Please share your experiences on a fully plant based, "vegan", diet: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Me: 33 yr old female, eliminated animal products from my diet almost a year ago. Feeling great and loving it. 5'9" tall, size 1/2 No animal milk, animal eggs, or animal tissues, including seafood, eggs, and all dairy products. I am a strong advocate for a high-macronutrient, plant based diet.
Welcome to the Sciforums, Tara. Pleased to meet you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I was a strict vegetarian for 2 years when I was 19 - 20. I lost a lot of weight, got anemic and caught every illness that came by. My doctor asked me why I was trying to kill myself. :shrug: He pointed out that I had canine teeth and incisors as well, both of which are for eating meat - a hereditary attribute of being a member of homo sapiens. I noted that our relatives out in the bush also eat meat as part of their diet. I returned to being an omnivore and included animal based foods in my diet, though in proportion. Now, at 61 nearing 62 I eat an extremely healthy, well balanced diet including lots of fresh fruits and vegetables (many from a local friends farm), whole grains, fish and lean meat. Eggs in moderation, though I have 'Egg Beaters' for most breakfasts during the week. While I no longer do power lifting or kickboxing as I did for 35 years, I still run 7 miles a day 7 days a week, play very hard with my 95 pound Labrador, lift weights, do Taekwon Do and do some heavy physical work daily. I feel great, am very healthy, extremely strong and enjoy my life very much. I am a member and participate in Real Age (Dr Oz) and pay attention to current health - related science. If I were to become a vegan now, I would take advantage of the food products that are now available which were not back then. Stuff like tofu, endamami and supplements to replace the nutrients that would be missing from that strict vegan diet. With the information that is now available it should be quite possible to cover your nutritional needs as a vegan, if you do your homework. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I was vegetarian for over 10 years, and a vegan for about 2 years. That was around 20 years ago. I felt more healthy at the start but I think that may have been more of a placebo effect, I was expecting better health. Ultimately it made me obese and generally of poor health. To be fair though my regime at that time was not particularly scientific. My view then was to simply not to eat meat, but I didn't take steps to compensate with appropriate supplements, e.g. the B complexes, fish oil, etc. I have concluded from decades of experiments on myself, I am now 60, that a vegetarian lifestyle is fundamentally unhealthy and takes exceptional attention to include supplements simply not available in plants. It can be done but does require significant effort to do it right. For those who choose this for ethical or religious reasons then I completely understand, and I wish that animals were not part of our evolutionary food chain. But until our science can accurately produce true artificial meat then I'll keep eating all those dead animals and fish. I now eat animal fat (usually tallow that I make myself) as my main source of energy and the dominant part of my diet, small amounts of protein - beef, pork, eggs, fish, bacon, liver, kidneys, chicken (rarely), and a few non-starchy vegetables, with occasional macadamia nuts and avocados. Since my energy source is fat based I don't need to snack and I only need to eat twice a day, lunch and dinner. I drink mainly water, black unsweetened coffee, and an occasional diet soda and 86% dark chocolate as a rare treat. Best state of health I have ever had. The vitally important things to avoid are - sugar in any form, all grain and wheat based products, all high omega-6 vegetable oils and margarine, anything with soy, pasta, starchy vegetables, fruits, all legumes, milk based products, and of course no candy (hehe apart from that rare dark chocolate).
Tara, congratulations on your plant based diet! I too have been on this journey for well over a year. The medical, peer-reviewed studies, as you probably know, have pretty much proven that this is the healthiest way to eat. You have joined a fast growing group of people who are now eating a diet that is tremendously healthy and is the best thing you could do for the environment and the billions of animals who die every year just to end up on our plates and cause so many of our chronic illnesses. My experience of giving up all animal products, oils and most processed foods has been amazing. I have lost weight, feel wonderful, sleep well and have more energy. I always caught whatever cold or flu was going around and would often feel generally unhealthy. That is all gone. I was sharing with a friend that I can't even honestly use the excuse of not feeling well so that I can take a day off from work, because it never happens. Also, once I gave up dairy I stopped craving it. Once I gave up processed oils, all my food cravings went away. For someone who has struggled with weight problems her whole life (I am 53), it was a miracle. I love the incredible foods of the plant-based diet and have learned to love cooking, but I don't crave anything. This is the best thing I have ever done for myself. As for people who have struggled with vegetarian and/or vegan diets, it is so difficult to know why they didn't do well. There are many unhealthy ways of eating vegetarian and vegan. When I went vegan, I gained 20 pounds. However, I was eating lots of processed vegan foods and oil, and not enough vegetables. About six months later I took the next step to eating a whole foods, plant based, no processed oil diet and that's when everything turned around. I now eat lots of veggies, fruits, grains, legumes and a small amount of nuts and seeds. There are so many food options that I will never run out of new recipes to try. I know that there are wonderful free online resources like the T. Colin Campbell Foundation, Engine 2 Diet, John McDougall, and the Happy Herbivore that people can go to for recipes, education and lots of support. For those people who struggle with this way of eating and feel it isn't working, those plant based diet groups are excellent at helping people discover what they are doing wrong. It is very easy to let some of those unhealthy ingredients slip back into our diet. And little cheats here and there hinders this diet from being truly healthy. So, good luck with your journey. It seems like you are already experiencing all the benefits and don't need anyone to convince you to continue. I certainly will never go back to the Standard American Diet. To me, animal products no longer even register in my mind as a food group.
It's not just the teeth. Our entire physiology began evolving into that of a predator when our distant ancestral species invented the technology of flint blades. Using these tools, they were able to scrape the leftover meat off of the bones abandoned by the carnivores. This resulted in a quantum increase in the protein in their diet. Since brain tissue requires an enormous amount of protein, this allowed the brains of their next descendant species to be much larger. The extra intelligence allowed them to invent even more effective tools (such as bows and arrows) and more effective food gathering tactics (such as cornering a herd of herbivores in a cul-de-sac). They became predators themselves, killing their own meat instead of scavenging it. Eventually our species, Homo sapiens, evolved. We have lost the relatively large gut of other herbivores, which contains a bacterial culture that can turn the normally-indigestible cellulose in plant tissue into protein for maintenance and metabolism as well as more digestible starch for growth and energy. Until the rather recent invention of the technology of cooking (which also breaks down cellulose), we had absolutely no choice of diet except meat. So today our species is the apex predator of the entire planet: we dine on the flesh of both bears and sharks. This is the three or four million years of evolution you misguided kids are giving the finger to when you attempt to live without meat. Meat is a 100% balanced diet for human beings. It contains all the nutrients we need, in exactly the right proportions for growth and maintenance. Sure, milk and eggs also provide this. In fact dairy farming is a much more sustainable form of agriculture since one acre of grazing land will produce ten times as much food in the form of milk rather than meat. It's also kinder to the animals, since they don't need to be killed, but simply to work for a living like everybody else. And sure, it is theoretically possible to construct a faux-diet for a carnivore, out of 100% plant tissue. But it is not easy, and it seems that every couple of generations we discover that we've been making a deadly mistake. I had to put my dog on a grain-free diet because grain-based dog food was giving him seizures. Raw ground turkey and canned vegetables including the water, where all the vitamins go during cooking. My other dog is so jealous! The search for a meatless diet has been marked by heartbreaking failures. At the end of the Paleolithic Era, when our ancestors still lived the life of the obligate carnivores that they were anatomically, the life expectancy of an adult who had managed to survive childhood (the infant mortality rate was about 80% clear up into the 19th century) was in the 50s. The Roman Empire packed its population so densely that it was physically impossible to deliver meat (or even milk and eggs) from the distant farmlands to the people in the city, using the transportation technology of the era. They had no choice but to live on plant protein: grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, which don't spoil as quickly as meat and milk. (Eggs keep for two months, but they're so dadgum fragile!) By the dawn of the Christian Era, the life expectancy for a Roman adult who was not a member of the aristocracy was in the low 20s! Humans are carnivores by nature. Of course one of the things we've always done is to go against our nature, so perhaps one day we'll find a way to stay healthy without animal products. But that day is not today. We'll probably have Star Trek replicators that can create 100% perfect artificial meat before we learn how to live without it safely. In the meantime, will all of you please do your bodies a big favor and eat your damn eggs and dairy products! No animal had to die to produce them, but without them you might die a slow, agonizing death from a cause that hasn't even been identified yet. Wouldn't it be ironic if you couldn't live as long as a caveman? You're waaaay behind the information curve. My wife is an ovo-lacto-vegetarian and she says that tofu has recently been put in very nearly the same category as hydrogenated fats. She's putting her energy into campaigning for more humane treatment of laying hens and dairy cattle, instead of trying to reverse two hundred thousand generations of evolution. And she eats plenty of chocolate. Theobromine: "food of the gods." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
There are some commonalities between meat eating and vegan eating re poor health, and to some extent these issues have already been noted. 1. Highly processed man-made foods tend to include substances that have no place in a human diet, whether a meat based product or plant based item. 2. High concentrations of omega-6 PUFA from many oils and processed foods. 3. Wheat based products form the top item in the world for allergies and intestinal diseases. 4. Milk based products are the number 2 item in the world for allergies and metabolic disturbances. 5. The current fat phobia fad promoted by current poorly advised authorities causes healthy fat in the diet to be replaced by high volumes of sugar, or glucose generating alternatives. Make these few changes and focus on real foods instead of manufactured and processed foods then whether you go vegan, vegetarian, or carnivorous, it is quite likely you can maintain excellent health. While we all have the same basic physiology we all have different tolerances for certain food sources. These are usually genetic differences that significantly alter our individual metabolic processes. The hormones are the primary players and any tendency for your body to under-produce or over-produce such items as insulin, leptin, ghrelin, etc, or just have different allergy/tolerance triggers, will result in widely different reactions to the same food for given set of individuals. The real rule here is that there is not one approach that fits all. If you find something that works for you then that is great, but don't assume that your discovery will be good for anyone else.
Some excellent replies on this thread but this one resonates the most with my own personal research and experience. I have placed in bold italic the most pertinent observation of all, IMO. I was raised with the saying, 'One man's meat is another man's poison.' We are a species with a demonstrated capacity to survive an amazing number of options. Only the individual can truly ascertain the effect of various foods in their diet. By the number of products that we market in the grocery store for stomach and intestinal distress, it seems obvious to me that most of those food like products in the pretty packages are not serving our best interests. :bugeye:
I am feeling great too, and I don't think I have (had) nutrition based illness.(well, maybe bad teeth) I eat lots of sugar (my wife is surprised I am not diabetic), eat meat and drink moderately. But I do exercise and I don't do anything too much. (well, maybe the sugar thingy) I do have fast metabolism though... I have found the secret of decent life: do everything in moderation. And exercise. You don't need the vegetarian crap. I mean if you feel like doing it, the more power to you, but you are not healthier or more ethical than I am because of it...
I have a question for the vegans.... Are you able to be certain that the plants you eat have not been fertilized with animal and fish by-products? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I contemplate that all plants, animals and humans are carbon based life forms and that when I die, I too shall eventually become 'organic amendments'. My main concern with eating animals is that they be raised humanely and dispatched and utilized respectfully. When I was a child we lived close to the land and ate a diet that was largely big game, fish and wild harvest.
But that's a red herring when you're talking to a group comprised primarily of Americans and Europeans. Our distant ancestors invented the agricultural technology of dairy farming, which was not common in the rest of the world. As a result, the population of Europe and nearby regions developed and passed down a genetic mutation for a certain type of neoteny, the retention of a childhood trait into adulthood. In this case that trait is a metabolism that continues to produce lactase, the enzyme required for the digestion of milk. This enzyme is much rarer in the populations of other parts of the world with no tradition of dairy farming. So most Americans and Europeans can drink milk with no adverse effects. Of course both of these regions are now highly cosmopolitan, so many of us have DNA from other populations. For example, one of my grandfathers was of Jewish ancestry, and I began to lose the ability to digest milk in my late 20s. By 35 it was completely gone. I don't think vegans object to the tissue of animals that die natural deaths being used as fertilizer. That's just the cycle of life, no matter what one's dietary preferences may be. In the wild, the carcasses of animals that die natural deaths are most likely to be eaten by scavengers, a class of animals that we carefully call by a different name than predators, because they do not kill their prey. Any carcasses that manage to escape this fate are simply recycled into the soil and become fertilizer. Throughout history humans have generally eaten the flesh of scavengers, including pigs, dogs, goats, bears, raccoons, etc. But some cultures regard them as taboo, notably the Jews and Muslims. Vegans simply don't believe that there is anything "respectful" about killing a young, healthy animal in order to eat its flesh. The fact that we do it without the terror and pain that predators inflict on their prey doesn't make a difference to them, which I find distinctly odd. Yes, factory farming is cruel, but that's a recent phenomenon that is not essential to the industry of animal husbandry. In California we've already passed laws prohibiting some of the worst practices, and we'll continue to pass more. As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation eventually. The world population is going to peak and begin shrinking within the lifetime of our youngest members. It's possible that we'll never have to completely give up eating meat, which is a very inefficient use of resources. But beef will surely have to go; it's the most profligately wasteful type of food production.
I've been vegan for 26/27 years. Me: Male; age--right in the middle of Generation X; 6'0"; 138 lbs; and, heh, also size 2--owing to my unusually narrow frame and lean physique I wear mostly children's and women's clothing, and that which I make or alter; of course, at 6 foot everything is short, but I only wear 3/4 pants ("pedal pushers")--in emulation of hobbits, Nepalese Sherpas, Peanuts characters, and Ivor Cutler. I'm in exceptionally good health; bike several thousand miles a year; run through the woods with dogs for at least two hours every day; and am partial to the labor-intensive methods of doing anything and everything. My only health problem is a refractory seizure disorder (t.l.e.) owing to a severe childhood head trauma; I cope sans pharmaceuticals by altered "lifestyle," which basically means I avoid most dealings with people except on superficial levels (expecting the few I know and trust). Yeah, even in the mid/late '80s it was kinda challenging. I eat mostly food, and avoid manufactured and processed crap almost entirely, but just the ready availability of things like tofu, tempeh, etc. pretty much anywhere and an abundance of good information nowadays makes it a lot easier.
With you on the "food" thing. I avoid prepared, canned etc - minimal or no processing. I pass on saturated fats and added salt as well, we don't use that at all. I prefer the organic stuff I get from a nearby friend's farm stand in season, get it from the local fruit market when it is out of season. Also run through the woods with my Labrador for 2 hours every day. It is fun, healthy and she really enjoys it, as do I. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I am almost the same, except my weight is in the healthy range. 6'1" and 195 lbs. I used to have a problem of putting on weight/bulking up, but now that my metabolism is slowing down with aging, I think I am just in the right balance. I assume if you ate meat, you could put a little weight on. Unless you like your size 2. Please don't open an umbrella in stormy weather, you might just get blown away... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! No, seriously, if you like what you see in the mirror (I do) then don't change anything. None of my illnesses are food related (except sweet tooth) so as long as you live a moderate life, you should be OK....
The thing is, I'm thin, but I'm really not that thin. Somehow it took me years to figure this out, but I apparently have an unusually small skeletal frame (possibly owing to being malnourished in childhood). It sounds weird, but you take out a tape and do some measurements and it's pretty apparent. I also have really low body fat, I think it was around 5 percent last time it was checked. I honestly don't know why, but it's always been like this--I actually eat a lot of fat (though no trans fats, of course) and carbos, but I just don't put on weight or acquire fat. Seriously, I've never had a sweet tooth, but my weakness is greasy-and-salty: at times, I've eaten an obscene amount of french fries or fried potatoes, and I can easily go through two pounds of pistachios in one sitting (unfortunately, they're kinda pricey). Honestly, as far as appearances go, I think the absence of fat thing is weirder than the weight thing--no one would ever say I look gaunt or anything, but I don't have any extra skin. My skin is taut all over, like I'm always flexing or something. I don't really care what I look like though, as long as I can on any day easily bike 150 miles pulling a load, or carry an 80 pound backpack, or do a reasonable amount of "hard labor," I'm happy. Also, if I gained weight I might lose the considerable climbing advantage I have over everyone else: I've yet to outgrow getting a kick out of being able to fly past people on a steep incline while riding a crappy beater bike with my dog running beside me, while they're all decked out in spandex and riding two thousand dollar machines. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's childish, but who cares? I wouldn't necessarily gain weight if I ate meat; actually, a lot of people gain considerable weight when they stop eating meat. I can't quite figure that one out, I'm guessing that they must be eating bricks of cheese or something. We presently live out in the middle of nowhere, Western Massachusetts, surrounded by dozens of small organic farms and tens of thousands of acres of National Forest. The bulk of our food comes from our own garden or one of the local ones, and the dogs are never bored--and they've mostly learned, through experience, to avoid porcupine.
Some of these compative "befores & afters" are flawed. A great example is: I know a guy named Andrew who was way WAY overweight. He ate a lot of junk food and fast food. He went totally vegetarian (not vegan, though he will state that he's "mostly vegan" with occasional eggs and/or dairy) and "bam! he lost a lot of weight." Which--in his eyes, proves the beneficial nature of eating vegetarian. Which is all well and good because, compared to what he was eating, going on a pure "steak & potatoes" diet would also have provided meaningful results. When you but a clean diet (of any caliber) against a disgusting diet, you'll always get positive results, including veganism. So, what about me. How about a little before and afters, K? Me, 10 months ago. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's me at 261lbs @ my first day of training. Me, in August. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's me at 190lbs @ the Warrior Dash. And there isn't some magic formula. I mean, sure I could have gone vegan and been miserable (and, frankly, I've known so many vegans that I'm aware of the constant struggle to remain one--you have to be married to it as an ideology rather than maintain any sense of balance). Two simple tricks: Eat right Exercise But, not so simple at first. I didn't understand why this was so hard and I admit it took retraining as to what was "good exercise" and "bad exercise". To be sure, I've ALWAYS gone to the gym, regularly. Even when I was fat, I still worked out. And I thought I ate right. I was wrong. Simple. For starters, I got rid of my TV for a while (it's too addictive). I didn't eat enough vegetables--like TEN TIMES too few vegetables. 90% of my intake is from vegetable mass. But, just as important is my meat intake. I went from burning around 2k on average calories to burning 3,500 calories per day. Somtimes 5k calories per day. So, the first task was INCREASING my calorie intake (but with good calories) by way of vegetables blended (i.e. "reboot smoothies") with things like Kale, Carrots, Avocado, Blueberries, Banana and Spinach. I continue to drink so many blended vegetables that when I do eat my regular meals, they are smaller and generally a bit denser (chicken breast / quinoa). Then I had to exercise. People are shitty exercisers, and I was one of them. I had no idea what I was doing wrong, so I hired a trainer and really figured out what works for my body. Now, I do work out still around 2-2.5 hours per day (1.5 hours in the mornming, swimming or running, and 30 minutes to 1 hour in the afternoon, weight/resistence exercise). I learned about the importance of mixing exercises, raising my heart rate for long periods of time, doing intervals and constantly changing things up. It's crazy that its seems so simple now, but there's just a ton of confusion out there about what's right. It takes a lot of re-education to figure it out. Sadly, I didn't find out until recenlty. ~String
Very good post, String, and a picture is worth 1000 words of explanation any day. Great point about ditching the TV. We are surrounded by distractions and it is in our nature to yield to them as we are ever curious and fond of diversion. Like water, we prefer to choose the path of least resistance and the retail industry is happy to oblige with convenience foods and snacks which have been chemically analyzed and formulated to be appealing and addictive and technological toys to occupy our every waking moment, if we let them. Absolutely true that any sensible diet of good food in moderate proportions with adequate exercise will yield results. Perhaps Michael Pollan stated the matter as simply as it can be said: 'Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.'
