Sophia & Michael: Plant-based food recipes for athletes with as small of a climate impact as possible!

Sophia & Michael: Plant-based food recipes for athletes with as small of a climate impact as possible!

On our previous Bee Good blog-post, we introduced you to Sophia and Michael - Swedish-American couple behind the Live Slow Run Far -blog who decided to give up the big city life in New York City and move to the Swedish countryside.

Besides now living in the Swedish archipelago, they are ambitious plant-based foodies, gardeners and trail runners. In this interview, you will learn where they find the inspiration for all the delicious vegetarian food recipes, what they think about sustainable eating and how also athletes can follow a plant-based diet and still train hard.

Trail running in Sweden

Your recipes look super yummy, where do you find inspiration for them?

Oh, fun question! Well, ever since we read this book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver about 5 years ago, we’ve been eating with the seasons.

To us, that means we stick to fruit and vegetables in the season where we live - not in season somewhere else.

Vegan recepies for athletes

Live Slow Run Far blog has a mouth-watering collection of delicious vegetarian recipes >>

In practice, this is not nearly as difficult or restricted as it may sound. In the beginning, there was, of course, significant head-scratching and we ended up eating the same types of dishes a lot - but after a few years of practice, we wouldn’t want it any other way.

With that said, SEASONAL EATING is one of our primary sources of inspiration - instead of viewing it as something limiting us, we get a kick out of looking at what’s available (whether in our garden or locally sourced in the supermarket) and create dishes based on that.

We both feel like we appreciate food much more this way when we eagerly await the first green leaves in the spring, or root vegetable season in the fall, or the first corn harvest. It brings us closer to nature and where food really comes from - and it tastes so much better this way!

We also have a quite extensive cookbook selection on our bookshelf, and it’s a common sight that we read cookbooks before going to bed. It’s calming, to us, to flicker through the pages and see both pretty pictures and beautiful ways of cooking with plants.

Plant-based, green food for athletes - is that even possible?

We eat mostly plant-based - and that works excellent, even though we train a lot. And this brings us to another source of inspiration in our recipe creation process: green food for athletes.

Vegetarian food for athletes

"You can train hard by following a plant-based diet", says enthusiast trail-runner Sophia.

We put emphasis on complete meals, with adequate amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fat, which we know would fuel us properly - and the quantities will reflect all those hours along the trails. It can definitely bother us when others around us comment on us having dessert often, eating lots of bread etc - because what is “healthy”, anyway? That’s a misnomer in many situations.

It’s inspiring to us when we see athletes around us take on a similar approach to ours, where the meat-eating norm is fading off and the attitude of “the more you move, the more you eat” gets to take up space in media.

A perfect vegan dinner for atheletes who need energy!

A MUST TRY: Root Vegetable Grain Bowl

Any other food philosophies you are inspired of?

Hm, what else? Seasonal and plant-based eating, flickering through cookbooks, cooking for athletes. Well, one last thing: we try to create recipes with as small of a climate impact as possible. With seasonal and plant-based eating, you’re already far along, but there are foods that we should be careful with even in the plant category.

Sophia & Michael are continuously expanding their beautiful garden!

Figuring out ways of replacing, for example, rice and certain types of nuts can be tricky, but it makes us feel good when we can show that there are in fact ways to eat with a clean climate conscience, even though we might feel like whatever we do, we’ll be doing the wrong thing somewhere. That’s not true. We just have to relearn how we think of food resources.

Do you have future dreams and plans regarding your Live Slow Run Far lifestyle?

In all honesty, the dream for ourselves is to be able to continue living the way we do. We have no desires to do anything differently - except continuously expanding the garden and becoming more accomplished runners, of course!

Besides that, what we really want to do is spread the word about all the benefits of living simply. We want more people to see and dare to explore what lies beyond the typical modern life, and join forces with us in trying to change society’s idea of what “success” is.

Happiness doesn’t come in the shape of fat paychecks, career climbs or bigger and fancier houses. It really doesn’t, no matter what the news, the internet, and social media tell you.

"If we could start a little live slow-movement and get others to see the beauty of pursuing your passions and having time to actually both think, breathe and feel, it would mean the world to us", dream Sophia and Michael.

And not just to us - it would mean the world... to the world. We didn’t have the planet’s well-being as our first and foremost focus when we started this whole journey - it would be a lie to claim we did - but it’s been quite incredible to realize that all the changes we’ve made in order to create more time for us to do what we want have ended up benefitting the climate and planet earth infinitely. Less consumption, plant-based food, a garden yielding food for us as well as a home to pollinators - the list goes on.

The most important one might be the closeness we feel to nature now, living amidst it. It sounds like such a cliche, but we really do - and that’s something that has gotten lost in our 21st-century modern lifestyle.

"Once you’ve reestablished that lost connection with Mother Nature, you can’t NOT care for her."

It comes naturally. We know our birds, wildflowers, mushrooms, and pollinators so well now, after 2 years. We take great pleasure in witnessing all the seasonal changes and have time to notice even the smallest details. So many of us have lost touch with nature that the problems our planet is facing seem too distant to care about. That has definitely changed for us, and that makes us want to do our part even more.

In other words, our dreams and plans for Live Slow Run Far center around getting more people on board. If we could do this, then anyone can. Oh, and one more thing: we would love to make a cookbook. That’s a big dream. A cookbook reflecting our food philosophy, telling bits and pieces of our story and showcasing delicious plant-based food for the active person.

More about Sophia and Michael and their lifestyle will be shared later in Weekendbee channels. Stay tuned!

Get to know Sophia and Michael more by following Live Slow Run Far -blog and Instagram.


Read also:

Sophia & Michael left the hectic city life and moved to the countryside >>