Athlete Profile: Brendan Brazier

Many great athletes came by their sport naturally at a very young age. This gave them a head start on higher level training that later allowed them to excel. Most had the help of a coach who noticed the young athlete’s potential, and then took the athlete under their wing to nurture their abilities. Yet even with great potential, the desire to compete at elite levels, and mentorship and support from a great coach, it’s rare for young competitors to succeed as adults. Often these extraordinary competitors are simply too young; they lack the maturity to commit to the demands of the dream.

Rarer still is the young athlete who sets out to find his own way, even in the face of a coach’s advice and the risk of failure, and succeeds. Brendan Brazier is one such exception. An accomplished professional triathlete, two-time Canadian 50 km Ultramarathon Champion, formulator of VEGA, and now author of The Thrive Diet (in the US, the book is published as Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life) and Thrive Fitness: Mental And Physical Strength for Life, Brendan wants to help others succeed in “thriving” as well.

At 15 years old, Brendan felt strongly about what he wanted to achieve, and was determined to take his athletic future into his own hands. He began running track in high school as a means to improve his fitness. Immediately, Brendan felt a natural attraction to the sport and decided that his goal was to become a full time triathlete. He began exploring the factors that enabled top-level performers to excel, and the qualities that separated average from elite performers. He discovered that it was recovery from training, rather than the actual training itself, that made the difference in performance –- the more quickly an athlete could recover between workouts, the harder and faster that athlete could train.

The key determinant of recovery? Nutrition.

Driven by this insight, Brendan began experimenting with different types of food and ratios of macronutrients in his diet. As a teenager living at home, Brendan ate whatever his mom fed him. Thanks to mom’s home cooking, which Brendan describes as “a step up or two from the typical standard American diet”, he wasn’t eating a lot of processed foods. On the other hand, it wasn’t necessarily optimal for his performance goals. As he started changing and improving what he ate, he found that his performance also improved. But when he removed animal products from his diet, Brendan realized he’d found the most important change.

When Brendan first modified his food intake to be plant-based, his performance dropped. His coach, who was traditional in his ways and skeptical of Brendan’s nutrition experiments, quickly concluded that Brendan would need to include meat and animal proteins in his diet to succeed in his sport. This mentality did not sway Brendan from his course. In fact, it only further encouraged him –- he became even more excited about exploring different approaches to nutrition.

When Brendan more closely analyzed what he was eating, he quickly realized that his plant-based diet was lacking in a few key nutrients such as complete proteins, Vitamin B12, omega-3s, iron, and calcium. This was, in fact, good news for Brendan: By simply paying attention to what he was eating and being careful to include certain foods in his diet, he could stick with a plant-based eating approach. Within six weeks of making modifications, his performance was better than it had ever been. The basic diet that Brendan developed to fuel his performance and decrease the inflammation associated with training evolved over the years to become the approach he outlines in his books.

Opening a coconut

The meals and recipes on which the Thrive Diet is based use only plant foods, particularly high net gain foods that reduce the complementary stress on the body. Foods such as vegetables, fruits, pseudograins, legumes, nuts, seeds, and healthy oils are naturally alkaline forming foods that balance pH levels (more on acid-base balance), and are high in nutrients that the body can easily access without much work from the body. Brendan calls this “one-step nutrition”: more energy can be derived from less food; stress on the body is minimized; optimal health and energy results. A diet of minimally processed foods also helps to conserve environmental sources of energy, potentially reducing the cost of energy from food production by up to 30%.

These days, Brendan’s diet is still quite similar to the Thrive Diet plan, although he prefers to keep things as simple as possible. While  the selection of whole, plant-based foods is the same, Brendan keeps food choices simple and prefers to graze to meet his hunger, rather than adhere to rigid meal schedules and prepare more time-consuming recipes. This continues to support his performance and makes life easier when he’s travelling, but it also allows him to focus on his main goals: feeling good and getting what he loves and wants out of life, without needing to give too much attention to what he eats.

Part of this simplicity has come from giving up supplements. About 4 years ago, Brendan eliminated the supplements in his diet. He found that his health and performance remained unaffected, and he was able to gain mental freedom from “supplement dependence”. Instead of relying on supplements to fill nutritional gaps, Brendan relied on his food to provide all the nutrition he needed.

To ensure that he’s doing the right things, Brendan diligently gets his blood tested every six months to track his nutrient levels. Vitamin B12, iron, and protein are common nutritional deficiencies for athletes consuming plant-based diets, so Brendan includes 2.5 g of chlorella in his shakes to meet his Vitamin B12 needs and adds ¼ cup of raw, soaked pumpkin seeds to a daily salad. Combining this plant based source of iron with foods high in vitamin C, like a citrus salad dressing, improves the absorption and bioavailability of iron and has helped him move away from being borderline anemic.

Brendan used to rely on soy protein isolate to supplement protein intake from whole foods but discovered that because of how it’s processed, this type of protein was acid forming and contributed to an increased inflammatory response. The negative impact of the food outweighed the benefit of extra protein. He now meets all of his protein needs with whole foods, such as dark leafy greens; legumes and lentils; and a combination of hemp, pea, and rice proteins in a shake.

This homemade shake version is the blend that’s behind VEGA formulations. Each type of protein was specifically included to complement the other. Hemp is high in protein and omega-3s, but lower in tryptophan. And on its own, hemp’s taste and texture can make it hard to swallow. Rice protein, though lower in protein per serving, balances hemp out in taste, texture and amino acid profile. Adding in pea protein, which is higher in glutamic acid, helps to preferentially convert carbohydrates to energy instead of being stored, which means the combo in the shake can give athletes more energy and help make them leaner.

Brendan has found the plant-based eating approach that works well for his goals and lifestyle. He finds it very easy and doesn’t crave “cheat foods”. His experience has been very rewarding. When the body starts to crave good things, he says, there is no desire to eat any other way –- the body forgets about the junk and doesn’t desire other foods.

While over the years, implementing this nutritional strategy has been an interesting but exciting challenge, the bigger challenge Brendan faces is helping others adopt these habits. Just as Brendan struggled when he first transitioned to this kind of eating, an obstacle he faces in counseling others about plant based eating is that often the results are not instant. Many will feel worse off as they go through the process of recalibrating their systems, potentially taking a year or longer to really feel better if they have been eating a standard American diet for several decades. This can deter people looking for the quick fix to their health, performance and body composition goals.

For many, the idea of going cold turkey (no pun intended) may be too much to handle. Even if someone isn’t ready to completely abandon animal foods, the Thrive Diet approach is a great way to progress to incorporating more of these foods in a meal plan, and it’s quite compatible with the Precision Nutrition habits (such as emphasizing lots of vegetables). With over 100 recipes and 12 weeks worth of menus, the diet does not need to be followed exactly to reap the benefits. In fact, many people and athletes see positive enhancements to health and performance with even 1-2 plant based meals a day. If nothing else, the diet provides many options and recommendations for broadening one’s nutritional horizons to include new foods and new ways of consuming them.

Brendan continues to work with VEGA to develop new products that make it more convenient to do this, and get a broader range of plant-based foods out to the masses. With new flavours of VEGA Whole food optimizer (Vanilla Chai) and VEGA Vibrance bars on the shelves now, he’s also been busy formulating a product line called VEGA Sport, a selection of sport specific energy gels, bars, and performance drinks specifically designed for athletes. These will be available in Canada in April 2009.

Though his ventures with VEGA have kept him from finding the time to train and compete in triathlons, Brendan continues to be competitive in running events and will be gearing up for the start of the competition season this spring. He’ll be focusing on the events such as the marathon, as well as some shorter distances, aiming to get his time down to the low 2:20s. Wherever his business and competitive drive takes him, Brendan will continue to keep his mind open to new and different ways to approach things. As he learned at just 15 years old, just because something is steeped in tradition or has always been done a certain way, it might not be the best way. A better way might just be waiting to be discovered.

Brendan’s site: BrendanBrazier.com