Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life

stimulated in order to achieve something that could not be done, or done as well, without this stimulation, the stress that results can be classified as production stress.
     
    Here’s an example of a sensible way to use stimulation as production stress. An athlete who has recalibrated his diet (I explain how to do this in Chapter 2) by eating a clean diet and abstaining from stimulating foods such as refined sugar and coffee drinks a cup of yerba maté (a South American herb) tea before a race. The caffeine in the yerba maté will stimulate his adrenal glands, improving his endurance and helping him achieve a better performance than he might otherwise achieve. This will also bring about greater fatigue within a day or two, and that’s fine. At the time of the race, the athlete simply borrowed energy from the future to fuel his performance. Extra fatigue a day or two later will be a small price to pay for his performance. The same holds true for those trying to get more done at work. Stimulation can enable them to achieve more in the short term.
     
    However, if this borrowing strategy is used too often, it will lose its effectiveness and simply become another form of uncomplementary stress. To be effective, the strategy can be used only a few times a month, once a week at most, for those times when a boost would really be beneficial. Ideally, you would rarely, if ever, need it; the Thrive Diet is structured in such a way that there will be no desire or need to borrow energy.
     
    If stimulation is used when it will not help you achieve something of value, it is an uncomplementary stress. I consider coffee drinking an uncomplementary stress. I view it as a form of credit, similar to shopping with a credit card. You get energy now that you don’t actually have, but you pay for it later—when the “bill,” or fatigue, hits. (Simply drinking more coffee to put off the inevitable is like paying off one credit card with another: It will catch up with you sooner or later.) You’ll most likely pay a high interest rate as well, needing more time to recover than if that energy had not been borrowed in the first place. This is the beginning of a vicious circle. In the next chapter, I provide strategies to recalibrate the body, and in doing so, get maximum energy simply from eating natural food.
     
    At a Glance
     
    • Stress is the root cause of most ailments, both minor and major, in the North American population.
    • About 40 percent of the average North American’s total stress can be attributed to diet.
    • Excessive stress can have a negative psychological effect and can be responsible for specific food cravings and mental clutter.
    • Improved diet is the number one way to reduce overall stress.
    • Complementary stress can build physical strength and improve motivation.
    • Once diet is improved, production stress can be embraced, and productivity will therefore be enhanced.
     
     

two
     
    understanding the thrive diet
     
    The Thrive Diet is basic, and its parameters are simple. As you’ve just learned, uncomplementary stress is the biggest threat to our well-being. Unfortunately, its avoidance is near impossible in Western society. However, we do have the ability to take our health into our own hands and by doing so live a high-energy, sickness-free, rewarding life.
     
    The word health is thrown around quite freely these days. However, the word really does embrace all that we physiologically and psychologically can aspire to. If we all had a high level of health, we would all be at our ideal body weight, none of us would have food cravings, we would all sleep soundly, we wouldn’t rely on stimulating foods to give us energy, and we would always be able to think clearly and rationally. Yet, few of us are in this situation. One of the reasons is because we often treat the symptoms of each ailment as it crops up, while ignoring its cause.
     
    Simply put, the Thrive Diet is about getting to the root of the matter. Symptom-treating programs have risen in popularity over the past several years because of the speed at which results can be seen, and treating symptoms has become the excepted approach for many. While it’s true that short-term results can be achieved by dealing merely with the symptoms, long-term sustainable satisfaction is rarely if ever achieved. The Thrive Diet will likely not produce noticeable result as quickly as some symptom-treating methods. However, the Thrive Diet is a platform