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

Hi Faith,

Hope you're well. I thought I'll give some other perspective on the ex vegan subject seeing it's something that keeps coming back over and over and I'm familiar with the story. This is going to be quite long, but if you bear with me you might get another point of view in the mix.

Quickly about me- I'm vegan since I was 4 years old, just after I developed serious dairy allergy. I only tried meat once in my life when I was about 12 but as I wasn't used to it I hated it and never had it again. I'm currently 34, rock climber, runner, very happy, I can't remember when I was sick last time, my blood work is perfect on a consistent basis for many years etc etc

It hasn't been the case in the past though. In 2001 I started getting sick and as the time went by I started to think I'm actually going crazy, because none of mainstream doctors could tell me what was wrong. I ended up in my local hospital from exhaustion several times, but nobody was able to say why I was so exhausted. The next 4 years was like hell on earth, getting weaker and weaker, staying in bed a lot of the time and eventually in search of answers I looked into alternative medicine. I was quickly diagnosed with AF and sold monthly supplement supply, was told to eat certain type of diet and rest. It didn't unfortunately do a thing. So I went to another place and started another program, and then another, and another. I went through 'metabolic typing', 'dosha typing' , high fat raw food, I was told that fruit is poison and under no circumstances I should eat sweet fruit. At the end I got really depressed. I wasn't getting better, my life was revolving around pills and I hated my life so much I wanted to die. I looked like death quite frankly.

And yes, the thoughts that maybe I should start eating meat went through my mind over and over. I was never an animal rights activist (and I'm not to this day actually), and my desperation to get better was so severe I didn't actually care about morals at the time!
But through a very lucky incident I met someone who encouraged me to go back to basics and learn about human body, how it functions, what it needs to thrive, and look properly at what i was eating. I discovered "Natural Hygiene" , connected with Doug Graham and other Natural Hygienists, and within days of addressing my nutritional mistakes it felt like a heavy fog lifted from my brain and i was able to get up and actually do something.

I started learning everything from scratch- reading medical text books, journals, studies, articles- you name it, and as it happens food and nutrition became my life long passion.

What I've learnt is that as much as we would love to think we're certain 'type', on a biological level we are actually the same. Our digestive systems are the same, our natural design is the same, but through lifetime of abusing our bodies (and I'm guilty of it) we lose sense of what our natural design is.
I'm not going to go into discussing history here, because we could discuss it till we're blue in the face- but I would def encourage everyone to study 'hunter gatherer' tribes for themselves and discover that thriving tribes you don't normally hear about actually ate high carb diets with very little meat. There's a fundamental difference between 'thriving' and 'surviving', but that's a topic for another time.

Looking at the human body as it is, we're designed to thrive on a high carb, low fat diet. Yes, human body is incredibly resilient and will survive on anything (for at least a while), but on a cellular level glucose (carbs) is a primary source of fuel for us. We're born with 'sweet tooth' for a reason (although we abuse the idea by reaching for cakes when we feel like something 'sweet'), on a basic level we instinctively seek sweet taste because glucose is so essential to stay alive.

What was I doing during my sick years? Completely the opposite. High fat and very little carbs. Especially when i went raw first time. I was told to avoid fruit, so my calorie source was nuts, seeds, avocados and oils. Plus, the biggest mistake I made was not understanding how much to eat for my body size. Raw food is high in water, so it can be very misleading when consuming large bowls of salads, I automatically thought, yeah, that's a lot of food! Once I've learnt the basics of calories I've realised I literally starved myself in the past for years, no wonder I ended up emaciated and depressed.

Looking at your story, if you don't mind me pointing out couple of things, what immediately stands out is that your approach was high fat and high carb, and that is known to cause diabetes, high blood Sugar and candida you're talking about, so it absolutely makes sense to read about your struggles (pls feel free to ask for some details if you're interested in resources) High fat diminishes insulin sensitivity causing 'sugar rush' you're talking about, and you eventually crashed. People sometimes confuse the Sugar topic so much (assuming it must be bad).

I see you were concerned with your protein intake, but- everything you eat contains protein. Absolutely everything- it's impossible to develop protein deficiency if you eat enough food for your size. In order to develop protein deficiency you would have to stop eating completely- and even than they don't call it protein deficiency, but starvation. In fact, our modern life diseases are caused by protein excess and this is more important to be worried about.

I've been doing 80/10/10 for over 6 years now. And 6 years later I'm not failing, I'm not 'craving' anything, not deficient in anything. Did my 'typing' change over the course of my life? No, I was never a certain 'metabolic type' to begin with.

This is getting super long, but my point here is not to turn anyone vegan, but to encourage people to always look at facts before making a judgment. If you look at Alex's blog thoroughly it quickly becomes apparent she was trying to live mainly on greens- and this is not sustainable in a long run. Plus- none of us really know what she was doing exactly, so its not really a reflection on balanced vegan diet. I don't care that much if she eats meat or not to be honest though.

If people choose to eat meat- that's all fine by me. My point is to make sure people actually have an understanding what 'balanced' diet is, because from my experience it means different things to everyone. Human body doesn't recognise 'food groups', it recognises nutrients, so 'balanced diet' is a diet reflecting body's nutritional needs. It's not a matter of personal opinion. I happen to eat only fruit, veg, nuts and seeds (it's only 1 food group!) and hit all nutrient targets daily, so saying that meat has nutrients not available in plants is not based on science.

As I said, I really don't have a problem with people eating meat (most of my friends are meat eaters and I love them all!) but it's important to be objective and inquisitive enough to always dig deeper.

All the best! x




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