I sat with my vegan boss and her friend at a popular vegetarian restauarant.  It smelled faintly like lavendar and marijuana and slightly rained-out wood and I scanned through the menu of tofu and miso gravy and all kinds of animal-free sauces. Then I closed it and looked at her and asked her a question I imagined she'd been asked a thousand times before: "So - what provoked you to give up animal products?" She explained, intelligently and without any shrapnel of judgment and I listened intently and thought about delicious steak. I was a pretty unapologetic carnivore, back then: giant prime rib, rare as possible,  bbq chicken, ba... [More]

I love going to the health food store. I feel like a wizard collecting regents to cast spells...night sage, spiders silk, muscle milk! (wtf). There are brilliantly colored lineups of pills and powders with flexing giants hulking on the labels. It's like a socially accepted opium den for fit people! But seriously... I know very little about supplements and powders and the right mix for me has been an experiment in trial and error. Right now, I'm drinking protein shakes twice a day between meals: a mix of three different brands: ISO Sensation (chocolate fudge and Cafe Brazil) GNC Well Being Be Buff and ISO Femme Vanilla (Kristin's, but the... [More]

The picture of Jaime Pressly on my fridge was becoming agitating, and I considered flipping her over to the Equinox ad on the other side for a little while.   Or perhaps just sliding her unsurreptitiously into the garbage bin. I'd stuck her midpoint on the entrance to my food den as inspiration and a reminder that I didn't need that hunk of cheese as much as I wanted definition in my abs. Almost three months into a pretty hardcore and earnest running routine, and I wasn't seeing the results I had envisioned.  For sure, my jeans fit better.  And yes, my legs were leaner and more muscular and I could see lines in my stomach... [More]