However, it doesn’t have to to end there. Robert Cheeke still has a message to share: that every vegan has the power to serve as a powerful example of an amazing diet. While he doesn’t have to, I think Robert could singlehandedly dismiss every myth about the “scrawny vegan” if he just got enough exposure.

That’s why it’s important for the vegan community to get “re-excited” about this 2008 article. We’re going to get Robert BACK in the Willamette Week for a follow-up and here’s one way we can all help make this happen: go and read the article! You can read Lean, Mean, Meat-Free Machine by John Minvervini and then spread the word to your friends and family.  You can even throw them a link to this page (http://mikkei.com/robert-cheeke-willamette-week) if you feel they need some explanation. Also remember, and this is IMPORTANT, try to leave a comment (or two).

Doing this will help to get Robert back in the Willamette Week. By visiting this article online, you’re basically casting your vote. Websites track there top content by measuring which pages get the most traffic (and therefore, interest) via stats trackers like Google Analytics and by the ammount of interaction (comments). If the big-wigs at the Willamette Week see Lean, Mean, Meat-Free Machine going off the (meat) hook, then they will be much more inclined to run a follow up story with Robert because it’s likely to help them sell more papers offline and make more advertizing money online.

So, all we really have to do in order to spread the positive message of veganism and vegan bodybuilding is to spread the word about this article. I had the special opportunity to sit down with Robert this last week and he told me that he’s still in touch with the article’s author, John Minvervini, and is going to propose the follow-up idea to him.

So here’s what to do:

1. Go read and comment on Lean, Mean, Meat-Free Machine by John Minvervini.

2. Send this link to your vegan friends and family to let them know what we’re doing: http://mikkei.com/robert-cheeke-willamette-week

3. Vote for this article on your favorite social bookmarking sites below (Digg, Mixx, Stumble, etc.)

Click Image to See the Mark of the Beast Upon My Twitter Page

Anyway, if you want to get down with the Seitan thing, follow me on Twitter: @mike_arnesen

—> Vote Here! <—-

Now, if this isn’t a chance to do something cool, funny, and perhaps even world changing (small steps!) then I don’t know what is. One June 22nd, the “voice of Google”, Matt Cutts, posted a blog entry asking for votes to determine what his next 30-day challenge will be. Last month he made a commitment to walk at least 10,000 steps a day for 30 days (sometimes a bit trickier than it sounds for us computer nerds) and he just finished 30-days of abstaining from television for 30 days.

Now he has given the internet blog-reading community a chance to totally influence his life and vote on what his next challenge will be. The challenges he’s ready to try include bike to work, no blogging, no sugar, read 15 book in 30 days, and you guessed it: no meat! One of his readers even suggested adoption a straight edge lifestyle for 30 days!

So, does the online vegan community have what it takes to make a difference? Is Google’s Matt Cutts up to the challenge of “no meat for 30 days”? It’s amazing how much you realize you don’t need something (like meat, TV, cooked food) when you’re without it for a period that long. We could be cultivating life-long vegetarianism for Cutts! 

If you want to see internet super authority Matt Cutts become vegetarian for 30 days, cast your vote here!

I eventually picked up a copy of The Essential Triathlete by Steven Jonas and really started getting inspired. I was getting ready to start my training and even picked out a race that was a couple of months off. I chose the Blue Lake Triathlon in Portland, Oregon. Sadly, as I looked into it more I found that there were more obstacles than just physical limits that I’d have to overcome. Competing in a triathlon costs money! Aside from the $80 registration, I’d need a swim cap, speedos, a bike tune up (if not a new bike altogether), clipping pedals, bike shoes, and more. Long story short, I didn’t have the money for all of that so I had to call off the effort.

It was sad, but I still kept the goal in my mind and have been reading many Lance Armstrong books as well as the Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier to keep me inspired and learning. I’ve been steadily working on my swimming skills but haven’t put as much time into my running and biking because, another cost I forgot, I don’t have health insurance and I’ll be damned if I get hit by a car and have to pay for it!

Well anyways, I am confident that I can do a triathlon if I just get the funds together and have plenty of inspiration. I may have missed the window of opportunity to do it this summer (maybe September though!), but that just gives me more time to train.

I’ve always been impressed by the generosity of total strangers on the internet, so here is my plea for help! I’m accepting donations for my triathlon effort through my site. You can donate money through PayPal and your donation will go towards fees and equipment. Now, if you give something to my cause, I don’t want it to be a one sided relationship. I want to give something back. If you contribute more than $5 to my triathlon effort, I’ll include you in my list of official “Triathlon Sponsors” on Mikkei.com. More than just your name, I’ll include a link to your organization, company, or blog with any anchor text you want (because if you’re an SEO geek like me, that’s really cool!). I also wouldn’t mind including a picture and breif bio/informative spiel about you. Additionally, I’ll create a Triathlon Training section on the site where I’ll keep my sponsors updated with my training progress, my nutrition, and video blogs.

Once I get together about $80 or so, I’ll start searching for the triathlon that I want to compete in and sign up. Shortly thereafter, the training will begin!

Technorati Profile

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This year there are some great prizes for the winners courtesy of Giacomo Marchese of Vegan Proteins. 

The first place winner receives: $1 for each competitor to the winner’s charity of choice, 1/2 lb Sunwarrior, 1/2 lb Spirulina, 1/2 lb Aktivated Barley, 1 probar / 1 vega bar / 1 vega packet, 1 raw food recipe book courtesy of Christy Duffell; ‘Raw Food Figure Competitor’. 

So pretty sweet! Additionally, every competitor gets a $5 voucher for Vegan Proteins and will have their photos featured on that site. If you want to become part of the vegan bodybuilding and fitness community, head over and cast your vote in the Biceps Competion: Vote for your favorite vegans here!

So what’ the problem? Well, even though I hate people who start articles and speeches by saying “Webster’s defines ____ as…..”, I’m going to do it for the purpose of citing a credible source. Here goes. Webster’s defines the vegetarian diet as one that consists of  “vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or dairy product”. No fish in that sentence, right? Just to be safe, I’ll check to see if maybe fish is a vegetable. Nope. Apparently, a fish is “an aquatic animal”. So perhaps it’s safe to say that those who eat fish are definitively NOT vegetarians. Okay? Good, so now people can  stop using that term to describe themselves and their decidedly non-vegetarian diets. This is great, because when people who are not vegetarians in any sense of the word label themselves as such, it makes them look pretty dumb and it makes vegetarians look inconsistent and detracts from the movement.

Not all is lost for the would-be veggies. Fortunately, I’ve just discovered a word that you can use for yourself if you happen to be one of those people who likes vegetarian food, but just can’t give up sushi and fishsticks. It’s called “Flexitarian”. It means “someone who consumes a largely vegetarian-type diet, but occasionally eats meat”. It was the American Dialect Society’s “Most useful word of 2003″, so apparently it’s not news, but still new to me. So there you go. You can still have a cool word to describe yourself. Happy?

Now thousands upon thousands of vegans and vegetarians can breathe a collective sigh of relief and stop expending precious energy expressing our supreme annoyance with people who love to drag the word “vegetarian” through the mud. Now we can focus on illustrating to them that “yes, fish CAN feel pain!” But that’s another project for another day.

On January 2 of this year, RobertSupreme asked “How fast do you think you and I and everyone else here at VBBF can reach the combined total ofOne Million Push Ups?” It was a great question and thanks to him we have the VBBF Challenge: One Million 1,000,000 Push Ups thread and I have to admit, it’s one of my favorite threads on the forum!

It’s now been a bit over five months and last time I checked the total was: 34,470! Not bad. Not bad at all.
Most people would think that’s quite an accomplishment, but seriously…we’re vegans!
We can do way better than that! Haha.

How crazy would it be if the forum got one million pushups in a year?! Damn, that’s even a bit much for my aspirations, but what if we could hit the 50,000 pushup mark by the end of June? That would mean we’d have 100,000 by the end of year. (10 years until one million pushup? We need more vegans!)

Anyway, up until now we’ve been averaging 6,744 pushups a month. To get 50,000 by the end of June we’d have to crank out 15,530 between then and know. That would be more than doubling our monthly rate.

I think we can do it! If we all commit to it we can blow right passed 50,000. Really, all we need is 15 people to commit to doing 50 pushups a day until June 30th. 50 per day x 21 days left = 1,050. 1,050 x 15 people = 15,750. More than enough.

So I’m putting out a challenge for people to commit to the effort. It shouldn’t be that hard. It’s not like this is a couch potato forum. We all workout all the damn time anyway.

And you don’t have to do 50 a day if you aren’t feeling up to it. What can you commit? Anything helps.

Reply here to re-commit to the pushup challenge and then head over to the VBBF Challenge: One Million 1,000,000 Push Ups thread and add’em up!

So do you think a community of the fittest vegans around can meet this challenge? I think so! Stay tuned for an update at the end of the month.

I’ve been getting pretty pumped on veganism as of late, and I mean that literally. Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness is by far the best online community of fit vegans on the web, and even though there’s not a whole lot of competetion (how many vegan fitness sites are there?), don’t let that downplay how cool it is.

The first thing you see when visiting the site is the latest news in the world of Vegan Bodybuilding, more often than not, focusing on the training of site-founder Robert Cheeke or events he’s involved with. There is also a sweet page full of bios on a large handful of vegan bodybuilders and fitness celebrities; pumped full of info, pictures, and thorough interviews.

While the main web page at Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness is cool, it’s not updated that often. The real gem of the site is the vegan bodybuilding forum. Hidden away in the back of Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness, Inever even looked at the vegan bodybuilding forum until a year after I started visiting the site. I joined to forum in March of 2009 and just hit 200 posts and I have to say that being involved with the Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness community there is the most satisfying time sink I’ve ever come across. I’ll find myself up at night way later than I should be just searching the active topics and throwing in my two cents on training programs and progress updates. But aside from commenting on other people’s endeavors, the real benefit comes when you make the leap and just put yourself out there as well. I started keeping a training log there and uploaded progress pictures and the feedback I got was nothing but positive, honest, and constructive. It really has helped to keep me motivated and full of new ideas. I’ve also had a number of people who were very interested in my workout routine, which is a huge self esteem boost.

It’s also a great place to feel supported as a vegan. Since turning vegan in 2001, the other vegans I’ve met have been few and far between (until I moved to Portland, OR) but on the vegan forum, you never feel alone. After interacting with a bunch of people there, I even got the chance to meet up with and become friends with members. 

Another great motivator that the forum has provided me is there annual muscle photo contests. Each year members compete with their photo submissions. There are categories for each body part and an overall fitness/most ripped category. They are just kicking the competition off with biceps, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer being filled with some healthy competition.

So if you’re interested in becoming part of an online vegan community, getting feedback on you bodybuilding endeavored, finding encouragement to get fit, or just learn more about veganism and what it can do for you, I encourage you to check out Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness today.

Well anyway, I looked into Hugh Jackman’s workout plan that he used for Wolverine and found the typical stuff; consistency, increasing volume, compound movements. These are all typical things that the hollywood heroes seem to employ when they’re bulking up for roles that require them to be ripped. And then, as usual, I read about his mass gaining diet and was disappointed. What did it consist of? Animal protein and lots of it. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised at all. I suppose it’s actually pretty childish to be disappointed that more people aren’t aware of the benefits of taking in plant protein as opposed to animal protein.

So once again let down by a would-be hero, I find myself re-motivated to continue my training and serve as a positive example of what you can do on a vegan diet. I’ll keep thinking about poor Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber and their self-described “genocide of chickens” and use it to fuel my own efforts. As long as there are great role models like Giacomo Marchese, Robert Cheeke, and Jimi Sitko out there, I think the word will spread about vegan proteins, and the celebrity workouts and diet plans of tomorrow will give us movie stars we can really look up to.