Request for testimonials from athletes

Share your McDougall successes here in order to inspire others.

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Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby funcrunch » Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:26 pm

I'm not ready to share my own success story yet, but I've been on a big fitness kick lately and am very interested in hearing stories from others who have found this diet has helped their athletic progress. As noted in the newsletter, even Carl Lewis, an world record-setting athlete, benefited from the McDougall Program, and so has the amazing triathlete Ruth Heidrich. Whether or not you started this way of eating with the intention of losing weight, I'm interested in hearing from those who have set personal records, entered competitions they never dreamed of participating in, etc. Thanks!

(This is just for my own information; I have no intention of publishing it anywhere. Though perhaps if there are enough responses, Dr. McD might do another newsletter feature on athletes someday?)

P.S. I also have a thread going in the Exercise and Fitness forum for those who would like to share their daily workouts!
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby vgpedlr » Wed Jul 18, 2012 8:58 am

I'm hoping for newsletter article as well. Especially since we have some inspiring plant based athlete stories come out recently like Rich Roll and Scott Jurek. And it's an Olympic year, what better topic! I've head McD mention at times that he thinks the reason most people don't exercise is that they simply feel too awful to do it. That's definitely been my experience. I've always enjoyed outdoor and endurance sports, but until I changed my diet, I just couldn't make any progress before burning out. Whenever I go off plan for whatever reason, the first thing that suffers is my motivation to train. And as soon as I straighten up, enthusiasm is the first thing that returns. I always wanted to do triathlons, since I have a background in all three sports, but could never last through a whole training plan. Now I do several a year, focusing on XTERRA, which is an off-road (mountain bike/trail run) triathlon. I've done two 8 hr MTB races this summer so far (powerd by purple potatoes!), with another planned for next month. This Sunday I have another marathon length MTB race. I'm slow and at the back of the pack, but I always finish with a smile, excited for the next one. All this because I eat starch and high nutrient plant foods. I must give credit where credit is due, a nearly equal part of my success was discovering the Maffetone Method.

Who else rocks it now in ways that were impossible before?

BTW:
Congrats on your race, funcrunch! You're close to your goal, and it was unplanned, and you got there under your own power! I tried to comment on your race report, but Livejournal decided my Wordpress ID was spam. :-(
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby funcrunch » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:13 am

That's so awesome that you're doing triathlons. I doubt I could ever do one of those; I can't swim and dislike cycling. I'm pretty much a monoathlete ;-) (Though I do cross-train with stair climbing and weight lifting.)

I've read both Jurek's and Roll's books. Jurek's diet is a lot closer to McDougall's. Rich Roll says starch is bad and likes drinking green smoothies and apple cider vinegar and weird stuff.

Thanks on your kudos, and I un-spammed your comment yesterday when I saw it. I turned on screening for all non-friend comments by default because LiveJournal has been attracting a huge number of spammers lately :-(
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby Spiral » Wed Jul 18, 2012 3:50 pm

I started my plant based diet in September 2010 and two months later, on the morning of Thanksgiving, I became a runner when I ran a 5K Turkey Trot.

I had read so much from Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. McDougall about the cardiovascular benefits of a plant based diet, by the time my relatives challenged the family to do the Turkey Trot, I thought I was superhuman for having been on the diet for two whole months.

I quickly realized that I being healthy and being fast are the not the same thing. Still, I was hooked. And I have been running ever since. I am even get a little faster at it.

I am intrigued by vgpedlr's ventures into triathlondom. But the idea of juggling three sports is intimidating to me at this point.
Last edited by Spiral on Wed Jul 18, 2012 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby funcrunch » Wed Jul 18, 2012 3:51 pm

Spiral wrote:I quickly realized that I being healthy and being fast are the not the same thing. Still, I was hooked. And I have been running ever since. I am even get a little faster at it.

Amen! I'm still working on the speed part!
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby Tiger » Thu Jul 19, 2012 12:20 pm

I don't have a personal success story (yet) but would like to post the story of Eula Weaver, who came to the Pritikin program (very much like the McDougall program) at age 81, barely able to move. I first read about her years ago when I was very young and 81 years old seemed like the grave. If anyone ever inspired me to start moving (and I was a very fat and sedentary teenager), it was Eula Weaver, because I thought if she can exercise with all her problems, so can I.

This account of her story came from a website, soil and health:

Age as a limiting factor in rehabilitation

Our study has indicated the promising rehabilitative potential of a diet and activity regimen for claudication patients. That age need not be a limiting factor in rehabilitation is demonstrated by the case of a woman, E.W.: She began, almost 6 years ago at age 81, using the same regimen described in this paper for the experimental group. Her symptoms, like those of the study patients, included other atherosclerotic manifestations besides claudication. Only 5'3 " tall and weighing 100 lbs for the last 40 years, she had developed cardiovascular disease and was treated for angina at age 67. At age 75 she was hospitalized with severe heart attack, and at age 81 had claudication, congestive heart failure, hypertension, angina and arthritis. When she began the regimen at age 81, her claudication limited her walking to 100 feet and even then the calf pain was so disabling she often had to be carried home; and the circulation to her hands was so impaired she wore gloves in the summertime.

Last year, at age 85, and after 4 years on the regimen, she was televised at the Senior Olympics in Irvine, California, where she won 2 gold medals in the half-mile and mile running events. This year, at age 86-1/2, she repeated the runs and now has 4 gold medals. Each morning she runs a mile and rides her stationary bicycle 10-15 miles; twice weekly she works out in a gym; and she follows her diet assiduously. Her systolic pressure is 70 mm.

Conclusion:

This combined low-fat diet and exercise approach has proven to be significantly (p <.001) more effective in the treatment of severe peripheral atherosclerotic vascular disease than current therapies.

It is hoped that the results reported by the use of this regimen will encourage other investigators to repeat our studies.
Be compassionate, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby vgpedlr » Thu Jul 19, 2012 2:17 pm

Triathlons can be a bit intimidating, but with a variety of distances available, it's easy to start small. I like the variety, both in training and on race day. I'm lucky in that I swam (poorly) in high school so what is usually the hardest sport for most people is not a big deal. I need to swim more, but it is so darn inconvenient. Not like running or cycling where I just head out the door. I really just want to run around in the woods all day, with or without a number pinned on. But I have found that I also enjoy the challenge and intensity of racing.

You are all right on the money to note that health and fitness are not the same thing. They are related, but you can be fit and not healthy, and healthy but not fit. I strive for both, but it does take compromise. So it can be frustrating when I see what other very fit, very fast racers eat. Why can't I beat them? :x
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby Steelhead » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:42 pm

Without bragging about my own athletic success, I will share some science that hopefully will help motivate everyone to not hold back on following Dr. McDougall's suggested dietary program while endeavoring to attain athletic success.

The key principles regarding athletic prowess are (1) genes and (2) hard work (not necessarily in that order). The goal is to maximize our genetic potential through training. As many of us have discovered, we don't really need to eat all that much to be energetic and fit, but we do need glycogen and that comes from carbohydrates (including importantly starches).

A real benefit for the athlete on this type of eating program is that we get our energy from carbohydrate and don't need to use protein as an energy source; hence, we don't need that much protein for building tissue.

If we take the recommended energy intake in calories for each age group, say 2500 C for the average adult male, and calculate the percentage of this value that the RDA for protein supplies, the values approximate 10 percent for each age group. The National Academy of Sciences indicated that the AMDR (Acceptable Macronutrient Disribution Range) should not be set below levels for the RDA for protein, which is about 10 percent of energy. Mathematically, 56 grams of plant-based protein, at 4 Calories per gram, total 224 Calories, which is about 9-percent of 2,500, or near the lower limit of the AMDR. (It is easy getting 56 grams or more from a plant-based diet - stating the obvious and preaching to the choir.)

Consequently, protein needs are determined by overall food energy intake. If energy intake is inadequate, such as may be the case in those on weight-loss diets or the elderly, dietary protein may be used for energy instead of its core purpose of building tissue. (This is why this is not a calorie-restricted diet even though it appears that some still count calories and focus on losing muscle mass and water instead of burning fat and gaining muscle mass -- that is, throw the scale away and buy a measuring tape.)

Hence, if the active individual desires to maintain lean body mass, it is essential to have not only adequate protein (from plant sources is fine), but also sufficient carbohydrate Calories in the diet to provide a protein sparing effect. In other words, our plant-based, high starch diet, is brilliant for the athlete: carbohydrate Calories will be used for energy production, thus sparing utilization of protein as an energy source and allowing it to be used for its more important structural and metabolic functions. The presence of adequate muscle glycogen inhibits enzymes that catabolize muscle protein -- thereby reducing the amount of necessary dietary protein compared to the low-carbohydrate diet leading to decreased muscle glycogen levels leading to increased dependence upon protein as an energy source (a bad thing).

I don't have the exact reference, but recall that scientists at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands noted that high-carbohydrate diets have a protein-sparing effect for endurance athletes.

Moreover, protein metabolism becomes more efficient as a result of training: the response of muscle protein turnover to habitual exercise is comparable to other metabolic changes in the muscle associated with exercise training. Although an initial bout of exercise may markedly elevate protein breakdown and synthesis in an untrained individual, the effect is much less in one who has trained habitually. Training induces a decreased activity in BCAAD, the enzyme that oxidizes BCAA (Branch Chained Amino Acid), when exercising at a standardized workload of the same absolute intensity! Trained individuals, during rest after exercise, have been shown to experience a preferential oxidation of fat and a sparing of protein. This is why in pertinent part a high starch, low protein, low fat diet, with exercise burns off our fat and makes us lean.

In its recent Dietary Reference Intakes for protein, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that in view of the lack of compelling evidence to the contrary, NO additional dietary protein is suggested for healthy adults undertaking resistance or endurance exercise. Some investigators even contend that because exercise training increases the ability of the body to retain protein in the recovery period, athletes in training may need less protein than sedentary individuals if they consume enough Calories to maintain body weight.

So I expect everyone eating as recommended by Dr. McDougall who embarks on an athletic program will experience great success -- and will recognize the brilliance of eating correctly when it comes to athletic success.

Just do it.
No matter what genes we inherit, changes in diet can affect DNA expression at a genetic level." Michael Greger M.D.

Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition - eCornell & T. Colin Campbell Foundation.
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby TerriT » Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:47 pm

That's really interesting info, Steelhead. Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Request for testimonials from athletes

Postby veggie lover » Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:10 pm

Great info. Thanks, Steelhead!
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