Q&A: How to Eat If You Are Vegan; What Is The Best Type of Cardio and How Do I Eat on The Days I Swim?

How is your week? Mine is great! And because when I say I had a great week, some of you think that I am the luckiest person to be surrounded just by positive people. Truth is that the more popular my blog gets, the more “haters” arrive in my life. But the thing is that we make the daily choice to focus either on the positive or the negative. And I always choose to close my eyes for the haters and focus on the real, beautiful people I have the opportunity to meet. So, focus on the good and leave behind the bad and the ugly. Haters only express their opinion about themselves, not about you!

Thank you for your wonderful messages and comments. This week I picked up the questions: how to eat if you are vegan; what is the best type of cardio in my opinion and what do I eat on the days I swim.

I will be happy to read your opinion, so share it in the comments below.

Ina, tell me how is a person who doesn’t eat butter, meat, eggs and dairy, supposed toe at. I am challenging you for your next Q&A.

I received this comment on my blog, from a person who I know in person. A person who I really respect. But obviously she is a vegan. I really appreciate her hard work and what she does for a living, but besides answering her question I will take advantage of the situation and share my opinion about the whole drama with vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters.

Lately I notice that a lot of vegetarians and vegans read my blog. Some are really friendly and others are extremely aggressive. Here I will mention that I have nothing against people who do not eat animal products. This is a personal choice and everybody has his own PERSONAL reasons to make the best decision for himself.

What I do not tolerate is exactly the aggressive behavior I mentioned about. Obviously, if you read a couple of my posts on nutrition, you will understand that I am from the meat eaters. This means that if you are searching for recommendations about your nutrition, but you are vegans or vegetarians, you will hardly find such.

Just like I do not search recipes for steaks or nutrition advices on websites, written by vegans.

This doesn’t mean that I do not visit such websites. For example I love Vania’s website, because of her wonderful recipes and the passion she puts in everything she cooks. But there are recipes, which do not match my understandings of healthy eating and I kind of ignore them, and focus on the once that I could prepare.
That’s why if you do not eat animal products, but you like my posts about working out and motivation, I’d be more than happy if you follow my blog. But if the only thing you are searching for is confrontation, I am sorry to disappoint you, but it won’t happen. It is somehow silly to argue about this and “go around” the blogs, with the mere thought of imposing your opinion.

As a friend of mine says, the most important thing is tolerance. It is like atheists and people who believe in God, to detest each other and argue all the time. It is more than clear that neither one will start believing in god, nor the others will stop. Everything is a personal choice and a result from your experience and the lessons you learnt.

When you keep in mind that for me the definition of healthy eating is- meet(pork meat), eggs ( with the yolks), fish, veggies ( mainly leafy greens), avocado and some raw nuts and seeds, what would you expect me to answer to questions, such as: “ How am I supposed to eat if I don’t eat meat,eggs,butter and dairy?”

Until now I avoided answering, but a lot of people are asking it, so I will answer you now. If you want my personal opinion, if you do not eat meat, butter,eggs and dairy… WELL, START EATING THEM.  Just in this case your nutrition will fit my understandings of healthy eating.

If you are not incline to doing it, I have nothing against your choice, but I couldn’t give you an advice for something I don’t believe in.

Ines, I know that you are not a fan of cardio. But still, if you had to pick one type of cardio, which one do you think is the best?

This question is pretty interesting. I think that I would never waste my precious time, to do cardio on the treadmill or something like that.

Besides that I do not find the point behind wasting your time for cardio, and as I wrote HERE, I think that most people do cardio for the wrong reasons.

Still, my advice would be as follows. Train with weights and focus on being physically active during the rest of the day. Do not do cardio, with the mere goal to lose weight and spend more calories. Go hiking, go for a walk in the park, ride a bike, swim. Thus you will bring more variety in your days, you will feel pleasure doing this things, you will socialize more and you will gather nice memories, and meanwhile you will take care of a fit and toned body.

Personally I love going for walks and hiking. And lately I’ve left my car in the garage and I am riding a bike everywhere I go. Thus my days are filled with more physical activity, which has nothing to do directly with working out. This way I am moving more, but in the same time I am not being hard on my mind, thinking how much calories I spend, how much time I should walk on the treadmill and I do not torture myself about how boring it is, but how I am supposed to do it. Just because even though it is a physical activity, it has something to do with pleasure and something that frees your mind.

So go do your squats and deadlifts in the gym, and then go back home walking or on a bike. During the weekend go hiking or swimming. You won’t need to do cardio. And do not forget to eat good, quality food!

Ines, you share that you go swimming once a week, and in the same time you eat a high-fat, low-carb diet. I am really curious of your nutrition on the days you swim. Do you eat more carbs?

That’s a great question. Thank you that you asked me. I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask me this.

Lately, I often think of writing a whole post, sharing about my experience with swimming and nutrition, how I felt before I started following a high-fat diet, and how I feel now, when I eat a HFLC diet.

Back in the days, when I was a competitive swimmer, I used to eat a balanced diet, or in other words I used to eat carbs, but I was always starving even after the first 1500 meters in the pool. And now, I could endure the whole workout without even feeling hungry.

Besides that I have a lot more strength, even though I train mainly with heavy weights and contrary to popular belief my endurance is much better.

When it comes to my nutrition on swimming days, actually I do not eat more carbs, but more fats. I definitely feel I need more food when I swim, but the extra calories come from higher fat intake, not carbs. Usually on swimming days, I eat mainly pork steaks and eggs with more butter and avocado. And I feel great. I don’t crave sweets or carbs from any type.

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