The Vegan Diaries — Part II: Give Me All the B12 You Have
The following video is a recap of my first seven days on the vegan diet. The blog post below it focuses on my energy level and why I need all the B12 you have.
The alarm goes off at 6:01 a.m. on the dot, just as it has every morning for the past six months. I hit snooze, but just once — this is a habit I’m trying to break. I get up, let my dog, Creed, outside, do some morning stretches, and a short 15-minute floor workout. After filling Creed’s Snoopy dog bowl with water, I hop in the shower and give my neighbors one of the most horrendous performances of Tyler Childers’ “Follow You to Virgie.” I get out of the shower, iron my clothes, fix my hair, and apply my makeup. I tell Creed I promise I’ll be home after work and not to freak out when I leave, grab a banana and a Tupperware container out of the fridge, and head out for the day.
This is how every morning of my Monday-Friday life has gone over a hundred times, and I like it. I’ve finally got my routine exactly how I want it — I’m comfortable. Alas, this morning ritual was interrupted on Monday, March 2 when I slept through every one of my alarms and legitimately thought I had the flu.
I’m a relatively active person, a “morning person” if you will. Many of my friends even describe me to be high energy — and I agree with them. I’m rarely tired and always have projects going. I’m one of those people who sits around for too long and goes stir crazy. A prime example of this is when I got my wisdom teeth removed and had cabin fever so bad, I cleaned and re-arranged my 12-year-old brother’s bedroom. Why? Because I hate not doing something. So you can imagine how this whole “no meat,” thing is going for me.
You see, when I began my journey as a vegan a mere week ago, I knew this personality trait of mine would falter. I was warned by nutritionists, doctors, blog posts, YouTube videos, and even vegans themselves, “You have to take a B-12 supplement.” And trust me, I listened. I bought two bottles of B-12 complex and have them sitting on my bathroom counter right now. However, I neglected taking the B-12 because I wanted to see just how long it would take me before my energy level dropped and let me tell y’all…it plummeted.
So, let’s dig into why my energy level decreased and just how to combat this.
When I typed “why am I tired as a vegan?” into Google, the first article to pop up was from Tribali Foods and said, “Feeling Fat, Sick, and Tired on a Vegan Diet? Here’s Why.” Since I felt every one of those things, I clicked on the article link.
Although the article was not posted by some academic hub or government organization, I still found it relevant to everything I felt.
The article stated that the vegan diet makes it difficult to control blood sugar — which, hello, that could explain why I feel like I’ve been ran over by a truck. It claimed the vegan diet could cause a fluctuation of your hormones and explained that certain vitamins and minerals are either lacking on a plant-based diet or can be overloaded on said diet.
The last point this article made, however, really hit home, “eating solely plant foods is like playing a game of Tetris.”
“If you take a step back and look at foods as a whole, you can see that animal foods naturally contain nutrients in certain combinations, just the way our bodies need them. Egg yolks contain vitamins A, D, E, K, which are fat-soluble, and yolks are a fatty food. Yolks also contain vitamins B12, B6, folate, selenium, iron, and calcium[3]. Everything needed to absorb those nutrients is neatly packaged in that single food. But with vegan foods, you must constantly be cognizant of combining certain foods to make sure you’re getting as many nutrients as possible. It doesn’t just naturally happen,” the article read.
The simple fact is, I had no energy and the answer to why was simple: I wasn’t eating meat. Although I was consuming a relatively normal (high for me) amount of carbohydrates, I felt terrible. When I woke up that Monday morning and felt like I had the flu, I would say my energy level was at about a four on a scale of one to ten (eight is low for me, imagine what a four would be like). As the day went on, I just kept feeling bad. I wasn’t able to focus as much at work and I kept zoning out. The only thing I could compare the feeling to was if I maxed out in the weight room for two hours, ran a couple miles, didn’t eat anything, and woke up with a cold — that’s how I felt.
Then, just to see how hard it would be, I went and did a fairly cardio-heavy workout and targeted my legs in the weight room. I came home from the gym at about 7:00 p.m., ate a sweet potato and spinach salad, took a shower, and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up feeling like a zombie again — so I turned to the B-12.
B-12 is a nutrient that helps keep the body’s nerve and blood cells healthy and helps makes DNA, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (USDHHS). “B12 also helps prevent a type of anemia called megaloblastic anemia that makes people tired and weak” USDHHS’s webpage reads. Ahh…makes the body tired and weak…that would be where this relates to me.
The USDHHS states you can absorb B12 naturally, specifically mentioning clams and beef liver— the latter of which I will not factor back into my diet; fish, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, and other dairy products; and some breakfast cereals which contain nutritional yeast. So basically, all the things I won’t be eating for another five weeks.
Lucky for me, B12 supplements are available over the counter. Although, for the record, I would rather get my B12 from a juicy bacon cheeseburger.
Week 1 update:
• I am bloated – so bloated that I feel like if someone stuck a pin in my stomach, I would pop like a balloon.
• My skin has actually gotten worse which could just be a way of detoxing my body.
• Eating out has been very hit or miss.
• I have lost three pounds so that’s at least one good thing that’s come out of this experiment at this point in time.
• I checked with the Environmental Protection Agency (aka the un-biased government funded agency which focuses on combatting climate change) Carbon Footprint Calculator, guess what? My carbon emissions have yet to change.
Footnote:
I know many of you are more than likely skeptical of this journey and have questions about the process. I would love to visit with any of you about this experiment and can be contacted via email at mpurviance97@gmail.com
To follow this journey in depth, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like the Activists vs. Agriculture Facebook page, and follow me on Instagram @mayzie_purviance.
