Our friend Aaron Howard over at Mystic Merman has decided to challenge himself to 90 days of high raw and intense fitness. Aaron has been vegetarian for 20 years and has stepped that closer and closer to raw vegan ever since. Aaron is very knowledgable about nutrition and especially how superfoods can help us. He’ll be sharing his progress with us through his blog and every two weeks right here on Kale University.
Here is Aaron’s plan for carrying out this challenge:
Diet:
A plant-based diet, that is high in nutrients and devoid of processed foods. The meals will be mostly raw, gluten-free, and complimented with superfoods, many of which I have already blogged about. I will have six meals a day, with three being a small snack.Breakfast can be a smoothie, fruit, quinoa or amaranth “oatmeal,” or other. Lunch will usually be a mineral-rich salad with home-made raw dressings. Dinner can be another raw meal or a lightly cooked meal that emphasizes vegetables and ancient grains. Snacks can be fruit, energy bars (raw, home-made), an energy drink, vegetables or nuts and seeds. The key here is to make sure I get a good variety of food and macro- and micro-nutrients. I will give examples of my daily food intake in blogs every week.
Exercise:
The plan here is to work out six days a week. Three days of cardio/interval training will be alternated with three days of strength training. The seventh day will be a rest day. Again, the goal is to create variety for the body and mind, but also learn as I go, maximizing each workout without hurting myself. As this is happening in summer, I plan to do many workouts in the outdoors, but a lot of strength training will likely happen at the gym for the first few weeks.Goals:
Starting today, I will check my body weight, by BMI, body measurements, and other things I may learn about to make sure that I am making progress. While I don’t want to become obsessive about this, I do want to mark my progress, so I plan to check these things about twice a week. Right now, my BMI is on the border of what is considered obese, which means a year ago I was considered obese. Once I lose about 20 more pounds, I will be in the range of just being overweight. Ultimately, my goal is to come into my range for “normal” weight, which means I have about 59 pounds to lose. Measuring my body fat will fine tune this process, as this is a more accurate indication of how much extra fat I’m carrying, especially if I’m gaining muscle.
Suzanne and I have decided to take the 90 day challenge as well. We’ll be documenting Aaron’s progress as well as our own every two weeks along the journey. We have very similar goals to Aaron. We have gotten down to a good range but we are looking to really increase our strength and stamina. We will be running and doing strength training combined with a diet to incorporate a full amino acid profile.
We’ll be posting the progress both through pictures and through stats (inches, body fat %, weight) to help us see where it is that we are improving. When the 90 days is finished we will put together a framework from what we learned so that everyone can benefit from it.
Join Us!
Do you feel like you’re ready to up your game? Join us by kicking it up a notch for the next 90 days and share your story and progress with us. We love to see how everyone is doing!
