical relatives that plant based is the way to go, just as Popeye "proved" that eating spinach made you super-strong.

Well, um. I ran the 5k very slow and I was absolutely exhausted for the remainder of Thanksgiving Day. I guess eating a healthy diet won't turn us all into olympic athletes. Still, over the past year or so, I have clung rigidly to both the McDougall diet and a consistent running and racing schedule.

Some days as I look ahead to running my first half marathon in May, I think, "Is it really me doing this? Me, a runner?"

Recently my wife told me that she thinks I would get better race results if I ate . . . . . . you guessed it. More protein.

I told her that if I had not adopted the McDougall diet, I would not have had the confidence to even attempt running.


You should only feel sorry for me if I either give up this way of eating or give up running.