You join the gym with hopes of cutting 5, 10, 20, maybe even 30 pounds. It seems easy enough; eat less and move more. Get a good calorie-burning workout and eat less calories by cutting back on fat or having better portion-control. You go four days a week; 45 minutes on the elliptical machine, some light stretching, and smaller portions at meal time. You lose a good 5 to 10 pounds in the first month! You feel great! But then what happens? You keep doing the same routine and your weight-loss comes to a screeching halt! What gives?

Despite losing weight, you likely didn’t differentiate between muscle weight and fat weight and there’s a good chance that you were losing a significant portion of lean muscle mass. Loss of lean muscle mass results in less calorie burning, exactly the opposite of what you set out to do.

An example of an effective workout for muscle building is below. This circuit can be done in less than 20 minutes. This will stimulate testosterone production and lean muscle increase.

• • 10 reps of each movement for 3 rounds in a circuit fashion of the following:
• • Overhead barbell push press
• • Assisted pull-up (body weight when you get there)
• • Barbell dead lift
• • Weighted walking lunges

With over 5 years of personal training experience, Ed Bauer is a Fitness Nutrition Coach, and owner of PlantFit Training Studio, located in Portland, Oregon. He offers counseling on how to lose fat, gain muscle, and obtain optimal health on a plant-based diet.  Bauer began his journey into fitness in 1995, with encouragement from his competitive power lifter father. He became vegan one year later after learning about the inhumane practices that are involved in raising animals for food. Combining these two interests led to an understanding of plant based foods and sports performance. 

“The Evolution of Man” series is based around the feature article Joshua Katcher wrote for VegNews Magazine’s “The Man Issue”. In this episode Katcher interviews James “Lightning Wilks. Now an experienced advocate of high-performance athletic veganism, Wilks claims that two weeks after he stopped eating meat, he lifted more weight than ever in his life. He was chosen for Season 9 of the Ultimate Fighter – UK vs USA. This drove James to train harder than ever before. He won the TUF finale on June, 20th 2009. Visit Wilks website for more info.

It seems everything in Portland is prefixed with the word “vegan”. Everything from strip clubs to B&B’s to realtors can and do pull out the big V at every stop. And this is good news for wary vegan travelers in search of grub and adventure. Here’s a list of some of my favorite places to check out while in PDX.

Blossoming Lotus — organic vegan fusion. What does that mean? Think awesome, lots of raw options, and a diverse menu. A trick I learned to being able to eat a variety of menu items here is to go for happy hour and order half a dozen tapas (for yourself, more if you’re with friends) and go nuts.

Homegrown Smoker — stoner soul food. From mac-no-cheese to deep-friend Oreos, these dudes have your cravings covered.

Sweatpea Bakery — baked goods and strong coffee. The almost-lost art of sandwich making is alive and well (and vegan) here. Their desserts are insanely good as well.

Scapegoat Tattoo — vegan tattoo shop. Did you know not all inks are vegan? These guys and gals use plant-based inks and do a bang-up job. I’ve got a few tattoos from here.

Foodfight — heck yes, a vegan grocery store! No more do you have to stand around reading labels for hours, everything is vegan. They also carry a lot of hard-to-find vegan treats.

DC Vegetarian — mostly-vegan food cart. Although I’ve never tried an actual Philly cheese steak, their vegan version is easily one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

Powell’s Books — massive bookstore. Get your vegan cookbook on in their vegan section!

Bye and Bye — vegan hipster bar. All vegan spirits and a killer southern kitchen (hello collard greens, I think I love you!).

Vita Cafe — mostly-vegan breakfast/brunch spot. They have a vegan chicken fried steak. Enough said. If you’re into “day drinking” they also have great morning vegan cocktails.

Prasad — a mostly vegan raw joint. They’ve got great lunches and killer juices.

Voodoo Donuts — any establishment where I am able to order a “coffin of donuts” is right by me. They’ve got a huge vegan doughnut selection, and they’ll even perform marriage ceremonies!

Being vegan while traveling can sometimes require a little more planning, but definitely not in Portland — almost everywhere has vegan options. The only downside is that I am not able to eat the entire city whole.

About the author, Paul Jarvis
Paul Jarvis is the author of Eat Awesome: A regular person’s guide to plant-based, whole foods. He believes veganism is love — and that deliciousness always trumps dogma. He’s also a web designer, minimalist and touring musician. He lives with his amazing wife Lisa, in Tofino, British Columbia. They’ve also got a llama named Starman, who hangs out on a rescue sanctuary in Seabeck, Washington. Follow along with his photos on instagram.

Oscar-nominated actor Michael Clarke Duncan is a strong dude. In this video he just released with PETA, he explains how he reversed serious health threats by going vegetarian. He also dishes on the false assumptions that big guys who work out make about meat and protein. Also, check out the book he recommends, Skinny Bastard, by our pal Rory Friedman. If anything, just watch this and enjoy his deep baritone voice.

Animals Asia is making it really easy to help raise money for moon bears - victims of ruthless and barbaric “bile farming” in some Asian countries. Moon bears are kept in small cages for up to 30 years, and have their bile extracted through catheters, needles and open wounds. Starved, dehydrated and riddled with ailments, this is a living hell for the bears. The bile is used as a form of medicine.

Animals Asia needs funds to run our bear sanctuaries in China and Vietnam and to campaign for an end to bear farming.

Guys can help in a really simple way. Just stop shaving. Then take a photo of yourself, sign up here and invite your friends to sponsor you. Click below:

I am pleased to announce that Brave GentleMan is now carrying the world’s most handsome and responsible condoms. Only a few months ago I sat in Dun-Well Doughnuts with Mathew Gerson, Sir Richard’s Condom Company co-founder. We discussed everything from social justice to art and design to food, and I was blown away by the amazing work that Sir Richard’s was doing, especially in Haiti. Just watch this video:

We dig the gingham design – it’s classy, fun, and it radiates style in comparison to other condom companies’ tacky designs. But the really cool part is that for every condom purchased, Sir Richard’s donates a condom to a developing country. Their lubricant is free of harsh spermicide, parabens and glycerine, and the latex is casein-free, gaining them vegan certification. What’s even better? If you buy condoms from BraveGentleMan.com, there is no shipping charge!

Nate Diaz has become a real force of nature, and he’s working his way to being Lightweight Champ. He has been fighting every few months for the last seven years. To top it off, he’s vegan. “I switched to a total vegan diet some time ago – no meat or dairy, and I feel stronger than ever and my endurance is only getting better.” (Fuel 4 The Fighter)

According to David King of Yahoo News:

After putting on an impressive performance against Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in his last fight, Diaz displayed his evolution as an MMA fighter on May 5, becoming the first man to finish Jim Miller at “UFC on Fox 3.” Nate’s takedown defense looked better than ever against Miller, stuffing a few takedown attempts, and outworking him in the clinch. He sealed the deal with his ever impressive BJJ, smoothly securing a power guillotine choke when Miller shot in lazily.

Diaz will fight the winner of the Henderson-Edgar match later on in the year.

image courtesy of Ken Wolf

This is not a new phenomenon; plants and trees have rooted where ever habitable, but recently The New York Times wrote about trees taking root in the shelter of abandoned silos.  There is even a Flickr group devoted to these trees.  The oldest photograph in this group dates back to the summer of 2008.

Dwindling agriculture, through the rise of major factory farms, caused many family farms to close.  As The New York Times states, “because it can be more expensive to tear these down than to leave the task to time, they are left to teeter.”  The collapse of small farms left silos barren for decades.  They became free for mother-nature to re-imagine herself.

It brings me great joy to see nature reclaim these structures.  Perhaps, now more that ever, with the Mayan Calendar ending in 2012, people often wonder about the end of the world–but it is a misnomer.  The world will not end, just the era of man.  Earth is a resilient planet. It has transformed and replenished itself over and over, and these silos are just a sprinkling of its possibilities. Though it has moments of ridiculousness, there was a series on the History Channel called Life After People that goes in-depth on how nature may reclaim the structures. It has twenty episodes, ranging from the fact based ideas of trees growing in crumbling buildings to cats learning to fly. Can’t wait.

image courtesy of Ken Wolf

These images are also striking, especially when seen on flickr, in their resemblance to the stoic imagery of German photographer team, Bernd and Hilla Becher. This prolific duo created clean, objective documentation of industrial structures built with function over form, or as they say, ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style.’ Though their subject is often bleak looking, there is a lot of design and humor in these works. The structures are usually displayed in overwhelming grids. In a grid, the seemingly ordered pipes and rails, that flood the composition, turn chaotic and confusing. This quirky eye can be seen in the snapshots of trees growing in silos as well. The flat landscape and isolated structures feel cold and clinical. The structure has a impenetrable feeling. Yet, tuffs of tree branches peak out from the open tops or cracked sides of the these cinderblock behemoths. The juxtaposition of deteriorating structures and the natural resilience of trees becomes a punch line to man’s hubris…

Or, with much less schadenfreude, they can be seen as a friendly reminder: As we try to pull ourselves out of the fiscal and environmental recession, perhaps we should return to natural living try and mimic the ecosystem. After-all, it has persevered at least a century of direct destruction, pollution, yet continues to grow.

Contributor Brad Silk is an artist, curator, hedonist, and unprofessional who has worked with New York City galleries since 2007. He is Assistant Director at Numberthirtyfive Gallery (numberthirtyfive.com) and will be working with HEREarts Center (here.org) and Art Connects NY (artconnectsny.org). As an artist and curator with both commercial and not-for-profit spaces, he has a unique view into the art world.