Entries from April 2010 ↓

So today was the official last day of the season! Unexpectedly after a really dead winter I ended up Snowboarding quite a bit in the spring, thanks to $99 season pass at Stevens!

The intent of this post is to summarize my improvements in Snowboarding skills. Overall i went about 5-6 times snowboarding this season, once in winter and rest of the time in spring!

Progress this season?

I definitely improved my skills and speed by trying to connect turns more graciously than forcing my back/gliding leg to get me on toe-side! Leaning forward and then gradually getting on to toe-side helped a lot in my speed and grace! In fact, this was the exact skills the lesson at Tahoe last year focused on. I didn’t go any gracious black this year but I ended up trying the terrain park at Stevens pass, thanks to Jeff. I did a few 1-3 footer jumps, only to see the blue sky.

New gear this season?

Thanks to spring sale i finally bought a Giro helmet for under $40!

What I might try next season?

I’m an average intermediate snowboarder may be I’ll take a couple lessons next season to move up a notch, and possibly a vacation at Whistler to truly enjoy long runs! Meanwhile any tips to improve are welcome!

One of the joys of snowboarding is that you can get in to jumps pretty quickly, I know I’m pass my teens but may be next season I’ll try some jumps and my goal would be to at least do a 3 footer.

One of the things I noticed this season is that eventually i might want to learn skiing, yah I know I give hard time to skiers . No matter how long you snowboard you do fall, not so in skiing , the ability of the skiers to do backcountry and also a lot harder stuff (read moguls) easily is tempting me to try skiing next season, we’ll see.

On Thursday I spent my afternoon listening to Gary Taubes at University Of Washington. Gary is author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, and has had a very successful journalism career exposing bad science. His talk gave background and analysis of research on ‘science of why we get fat’. You can watch this talk online.

I was attracted to Good Calories, Bad Calories sometime last year, primarily owing to my co-workers and friends (Chris, Lowell and Keith). Lowell is a very passionate ambassador of low-carb diet, he infact lost over 90 pounds in a year and a half by just changing his diet! The book is a dense read and I have barely finish first part.

I haven’t really switched to a low-carb diet, but Maris (specially) and myself have been looking in to ways to improve our vegetarian diets. The food in America is no way tuned for a healthy vegetarian diet. Maris researched on the protein aspects of the diet and came up with the idea of putting soy powder in curries. In fact she even bought a whole recipe book for tofu powdered cooking. The next culinary exploration we are going to try is vegetable smoothies.

As you will notice all our exploration has been to add protein to our vegetarian diets and eat more of leafy vegetables. But what i would take away from Gary’s book and talk is to actually try reducing the bad carbohydrates in our diets especially sugar, bread and white rice! I did end up asking a question along these lines to Gary and his frank answer was that he is not a good spokesperson for a vegetarian low-carb diet (given that all his bread substitutes are meaty/fatty), however one of his strongest proponent and friend is a vegan and he has seen improvements in health by reducing carbohydrates.

So what are bad carbohydrates?

• Starches (esp. Fructose)  and Sugars
• Bread
• Pasta

What should a vegetarian substitute these with?

• Soy  products
• Green leafy vegetables

Any tips?

• Start by reducing rice and bread in diet in lieu of salad!
• Introduce the morning vegetable breakfast smoothie !!

The strongest criticism of low-carb diet is that the fat substitutes (esp. meat) are bad for your heart and will increase risk for Heart Attack. For a vegetarian this is not really the case and any reduction is carb is good!! .

Any suggestions for good calories for vegetarian? Feel free to comment away!!