The Vegan Diaries — Part One Thousand: Donski
The following video is a recap of my journey as a vegan and how it not only effected my health, but this experience’s effect on me personally.
The blog post below this video dives into my journey as a vegan.
I am writing this blog post on Tuesday, April 7 and it will get to you after Thursday, April 9 — the day that I am allowed to end my vegan fast for Lent and eat animal products again. You know those commercials where the camera pans over to a woman standing in a crowd of people with her eyes closed, taking a deep breath while Aretha Franklin belts out “FREEEEEDOMM, OHhHhHh, FREEEEEDDOMMMMM!” in the background? Yep, there is absolutely no better way to describe how I feel right now.
As you all know, the past six weeks have been… interesting. We found out that the vegan diet isn’t for everyone — especially not me. I’m sure there are tons of people out there who have had positive results from following a plant-based diet, but I am not one of those people. The cons outweigh the pros on this one, and after very little thought or consideration (because this decision was a no-brainer) I will no longer continue on the vegan diet. I am sure my grandpa is jumping through the roof of his leather shop right now reading the previous statement.
Speaking of pros and cons, one of my favorite things is to make a pros and cons list and I made one just last night for my whole vegan experiment. I will now share with you the almost-comical, unbalanced list.
Pros:
I lost 10 pounds and I learned a few new recipes for side dishes.
Cons:
My grocery bill doubled; my face broke out terribly; my sugar consumption went up; my weight fluctuated terribly; my energy level has been at an all-time low; my hair fell out, dried out, and broke off because it was so brittle; I experienced consistent bloating; and I didn’t get to enjoy food the way I always have.
As you can clearly tell, the cons outweigh the pros. I did not have a good time on the vegan diet, and I am ready to get back to my normal routine.
Although sticking to a strict vegan diet in itself is a win, I would like to share another victory with y’all: I proved my hypotheses.
If you’ll remember back to “The Vegan Diaries — Part I,” I had three hypotheses:
1) I will lose some weight, but not as much weight as I would following a protein-heavy or carnivore diet.
2) My energy level will be lower, even with a B12 supplement.
3) My carbon footprint will shrink by less than 5 percent.
I am proud to say that I effectively proved numbers two and three on that list.
My energy level plummeted, I could barely make it through a workout, and I went to bed around 9 p.m. every night. I was no longer a morning person, and I love being a morning person. I will say that as time went on, it did get a little easier. But was my body becoming accustom to the diet or was I just getting used to feeling like trash?
Possibly the biggest and best finding of this who experience was the fact that my carbon footprint did not change by more than 5 percent. As I said in a lengthy column, “The Vegan Diaries — Part V: My Carbon Footprint did WHAT?,” the Environmental Protection Agency (a unbiased, government funded organization) does not take diet into account when calculating your carbon footprint. Out of five different websites, which were recommended to me by vegans, all gave me inconsistent results. I concluded that these five websites could not be trusted due to inconsistency. My variables (energy used, miles commuted for work, amount of flights I’ve taken, etc.) stayed the same, the only variable I changed was that I was a regular meat eater or I was a vegan. However, THEIR variables ranged from a 1 percent difference to a 12 percent difference. I’m no math mathematician, and I was not a star pupil in my statistics class, but even I know — something is off with that math. Why? Because math does not lie.
Now, my first claim was that I would lose some weight but not as much as if I were to follow a carnivore diet. After much thought and consideration, I have decided that after I reintroduce animal products into my diet and feel comfortable doing so, I will follow the carnivore diet for six weeks as well to get an accurate comparison. So, the experiment is not over yet — but this series is. You’ll probably get one or two columns about the carnivore diet, mainly because I’m getting sick of writing about what I eat, but also because I know y’all are sick of hearing about it.
If you’ve kept up with this column over the past six weeks, I would like to say thank you. I have yet to receive one piece of “hate mail,” and I really thought I would. Publicly going vegan for six weeks and broadcasting it to thousands of agriculturists may not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done — but y’all proved me wrong. I’ve received nothing but encouraging comments and for that I am thankful.
Also, if you’ve kept up with the videos posted to my YouTube channel: THANK YOU. I’ve decided I might upload more videos like my Carbon Footprint talk-through video. Sometimes, I find something so interesting that I can’t put it all down on paper and explaining it further in an eight-minute video helps me get my point across better.
I followed a vegan diet for six long weeks, and I am proud. Now, when I try to connect to anti-ag activists, I will have the credibility of walking a mile in their shoes. I have connected with more vegans in the past six weeks and not only swapped recipes with them, but have had the opportunity to explain the ag industry to them. And if I was able to open the eyes of just one anti-ag, this was more than worth it.
