Each morning I awake to light filtering through my window shade, and the sounds of wind, rain or bird chatter outside my bedroom. Bird chatter is always an encouraging sound, usually a good indication that I’m going to get some exercise that day. However, for every morning that I’m awakened by the sounds of birds hunting their breakfast in the front lawn, there are 5 mornings when rain and wind make me want to go right back to sleep. Here in Portland, during the winter, getting enough exercise and sunlight is particularly challenging. We’ve had temps in the 40’s for the past few months, with cloudy, windy and gray days the prevailing trend. I try not to be a fairweather anything, especially an athlete. However, some days getting cold and wet for the sake of burning a few hundred calories just isn’t motivation enough.

On these days, I find eating healthy particularly challenging. There’s something about the subconscious admission of failure that makes continued failure easy. Once I start off on the right foot, continuing to exercise good judgment and make healthy choices is much easier than when I let the weather or my fatigue defeat me. It’s funny how this battle to stay fit and healthy is so much like dominoes. I have to make sure and start the right chain reactions in order to ensure the desired results.

I’ve been learning about high net gain nutrition, and plant-based performance foods, and trying to eat accordingly. Unfortunately, I’m also a stickler for comfort food when it’s cold out, and convenience when it’s wet and windy. I have this bad habit of buying processed soy products in order to make meal planning and preparation more simple. This means that many days, when I’m not feeling particularly energetic, I eat too much soy, wheat protein, and processed “healthy” vegan foods.

To offset this, and try to get through the next couple of cold and wet months, I’ve been balancing my consumption of processed soy and wheat and bread products with 2 or 3 times more fresh, raw vegetables. I’ve been eating tons of kale, spinach, basil, garlic, cilantro, chard, hemp and seaweed. I’ve also been eating a dozen organic bananas a week, lots of organic grapefruit and organic apples, and hemp and flax seed granola.

While I’m not losing my layer of stomach fat like I’d wanted to, I’m not gaining any, either, and I’m actually seeing muscle development in my shoulders, arms, back and core.

I’m fairly confident that, as I continue to increase my level of activity with the nicer weather, and continue to cut out more and more of the processed convenience foods I’ve been eating, I’ll see greater and greater improvements in muscle definition and tone, flexibility and recovery, and loss of the fat layer around my midsection.

Good food really is good!