Thanks Mike. I have modified/replaced my meals with healthier versions. But looking at the Thrive Diet pyramid, I think I might need some more fibrous vegetables. Below is a sample of some of my meals:

BREAKFAST:
-Cereal:
Granola, sliced bananas, almond milk*, and a spoonful of natural cocoa mix.
*Eventually I plan on making my own milk like Brendan.

-Apple Sauce:
Apple sauce mixed with: ground flaxseed, ground sesame seed, and ground hempseed.

SNACK:
-Wet Trail Mix:
Raw and soaked: sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, almonds, Brazil nuts, raisins, chopped collard greens, and chopped celery.

LUNCH:
-Salad and Rice Pilaf:
Mixed greens (from the salad bar at my workplace cafeteria) topped with lightly boiled/simmered brown rice, wild rice, lentils, split peas, chopped asparagus, and frozen vegetable mix - with added sea salt and olive oil.

SNACK:
-More wet trail mix.

SUPPER:
-Black Bean Sandwich or Wrap:
12 grain bread or wrap topped with sour cream-free guacamole or avocado, collard greens/kale/spinach, warmed black beans, scallions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and oregano/crushed red pepper.

-Blue corn tortilla chips & salsa.

SNACK:
-Frozen grapes and raspberries.

Good to hear Mike. I ran into some symptoms myself (muscle soreness/slight cramping), and started adding some more calcium-rich foods to my diet...and the symptoms disappeared.

There was also an instance where I had an upset stomach. In the past I would have popped a Tums, but I decided to see if I could cure it with a better source of calcium - ground sesame seeds. So I poured myself a small glass of water, mixed in a spoonful of ground sesame seeds, drank it down quickly as a shot, and no more stomach ache!

Terrific!

Could disc golf be added to the list?

Thanks!

-Nick

Oh supercool! There is an archive of extremely valuable nutritional articles right here: http://www.monkeybargym.com/articles/articles-2/.

This one: http://www.monkeybargym.com/the-high-performance-vegan-athlete-it-is-possible.html by Brendan Brazier addresses nutritional imbalances that vegans (and especially vegan athletes) can run into.

This website is, quite literally, a treasure trove of valuable info!

One more thing to take into account (for the head-blow prone fighters who continue to fight for years): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica.

I've knocked my own head on the ground pretty hard a few times when I was an aggressive snowboarder (the sweet jumps didn't have such sweet landings), but I've become more risk-averse and have chosen a seemingly more mellow winter sport, cross-country skate skiing.

Awesome - just remember, though, that bigger guys are still capable of inflicting relatively more damage when they land blows (my high school physics teacher used this analogy when he was explaining the concept of force in Newtonian physics: (force) = (mass) x (acceleration). And it is also important to realize that not all the bigger guys are foolish enough to become emotionally flustered when a lean and mean competitor is running circles around them.

Hi Casey,

It sounds like the Thrive Diet is working for you, so I wouldn't worry about altering it to get to a higher weight than 170 lbs.

Have you considered that being relatively smaller than your competition can be used as an advantage in your favor? Being the scrappy underdog in a combat situation can have two major advantages: 1)dynamic speed and 2)big-guy overconfidence.

On the dynamic speed front, it will be relatively easier for you to move in/around/away from your larger opponent because you have less body mass to move around. You may able to defeat your larger opponents by avoiding major blows, and tiring them out over a fight of longer duration (e.g. make it a fight of endurance). Your optimal diet will also help immensely with endurance.

On the big-guy overconfidence front, there seems to be an obsession in our culture with physical size. Your larger competitors who think that they will win due to being bigger than you will grow increasingly more angry when they find that you're beating them with speed and endurance - this is when you can strike. Remember, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

-Nick

An interesting (and terrifying) article on the nutritional situation that the Olympians will be facing this summer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/sports/othersports/09olympics.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

An enlightening article on balanced veganism from the MBG Newsletter:
http://www.monkeybargym.com/calcium-from-a-logical-vegan-perspective.html