Featured Interview: Ruth Heidrich’s Amazing Race
Ruth Heidrich might be the bionic woman. Heidrich has been a marathon woman (pun intended) for decades, surviving a battle with cancer, winning Ironman competitions and publishing books about her story, all while maintaining a vegan lifestyle. Recently Vegan Mainstream got to chat with Heidrich about her many accomplishments, and glimpse a day in the [...]
Photo courtesy: Ruth Heidrich
Ruth Heidrich might be the bionic woman. Heidrich has been a marathon woman (pun intended) for decades, surviving a battle with cancer, winning Ironman competitions and publishing books about her story, all while maintaining a vegan lifestyle. Recently Vegan Mainstream got to chat with Heidrich about her many accomplishments, and glimpse a day in the life of this inspiring woman with a splendid sense of humor.
Vegan Mainstream: What first urged you to adopt a vegan lifestyle and how long have you been vegan?
Ruth Heidrich: Breast cancer! In 1982 I was diagnosed. I had been a runner since 1968, and had done several marathons. When they did a biopsy and I found out it was cancer, I had been running for 14 years and thought I was fit and healthy, so I couldn’t believe that it was really cancer. I got a second and third opinion, but there was no question it was cancer, and it had spread.
[Doctors] were scheduling me for chemo[therapy] and radiation when I happened to see a notice in the local newspaper: “Wanted! Women with breast cancer to participate in diet research study.” I thought, how timely! I called the number and it was Dr. John McDougall’s number. I told him I had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, but I really didn’t think it was [due to my] diet, because I was already on a really good diet. No red meat, low-fat, powdered Carnation milk. He said, “I need to talk to you. Get your medical records and come down to my office.”
So I did. He showed me the scientific studies, the epidemiological studies, and some animal studies. “The study I’m proposing is that you have no chemo, no radiation, and go on this low-fat vegan diet, and we’ll see what happens,” [Dr. McDougall said]. “You go to your oncologist and ask him to show you studies that chemo and radiation work.” So, that convinced me. I went vegan in two hours. No transition, no anything. Of course, I did have a medical gun to my head.
I kept up with my running, even after the surgery. Because I was so fit, that was not a problem. I just wrapped an Ace bandage around myself and kept on running. Then I saw the Ironman Triathlon on television. It had just started back in 1982. I thought all I needed to add was the [swimming] and the bicycling, because I already did marathons. Then I thought [to myself]: “Oh lady, you’ve got cancer.” “But, wait a minute, I’m feeling good and if Dr. McDougall is right about the diet, I’m going to be even better than before.” “Lady, you’re 47 years old. These are all youngsters in their 20s.” “Well, I can be the oldest lady.” For a short while, I was. I still am the first cancer patient to do the Ironman. It is 30 years ago this year that I’ve been vegan.
VM: That’s a great story!
RH: That’s why I wrote my first book, A Race for Life, because Dr. McDougall kept saying I had to tell women. It was self-published in 1995 and Lantern Books picked it up in 2000.
VM: What advice do you have for athletes in terms of training and how they can use veganism for strength and endurance?
RH: Be consistent with your training. I do daily training, the “hard/easy” [training system]. They say you need to rest a day in-between, but that’s only if you do so much that you do muscle damage. Very few people I know train hard enough that they do muscle damage. Do something every day. Start at whatever fitness level you’re at and increase slowly. I use the rule of 10 per cent per week to increase.
Listen to your body. If something starts to hurt, then stop. If you’re starting as a runner, I say run ’til it hurts, stop ’til it doesn’t hurt and then run some more. As a 42-year runner, that advice has held up quite well.
As far as the diet, I think there’s no question our bodies and muscles run on carbs, but healthy carbs. I still get flack about low-carb diets. You want a high-carb diet! That’s what our fuel is, and it’s the only fuel our brain uses. Glucose is the only fuel that gets through the blood-brain barrier. If you’re low on carbs, your brain gets fuzzy. The diet is all plant foods. If you average all the fruits and vegetables, it’s about 80 percent carbs, 10 percent fat, and 10 percent protein.
The protein issue always comes up, but Dr. McDougall says if you get enough calories, you will get enough protein. People have told me I can’t possibly get enough protein with all the activity I do, but you get more protein when you do more. When you burn more calories, your appetite increases, so you eat more, and by definition you will get more protein. The body handles that situation very easily. People write to me all the time at Ask Dr. Ruth on my website, asking me how to get enough protein.
VM: Are you still updating Ask Dr. Ruth?
RH: Not on the website. I lost my webmaster, but I do get questions every day. Ever since the documentary Forks Over Knives came out, the email has just been [coming] every day. This morning there were 86 new emails.
VM: What does a daily routine look like for you?
RH: Every morning I run, bike and swim. It varies on how long I do each, for two to three hours. After I eat, I floss and brush. I do that after every meal.
I email first thing in the morning before my workout and then again in the afternoon. I eat breakfast after my workout. I’ve discovered I like the feeling of being lean and mean. When I first started racing in the early 70s, they started early in the morning and I never had time to eat anything, but I didn’t really want to anyway. I’ve found that I do really well on an empty stomach. With this diet, you have enough glucose or glycogen on board from the night before.
For endurance races, like Ironman, I run out of glycogen at about two hours and 20 minutes, so that’s when I need to put something in.
VM: Do you eat protein bars or anything like that?
RH: Not really. I’ve been a purist ever since the cancer episode. Back in ’82 there were none of these “fake foods.” I guess if you look at the ingredients there’s nothing wrong with them, but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat oranges, apples, dates and figs. Whole foods. Studies have shown dried plums [prunes] really help your bones; women who eat nine to ten [prunes] a day have increased bone density.
For the past three years, I’ve included the dried plums in my diet and found I love them.
VM: What time do you typically eat your last meal of the day?
RH: Five o’clock. It’s basically lots of leafy greens. Both of my meals [consist of] a bed of leafy greens. My eating bowl is the big one [from a salad bowl set]. I fill it up almost halfway with leafy greens: kale, water cress, baby spinach, mixed organic greens, romaine, etc. I shop at the farmer’s market so I get lots of greens that way. For the morning, it’s greens and fruit, and for the evening it’s greens and veggies. Then my dessert is always blueberries, about a cup or more, with a handful of walnuts for my Omega-3s. That’s when I have my prunes. I sprinkle a lot of cinnamon and it’s delicious. I also buy fresh ginger at the farmer’s market. I don’t mince it, but I cut it into pieces, and it makes for a very spicy, tangy taste which I love. I do that for all my meals, breakfast, dinner and dessert. I probably get about an inch worth of ginger every day.
VM: Do you have any other “food as medicine” remedies for athletes?
RH: Curry powder. It is a mixture of tumeric and cumin. Those two are the main things as antioxidants [for inflammation]. I love the taste of that with the ginger. Most recipes call for a teaspoon or tablespoon for the whole recipe, but I use it for one serving. I guess my taste buds really like the tangy taste.
People who are not vegan just don’t understand. They think a vegan diet is so devoid of all the flavors they think they get from meat. But, meat is just a cardboard taste until you add stuff to it, and it’s the stuff you add that can be the healthy thing.
Green tea is my morning beverage. I leave the bag in to the second cup of hot water to which I add 100 percent cocoa powder, and I sweeten that with Stevia. I call it choco-tea. That’s my favorite beverage.
VM: What is your book Senior Fitness about?
RH: When I turned 70, my editor gave me a call and said, “Now that you’re 70 years old, how would you like to write a book about senior fitness. I think you qualify.” I’m the luckiest writer in the world to have a publisher calling me and asking me to write a book. So I said yes.
I had been giving talks on the top ten drugs people take and why you don’t need to take them. Each one of those symptoms are related to a disease, and the drugs don’t cure the disease. If you eat the right diet and do the right exercise, most of those symptoms disappear. So the book is on the top ten drugs for the top ten killers of Americans, and how to reverse and prevent those diseases. Things like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, osteoprorosis, arthritis, they are all tied in. There’s even a chapter on sexual disfunction. It covers everything.
Now, I’m off and running on another book!
VM: I’m curious as to what your diet and workout routine was like before you went vegan versus now.
RH: Before I went vegan, I would go for my morning run before work. That was the only time I could go. That’s when I became sold on running as the perfect exercise. The diet was the typical American diet: chicken, steak, hamburger, lots of cheese dishes. I didn’t eat breakfast even then. My lunch was frequently yogurt. I remember making lunches for the family, things like sandwiches and lots of processed foods. I just feel so sorry for the way I fed them!
Our refrigerator was kind of divided in half [when I first went vegan]. My fruits and vegetables, and [my husband's] lobster and butter and hamburger. I started getting support outside of the home, though there weren’t very many [vegans] at the time, so we started the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii in 1990. There was a group of us who had been through the McDougall renovation of our diet and health.
VM: What was your involvement like with Forks Over Knives?
RH: I had no idea who, or what or anything about it, but I thought it could lead to a lot of people getting to hear my story. They sent a film crew to Vancouver where I was spending my summer at the time. We filmed my running in an urban forest where there were berries, so we stopped and I fed the crew blackberries. We went down to the beach and did some filming, then went to a local grocery where I bought some food and prepared a meal. I also have my home gym here and there, so they filmed a weight workout and me working out on a stationary bike. Next thing I knew, I was getting emails from all sorts of people. I’m still hearing from people who just watched it. I was so lucky to be a part of that opportunity.
If you want to learn more about Ruth Heidrich’s journey, check out her website here.
Source: www.veganmainstream.com
