Vegan Celebrities

Hi everyone,

I am not saying here you should become vegan and no you don't have to become a celebrity. Actually - this is the first post on which I really don't know what I am saying. I mean look at these beauties...

Pamela Anderson, Age:46

She's vegan, eats raw food, pay super attention to her diet, she eats vegetables, fruits, nuts, doing cardio at the gym, carries a bottle of water with her at all times and she's going to run the NYC marathon. And yes she's still many men's eye candy.

Demi Moore, Age:50

She's vegan, eats raw food, and looks great.

Alanis Morissette, Age:39

She's not only vegan but also nutritarian, pursuing more or less the same diet that am adopting. It helped her regain her health.

Michelle Pfeiffer, Age:55

In an interview that she gave Sanjai Gupta she said she read this book "prevent and reverse heart disease" which advocated for a plant based, oil-free diet and said that her mind was made up. 

she said "I just felt likt... htere was science behind it, And you know, it was sort of irrefutable... I couldn't not listen to it. My father died from cancer, and the older you get, there's a lot of disease around you. And you see people struggling with chronic disease. You see people dying with terminal illnesses. ?And if in any way... this is true, then you kind of have to listen to it"

Bill Clinton, Age:66

Bill Clinton used to eat steaks, hamburgers and such until his heart condition deteriorated. He had a quadruple bypass surgery and since 2011 he's vegan and feels great.

Daryl Hannah, Age:52

She's vegan since the age of 11, animal right activist, environmental activist. The picture at the right is an updated picture. The one on the left is ~20 years old, in case you are confused.

Carl Lewis, Age:52

He's vegan since May 1990 and he said "my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet".

Mike Tyson, Age:47

He's vegan too. He wanted to lose weight, get rid of drugs so he became vegan, lost 50 Kg and his blood pressure improved.

Aviel.

Budha Burgers - a yummy vegan restaurant

Hi folks,

Yesterday I had a festive lunch with my beautiful daughter Donna at Budha Burgers. It's a vegan bar. We were celebrating me shedding 30Kgs in less than 3 months... They make the best burger in town made of beans, they also make lots of tofu products, quinoa, and of course shakes & smoothies.

And Donna? my daughter? Well you surely know Donna by now, she's the one who lost her phone from my other blog.... She's a 20 year old charming girl, and she's vegetarian and she really wants to go all vegan.

So here you can see us smiling to the camera.

According to my nutritarian vegan diet the salad is the main dish. So they have this bar with ~20 types of vegetables and you build your own salad. I took the big plate. It's too small for my standards!!! Now regarding the vegetables - There was an avocado, carrots, hummus, lettuce, chickpeas, tomatoes, and more. Well these are not exactly what I call Greens - right? Cause if they sell the real green - Spinach, Chard, Kale, etc then no body is going to buy. They are a business and after many years in the business they know how big should be the plate and what do salad eaters want to eat. They are not catering for the extreme vegans - nutritarians who need and crave real green. Normally I don't just eat Avocado, and I try to limit the amount of hummus I consume and I eat less starches and that means I don't eat carrots every day. But since I was in a festive mood and I was hungry then I ate that, and it was yummy. 

There were ~6 types of very yummy sauces to choose from. I eat nut based sauces at home. I asked!! - they don't sell it. Well again - I can understand them. It's expensive. These people are making a living selling vegan food and they can't afford expensive nuts & seeds. Still I would prefer that they tell me - you want the ceasers sauce? ok that's additional 4 Shekels. And that's fine with me. 

When I say that these people are making a living I mean that I am sure that Arie, the owner, didn't open this in order to make tons of money, he is pursuing a goal in his life. Money & health is second in his priorities. His first priority is to save the poor animals. It's not about the money.

My daughter asked him about this '269' all over the place. He explained that this is the number that was branded on a calf living in Israel that was going to be slaughtered. People feel pity for small cute animals like their cat, their parrot or their dog but they forget about big animals like cows who are being murdered for food. It's easy for people to forget. I think the brain cannot process and comprehend numbers. We just don't get it when we are told that 6,000,000 Jews were murdered in the holocaust and we don't understand it when they tell us that 150,000,000,000 animals are murdered every year because people want to eat them (look at this amazing counter), but I was crying buckets when I was following the extinction of the Weiss family in the movie holocaust. Same goes here for this one poor anonymous calf. So I encourage you to take a look at their web site: http://269life.com. btw, 2/Oct is the world farm animal day - a year ago they branded 269 on their skin in Rabin Square.

Now back to our lunch. As a nutritarian I top my salad with up to 1 cup of cooked beans. So instead I ordered their famous Budha Burger which I hope is made of beans. I usually don't eat bread but since I was in a festive mood - I ate the burger buns too :)

And I drank green a green smoothie, which were in my opinion very tasty but not as dense as the ones I prepare at home. Again - it's all about the money. They are catering for young vegetarians living nearby in rented apartments, with shaved heads and one day beards - they can't afford to pay too much. It's not for well heeled customers like myself.

My daughter ordered a puree and she was of course disappointed but then she ate her salad and mine and enjoyed it immensely and also enjoyed the seitan burger (was it? Donna?)

I was eating at Budha Burgers for years, since they were a small place in Dizingof street. The owner, Arie, is a very good looking vegan. After a long break when I saw him yesterday - wow - he still hasn't lost his hair, still good looking, few more character lines, healthy, still crazy after all these years.

We surely be back!!

Meanwhile you can check up my other restaurants reviews,

Aviel.

Eat these 3 food types to boost your sex drive

Hiya all,

Since I published my article about how to have a beautiful skin I was thinking that actually by eating the right food one can sculpt not only how the skin looks but also increase the sex drive. I thought, wow if I have the same success with the sex thing like I am having with my skin then wow I am going to have constant erection throughout the day.

So I started searching the net and I found out that everybody are copying from everybody the same myths but no body is quoting a scientific paper. 

I decided to go deeper than that and read "great food, great sex".

Now let me give you the gist of this book...

First of all - disappointment - this book is not dealing with increasing ones desire. It deals with boosting the mechanism that help us maintain full erection, in short it's dealing with how to avoid erectile dysfunction (and of course its feminine counterpart).

So let's get right to it - 

The brain released acetylcholine (ACh) as result of sexual arousal. These things travel along the blood vessels and arrive to the sex organs where they signals to a guy called endothelium to release a gas, that's called nitric oxide (NO). NO then causes the endothelium to release something called cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). cGMP relaxes the blood vessels and thus help increasing the blood flow into the sex organs and there you go - you have erection in men (or engorgement in women).

Maybe this illustration can help you memorize...

After sex, the enzyme phosphdiesterase type 5 (PDE5) deactivates the cGMP.

Now this is new stuff, only in 1998 three american scientists were awarded the nobel price because they discovered that the endothelium releases a gas called NO and it relaxes the veins. Before this discovery no one was able to gain erection!! Well at least these 3 scientists couldn't.

Anyway what could go wrong in this system? or in other words - why do so many fat slobs suffer from erectile dysfunction? (Don't look at me - I didn't suffer from this - you can ask my special lady)

Well first of all the Ach should reach the endothelium through the blood stream. For that you need your blood vessels to be clean so that blood can reach the endothelium with the Ach message. But if you are suffering from atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) then no way you are gonna get those messages. You need low LDL and high HDL. There's a paper saying that men with LDL of 240 have two times probability of having erectile dysfunction than those having LDL of 180. So you see where the knee in the graph is. For this you need to get rid of free radicals - you need to eat super antioxidants.

The second station is the endothelium - the guy that generates the NO. It uses the protein arginine for that so you better have enough arginine in your diet. And of course you need NO.

So if we summarize the food types that we need then there are 3 of them

1. Nitric Oxide (NO) rich food.
2. Arginine rich food.
3. Super Anti oxidants.

Nitric Oxide (NO) rich food

These are the famous greens and beans. Hey this is exactly that main food of my nutritarian diet. So I don't have to worry about these - I eat tons of them. Just for those of you who are not familiar with the term 'greens' (shame, shame) here's a list: Kale, Bok Choy, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Collard, Celery, etc (you can see them here and here). I still remember feeding my aquarium plants KNO3 and these little bastards converted them to NO that animals eat after which they enjoy good sex. So I am all set. Of course the book doesn't say how much NO is required and at least by USDA data base doesn't tell how much NO we have in all sorts of food types... so no need to dig any further.

Arginine rich food

Well again the book doesn't say what the required daily allowance here... (shame, shame, shame) but it does say that an average american consumes ~5.4 grams. The main sources for this food is meat, fish and cheese but veggies still have enough arginine so the question is if my nutritarian diet gets enough of this arginine.

I had to work very hard to add arginine to the basic tables of the USDA data base and the result is that I consume daily only 3466 mg. This result is in line with the numbers provided by Dr. Fuhrman in his book "the end of diabetes" where he measured a typical meal having 3627 mg. The following cake shows which foods are providing me with arginine in my diet:

So as you can see my beloved greens and cruciferous are not contributing much. Nuts & Seeds are a known source for Arginine - so that's good to know however they cost tons of calories - I can't afford to be fat just because of this Arginine. It doesn't show here but half of the arginine in the 'other veggies ' section comes from Tofu. So there are two things that I should make sure I eat daily - and never miss - Nuts/Seeds & Tofu.

Now the question is if this is enough. Well I searched the internet and I couldn't find an RDA for arginine. I read that this Arginine is good for other benefits too:

• Impotents with erectile dysfunction are consuming 5 grams a day.
• For cognition improvement people are taking 1.6 grams a day.
• For body builders who wish to have higher level of growth hormone production - 6 grams a day.
• And of course for diabetes, coronary heart disease and such - we are talking way more. 

Well 3.5 looks sufficient for me, as long as I don't forget to consume my seeds, nuts and tofu.

There are no other sources for me. 'Normal people' can get it from meat, fish and cheese - but again - it's an issue of spending lots of calories for this arginine which is a problem for me.

Getting this as supplement means 0.5$ per day per gram. If I want additional 2 grams per day then that means 30$ per month. Not too expensive.

I notice that 50 grams of nuts & seed provide me with a daily 1g of Arginine. If I double that and eat more nuts & seeds then I can get an additional 1 gram of Arginine. It shall take my calories from fat up from 15% to 19% which is not that bad and I quote from the book "The daily addition of one or two ounces of nuts and seeds, which average about 175 calories an ounce, can bring the diet up to 15 to 30 percent of calories from fat. This is important, and I repeat: my recommended diet is eating 15 percent or more calories from fat in the form of healthy, whole foods, not oil."

But do I want it?

I have to say that I don't, at least not now when I am slimming down. I believe that if I want to be a big muscular monkey with lots of hair and hard and erect all day long - then it's not about just buying Arginine supplement I will have to buy a whole set of proteins, I believe that anything I eat is in moderation so I can't expect Arginine alone to do all the magic. I have to live with the fact that I should be moderate from now on and that's it. Less growth, slower life, live longer - hu humm yes!

Super Anti Oxidants

Well here my nutritarian vegan shouldn't be a problem right? All greens are anti oxidants, and especially the cruciferous family. Also onions are anti oxidants so my diet has plenty of anti-oxidants, no need to buy supplements for that.

Aviel.

The one big problem with this nutritarian diet

It's the food preparation!! This is the problem with this diet. Last weekend for example, I had to spend 6 hours in the kitchen preparing my food for the next week.6 f**ing hours of cutting, blending, mixing,  warming, packaging food into plastic containers, etc, etc - Wow!! If there's something that could break my enthusiastic spirit - it's the fact that I can't just grab some processed, pre-prepard junk food from the fridge. I have to prepare it myself, upfront and I have to spend time on this. TIME! Time is such an asset for me - I really don't have time, I really don't, I can hardly find one hour to blog here and there... and this diet is time consuming. Yes - it is!!

But as for now I think that it is worth it - it's an absolutely life saving diet, I feel so absolutely great that yes - it is worth it.

My Nutritarian Vegan Diet

Hi everyone,

People are amazed at how come I lost 24 Kgs in two months. So here's the answer.

what do I eat? 

I am following Dr. Fuhrman's diet as described in his book "The end of Diabetes". This diet focuses primarily on the G-BOMBS....

• Greens
• Beans
• Onions
• Mushrooms
• Berries
• Seeds & Nuts

I am vegan. I don't eat meat, fish, chicken, milk, cheese, eggs - in short no animal food intake.

I eat 3 meals a day. A small breakfast that most of your would consider 'aperitif' (Well at least that's what my special lady thinks and I am in no position to argue with her). It contains fruits, oats, seeds, nuts, oats...

I eat lunch, I eat dinner, I don't snack between meals. I don't eat before I feel hungry.

I drink only water. No coffee, no tea,  no herbs, no coke, no sweetened drinks, even artificially sweetened!

My main course for both lunch and dinner is a huge salad with all sorts of sauces made primary of Tofu and nuts. I top the salad with a cup of cooked beans or bean patties, or tofu, hummus and such, but the main course is the salad.

Half of my meals contain a vegetable soup and in that case the salad is smaller.

If I have to estimate then I consume 400 grams greens per day - mainly lettuce, spinach, chard & green onions. Occasionally I add parsley and such. I eat most of these raw! 

On top of this I eat  200 grams cruciferous vegetables: kale, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, arugula, radish. I eat half of these raw and half of these steamed.

Then I also liberally eat tomatoes, mushrooms, leeks, artichokes, peepers, celeries, endives & zucchinis. About 200 grams per day.

I top the salad with home made lemon juice. I sometime add mustard roots.

I also add garlic cloves and onions to my soups and home made sauces. I also add tofu and when I need a sweet taste then I add dry dates.

I don't consume oil. I eat nuts & seeds instead. Occasionally I would add half an avocado to my salad. I limit myself to 50g nuts/seeds per day so if I eat half avocado then I eat less nuts & seeds. I eat half of my nuts for breakfast mixed with my fruits.

I eat frozen berries: all sorts of: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, currants.

I eat 3 fresh fruits in the morning, 1 eat lunch and one at dinner: bananas, peaches, apples, grapes, kiwis, pomegranates,  and many more.

I eat the following starchy stuff only every second dinner: carrots, beets, peas, squash. About 100 grams in total.

I limit grain consumption. I rarely add minuscule amounts of rice to flavor my salad/soup. I do eat half cup oats sometimes for breakfast but I don't cook them, I soak them in water. 

As for high-starch foods made of flour - I don't touch them. I don't eat whole wheat bread (!!), I don't eat white rice (god forbid) or white potatoes. And of course I don't touch refined flour products such a 'normal' bread... I don't eat bread at all.

I never add salt, I never sprinkle oil and I don't use sweeteners.

Every day I take 100 m Cartia (aspirin), 25 mg iron, 1g Omega oil, 1200 mcg B-12 & 400 mcg Folic Acid.

I spend 10 minutes tanning per day, I run every day for ~20 minutes and I lift heavy weights twice a week.

Aviel.

run forest run

Hello everyone and happy Rosh Hashana,

I am sure you remember that scene from the movie "Forest Gump" where Forest is running for his life, right after his gf shouts at him "Run forest run"....

Yep that's about how I feel these days - I am running for my life - and YAY I can run 5 minutes w/o taking a break.

I walk/run from Freescale to the Herzliya beach and then back. If you recall I am following the c25k (Couch Potato to 5K) program using an application called run double on my Android so on their web site I can see how I was doing.... see? 

Training starts with the synthesized voice (of a woman) telling me "Start your warm up now", then I run for 5 minutes when I hear her husky voice saying "Start running now" and I run for 3 minutes. Then I hear her saying "Change to a brisk walk", and then after 90 seconds like this I hear the bitch commanding me again "Start running now". Oh so sssooon? I curse a bit and start running, and running and running - 5 minutes of pure hell where I reach the sea shore and start running by the sea side trying not to fill my only pair of shoes with water or other debris, after all I need them for my Rosh Hashana's eve... and I see people walking, smiling, breathing the morning air. After 5 minutes running the synthesized voice says "Change to a brisk walk" and I walk, sweating, inhaling the salty air, looking at the people who look so happy, looking at rare couples whose marriage was not yet destroyed walking together, talking, living their lives. I pause, I snap a picture, it's 6:30 a.m., I continue pacing when the bitch tells 

me "Start running now"... I am not running that fast, the lady tells me that I am running at a pace of 9 minutes per mile, that's about 6 minutes per Kilometer right? It's easy, I am already warmed up at this stage, I feel better, I am on my way back, to the office, I walk, I run 5 minutes more when I hear the lady commanding me "Slow down to an easy pace"...mmmmm - love that minute - I have done my share for the day, I walk slowly back to the office, it's early morning, very few cars, the air is still cool and I have this wonderful post workout endorphin rush - yes, today is going to be a great day!

Aviel.

Lost 24 Kilograms in two months - Nutritarian Diet

Hi there,

I started my diet 2 months ago - and the results are amazing.

Back then I measured 139.6 Kg - which means BMI=42.6 ==> Morbid Obesity.

Now I weight 116.0 Kg - which means BMI=35.4 ==> Severe Obesity.

My special lady was kind enough to help me arrange the following pictures using her GIMP skills.

And the side view,

What can I say? This nutritarial diet works wonders!

Aviel.