Over the Weekend

I feel good. Great, even. Many (but not all) of my new habits and routines I’ve been building over the past month seem to be clicking all at once now, and my days feel good, and because of that, I feel good.

I woke up to twenty—twenty—low heart rate notifications on Friday, an obvious record for me. Last week, Apple Fitness+, my workout service of choice, released kickboxing workouts, and I spent every weekday last week going through them. Normally, my heart rate maxes out at around 150bpm during my most intense workouts (HIIT mostly), but I noticed during my kickboxing workout on Thursday that my heart rate maxed out in the 170s. During my sleep that night, I practically entered hibernation mode, and I woke up the next day feeling strong, lean, and healthy. When I weighed myself on Saturday, I dropped another pound, making that 4.5 pounds lost since the start of December. My goal then was 10 pounds, and I’m almost halfway through achieving it.

Fitness is only part of the equation. Good sleep also matters, as well as how I fuel my body. The last book I read last year was Thrive: The Plant-Based Whole Foods Way to Staying Healthy for Life by Brendan Brazier. The Thrive Diet is basically an alkaline diet, where the focus is on eating foods that are not too acidic. The first few chapters go through the science, and frankly, I didn’t give a shit about that. Brendan spent those chapters trying to sell me on his food philosophy, and it felt like a snake oil salesman trying to sell me on bullshit. But! The last half of the book was devoted on recipes, and these looked good. They were high on good, natural foods, something that jived well with my vegan diet—I diet I started on January of 2017. Over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly—oh god slowly—adding these recipes into my recipe app and acquiring as many ingredients as I could in my small town. Last week, I finally finished adding all the recipes into Mela, and I started to finally make some of these foods.

And oh my god.

The few I’ve made have been more than just good—they’ve been great. The almond flaxseed burger was orgasmic, and the chocolate blueberry energy bars helped me see in multiple dimensions. After I took my first bite of the burger, I messaged my friend and told her, “I love being vegan.” She didn’t say anything because she was busy eating meat, but oh my god, that night’s dinner is forever ingrained in my head. It was also the same night where I watched The Menu, which added an extra dimension to the viewing experience (what a great movie, by the way).

This week, I hope to keep pushing myself as hard, if not harder, during my workouts, and I hope to keep making more of these Thrive recipes. The book also has a 12-week meal plan (that I also digitized), and I’m not quiet ready to start that yet (some recipes require ingredients I can only find on Amazon so far), but it is on my radar. There are these pizza recipes I really want to try but they require buckwheat flour, and why don’t more stores carry buckwheat flour? What the hell? Anyways.

It’s been a good 2023 so far. Let’s keep going.