Re: A great article about being a former vegan and making changes

It's too bad Alex didn't give more of a breakdown of what she actually ate. Stories like hers are what made me start really researching about plant-based diets after I started eating in this way after healing my worst condition caused by years on a meat-based diet, but I was astonished to learn about the biggest mistakes on a plant-based diet.

#1 - Didn't eat enough/calorie-restricted
#2 - Ate too much fat; nuts, seeds, avocados, oils, etc
#3 - Too much processed vegan foods
#4 - Not enough variety

The one thing I've learned after really looking into it is NEVER TRUST HOW PEOPLE SAY THEY ATE. Not even me. Was Alex simply not eating enough? Too much junk vegan food? Not enough variety? There's no way to really know. That's why I always push people to start really looking at what they are actually eating with apps like http://cronometer.com
to really give you a more accurate breakdown, not just guessing about their own diet or assuming someone was really eating the way they say they were.

One sad thing I observed with the plant-based lifestyle is it brings in a lot of people with eating disorders. At the 30bad forum where they stress over and over and over again the importance of not calorie-restricting, a large percentage of people who post that they are having problems on the vegan 80-10-10 diet they promote mention they come from an eating disorder background and more times than not admit they are still not reaching the recommended calorie minimums that site promotes.

I don't know if a strict vegan diet is healthy longterm or if one diet fits all, but the real shame about the talk about diets is that when people say they failed on one, rarely do they give enough info for others to see if they were really doing that diet correctly or not, regardless of which diet. Tweet