A little light reading.

Despite what *some* people close to me think, I am not doing this vegetarian/running/weight training thing lightly. My goal is not to get as skinny as possible; my goal is to get to the point where I am at a healthy weight and using my body at its most efficient in running.

Before I make a move, I research it thoroughly. I didn't go into this weight loss thing on a whim. I didn't start running on a spur of the moment idea, and I most definitely didn't make my choice to become a vegetarian randomly.

I did the vegetarian thing once before and failed, miserably. I wasn't eating enough, pure and simple. I was still in weight-loss mode, so it was more of "how little can I eat; how far can I push myself" rather than "what does my body need to work at its optimum."

So when I decided to do this now, I didn't want to fail.

I'm currently reading "Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life" by Brendan Brazier. Brazier is an extreme athlete -- think ultramarathons, extreme bike races, etc.

He is focused on mainly raw and vegan eating, but there is a lot of information that applies to me. Lots of epiphany moments.

According to Brazier, exercise makes your biological age younger. What happens when you exercise is you break down muscle, and if you're eating properly, your body will regenerate muscle tissue -- NEW muscle tissue! So while my body is 39 years and 6 days old, my new bicep muscles? They're merely a few months old.

That is AMAZING.

He also states that by eating processed food, our bodies have to work harder to digest it. If our bodies are working harder to digest that food, then it's expending energy that we might otherwise use to exercise. That's why, after a large meal (like Thanksgiving), you feel stuffed and listless. Your body is pulling all of its energy to digest that meal.

There's TONS of information just like that. Little bits and pieces that make what is happening and what has happened to my body make all kinds of sense.