Another incredible success story from Ben

While i didn't attend week 2, I did continue to follow the carb/protein/fat ratio advice that Ariane gave us, and that nutritional advice is going to stay with me forever (That and those red resistance bands). I followed the nutrition recommendations rigorously and worked out in the evening. Combined with the intense workouts from the first week, I lost 8 lbs during the 2 week bootcamp and have lost more since. As a vegan, it's been an interesting challenge trying to get the carbs/protein/fat ratios just right. I find that i'm eating a proportionally higher fat diet than recommended because i've cut so many typical vegan staples out, but so far i'm still losing weight! Moving the carbs consumption down has been huge. I have also tried to follow Ariane's advice to include resistance workouts with cardio. I am still the worst at push ups in our entire boot camp class, perhaps in bootcamp history, and situps, fuggedaboutit! But i'm working on them.


I'm also following Ariane's recommendation to drink at least 3 liters of water a day. I don't know what it's doing exactly but it makes me feel good. Maybe it helps gives the body a satiated feeling so i am less hungry, or maybe i just figure it's helping keep things move along in the body.

At the beginning of class, we were asked to state our goals. I met one of my goals way early. I've gone from not being able to jog for more than 1.5 minutes without having to walk to recover, to being able to run 3 miles (5K) in just over 30 minutes without stopping (hit this milestone yesterday and repeated it tonight).

Although i'm a vegan, i actually am not a huge veggie fan, and I have typically hated salads. Surprisingly i am actually eating salads now as a part of lunch and sometimes as part of dinner and am actually enjoying them. Mostly because i've actually found salads i like.

Ariane told me my snacking on trail mix was too sugary so i dropped the trail mix and kept the nuts (almonds mostly). Once I'm at my target weight and feel i've stabilized, it will be interesting to see if i occasionally allow myself certain forbidden foods--I'd list them here but i'm not sure if that would be bad manners!