The Whole Bloody Truth!

Here it is, our release of records!  We believe in full transparency and want you to be informed as much as possible!  When we first started our plant based adventure, there was much less information available than there is now.  In just the past couple years, we have seen a rapid growth in information on the internet, books, documentaries, etc.  While this wasn’t a new concept at the time and there was some limited resources available, it wasn’t exactly sitting on a display at the Whole Foods salad bar either.  On top of that, everyone’s curiosity is sparked by different reasoning, with different goals in mind.

For us, it was purely chronic disease prevention.  However, we are both very active and had questions about what the effect, if any, would be regarding our athletic performance.  So we not only wanted to find out what the effects were going to be regarding chronic disease prevention, we wanted to know how our bodies would hold up under the stresses of rigorous exercise.  We were familiar with the R.A.V.E. Diet book and The China Study, but these resources did not address the athletic performance.  There was also the resources from Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. McDougal, but again, short on information for athletes.  Forks Over Knives hadn’t come out yet, nor had the Engine 2 Diet.

Some how, we missed finding Brendan Brazier’s books, which would have been a tremendous help.  I guess we overlooked the whole foods, plant based athlete section at the book store.  Rich Roll wasn’t a public figure yet.  We had yet to enter the “blogosphere,” so we even missed out on great resources like No Meat Athlete.  While there were a couple of vegan body building resources, we had not considered that as a source since it was outside the scope of our fitness goals.  So we were a bit lost as to what was in store for us.

We decided to do the next best thing.  Run our own experiment and follow our body’s response to the plant based changes.  Coincidentally we already had our blood taken that year, so we had a baseline to work from before we made our transition.  We gave our bodies about 5 months to adjust to the changes.  Additionally we were busy refining our own dietary practices and finding what worked for us.  So after our food consumption stabilized and our meal plans were more consistent, we went back to see how things had progressed!

Since then we have had our blood taken again, one year after the first blood drawing (1 year 9 months since the dietary change).  So listed below are the tables containing the results.  The first table is for Josh, and the second table is for Lauren.  The first column is the baseline, while we were still eating meat products.  The second column contains the results after eating whole foods, plant based for 5 months and the third column is after 1 year 9 months of making the switch.  The results listed are not the “full panel,” but an excerpt of the pertinent data that would be affected by a major dietary change.

It should be restated that we are not doctors and this does not constitute as medical advice.  This is just results from our own experiences to share for what it’s worth.  We all have accounts of how much better we “feel” by living a healthy lifestyle and eating a clean diet, but sometimes the data is nice to look at as well.  So here is what is going on inside!

Here are the results for Lauren: