Can an Ironman-wanna-be become a vegetarian?

This was the challenge I set for myself last month. Due to personal reasons, I really wanted to try not to eat meat. The only meat I’ve been eating for years now is turkey and chicken, so I thought “how hard can this be”…………..I found my answer.

The past 5 weeks I have tried to get my protein exclusively through plant, egg whites, nut, soy and bean sources. After about 3 1/2 weeks, I started feeling horrible. I also had a minor surgery, culminating in an incision of about 6 inches, that wouldn’t heal and got infected, and my muscles were very sore for many days after normal workouts. Bottom line, I wasn’t getting enough protein for my active lifestyle, and this is only January! The real IM work hasn’t even begun. I had to do some soul searching on why I was trying to be a vegetarian, and whether it was worth it. For my body, it wasn’t working with my lifestyle. This was a hard decision for me to come to. However, in the past week I have added back chicken and turkey breast and I can not explain how much better I feel. It was very strange, but after 2 days, my incision was healing better, my muscles weren’t as sore, I had better workouts, and I was sleeping again. Oh right, I forgot to mention how this lack of protein also affected my sleep pattern. I think it’s great that I am figuring this all out now when I have time to recover before the “real” IM training kicks in, but why do I put myself through this in the first place! Isn’t one significant challenge per year enough! Sometimes I really hate my type A personality . As John Bingham says at the end of each of his articles, “waddle on folks”, until the next post.

I’d love to hear from you guys on your trials and tribulations to date too…..