How do you eat an elephant? (Thrive Days 2 & 3)

You eat an elephant one bite at a time, as the saying goes.

Likewise, Brendan Brazier, vegan triathlete and author of "Thrive," a nutrition guide to meatless athletes, suggests making life changes in a similar fashion — one at a time.

The reasoning, he writes in the book, is that to try to make too many changes at once is to overwhelm your body and put too much stress on it. Makes sense, yea?

BUT ...

But I feel so much better, infused with so much more energy, following his nutrition guidelines. I want to eat whole foods always.

It's like this: Why would I want to go forward slowly, eating only a meal or two a day that was fashioned after the Thrive guidelines, when I can eat every meal like that? In other words, why eat Crap sometimes when I can eat Awesome all of the times?

It's also like when I gave up eating meat all those years ago. People would say to me, I could never do that, or, How can you not eat meat? To which I'd reply, After feeling how I feel without meat, how could I not give it up? I'd rather feel light and energized and never taste meat again than to continue eating it and feeling like I've got a baby rhino stomping around in my stomach.

Not much of a sacrifice when you put it that way.

Anyways, it's only been three days since I started my little Thrive experiment, wherein I try to eat as many natural, whole foods as possible, but already I've begun to notice little changes.

Of course, it could be the placebo affect, who knows, but here's how the last two days have gone for me on this diet:

Tuesday I began my day with another Kale Calcium Boost Smoothie and continued with a lunch of spinach topped with heaps of carrots, onions, avocado and peppers.

For a mid-afternoon snack, I finally tried one of Brendan's energy bars that I had made Monday night. This particular one consisted of an apple, dates, quinoa, almonds, ground flaxseed, protein powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt to taste.

Before I had even tried it, my mouth was watering at the smell (of course, I happen to believe cinnamon, nutmeg and apples are possibly the most enticing smells known to existence).

It was just as delicious as I'd imagined it would be when I ate it the next day after having spent the night in my freezer and the next day in the fridge.

The energy bar — surprise! — gave me some energy, a much needed boost mid-afternoon, sustaining me through my evening speed workout. Afterwards, not having time to eat a meal because I had soccer practice to coach, I scarfed down some of the recovery pudding I made Monday night.

By the time practice was over Tuesday evening, I was starving. I ended up eating some leftover vegetable spaghetti with Boca burger meat crumbles that I had made over the weekend.

And the next day, I was sluggish. My run was sluggish. And I feel asleep in my car during my lunch break while trying to read.

Part of it was surely due to waking up early for a 3 mile run, but I'm convinced an equal part was due to eating the processed dinner after 40 hours of nothing but whole foods.

Hoping to rebound from my sluggish start to the day, Wednesday morning I finished off the recovery pudding and made a smoothie for later at work.

This time I tried the Chocolate Almond Smoothie, which was as delicious as the name suggests.

Consisting of a banana, dates, water, almonds, flaxseed, protein powder and dark chocolate (I still don't have any carob), I woofed this down as if the entire 3 1/2 cups were simply a shot of vodka.

For lunch, I had another salad and for an afternoon snack another energy bar.

For dinner, I heated up some black beans, corn, salsa, tomatoes, onions and garlic, sprinkled with nooch (nutritional yeast) and a dash of soy sour cream. I ate all this with some whole wheat pita bread.

And then the cravings started. Brendan writes that we sometimes crave things when our body needs nourished and that this is the exact time when we shouldn't give in to the craving because it's likely the exact opposite of what we need.

But I did. I had a beer with dinner, which I don't feel guilty about because it's beer and I love beer and I'll likely never stop drinking beer. But for dessert I made some vegan smores. And they were delicious too.

But here I am again Thursday afternoon, feeling sluggish.

And I'm left considering that quandary again.

Is it the early hours I'm keeping? The processed foods? The toll from my active lifestyle? If it's the beer and the soy sour cream and the whole wheat pita and the Boca burger crumbles and the whole wheat paste ... do I give those up too?

My sluggishness, realistically, is probably a combination of the processed food, the lack of sleep and the running around, but for now I'm not going to make a decision on it, or judge myself for choosing the option that wasn't the healthiest.

Instead, I think I'll just move on to the next meal.

Speaking of which, I have part of the Blueberry Antioxidant Smoothie I made this morning waiting for me as an afternoon snack. I'll have to get at you later. I've got some delicious whole foods to eat.