Ups, Downs, and All Arounds

Today marks seven days of being completely plant based in my diet. It's been really interesting. As I like to say: try it for a week, even if you do go back to animal based what is seven days out of a lifetime?

I've been doing a lot of research into eating & culture and the whole discourse of vegan/carnist/paleo. I will say this: it is a frothy and tumultuous debate. My mind is still trying to wrap itself around all of the arguments, stories, and anecdotes. A lot of people it seems cheat or go off of the plant based/vegan diet. Why is this? I have not been able to pinpoint what exactly they are missing, and for the most part neither are the people who are now ex-vegan able to pinpoint what went wrong. But it seems like a consistent narrative: after several years or even decades of a vegan diet they fall under a general weakening and malaise, start craving meat and eat a steak. I think it would be wise for the vegan/plant based movement to look at this phenomena. Just sweeping it under the rug and saying that "they did it wrong"... well that sounds a lot like a denial, like something out of the playbook of the meat and dairy industry.

As I mentioned in my last post I don't call myself a vegan - I follow a plant based diet at this moment which is essentially a vegan diet ( I don't care about eating honey). Someday I might put fish and some seafood, especially wild salmon, back into the equation - I'll see how it goes. Veganism is about the ethos in my opinion. A true vegan would still be a vegan even if such a diet irrefutably resulted in worse health for themselves. They would still be a vegan if they started to look and feel like most Americans on S.A.D. (standard American diet) do on a vegan diet. It just happens that vegans are not clogging up the American health care system like a clogged artery (hmmm?).

As for myself on a plant based diet so far I'm thriving. The only craving I've had so far was for buttered pasta on Saturday. And that was because I was probably running too much of a calorie deficit that day. So I ate some vegan butter on bread with peanut butter and then a rich acorn squash/tofu peanut curry. That solved the hunger. When I weighed myself today I was at 296… I had gained 2 pounds from my last weigh in at 294. I was around 315 give or take a few back in September. The weight gain probably had a lot to do with the craving and feast. I'm not discouraged by this slight weight gain, if anything it shows me that yeah, if you want to, you can make hearty, filling, and weight gaining foods from plant bits. I also was probably losing weight… urrr fat… a bit too fast.

Let's hear it for FAT!! I have had to rethink a lot about my relationship towards fat - both on me and in my food - these last couple days. I will say this about making a proper transition from the meaty diet to the plant one: you need to eat a lot of plant derived fats during this period such as avocados, nuts, peanut butters, olive oil, coconut milk. The reason is simple: your system is so used to calorie dense meat & dairy products that it can't handle so much fiber all at once and it is hard to gage how much mass is needed in the form of low calorie plant foods to replace the denser foods you used to eat. So until your body adjusts to more fiber and the bloating goes down (it already has for me) you need to make up the deficit with plant fats and probably more of the protein rich mock meats than is generally advised. Based on my experience so far I would wager that not putting enough plant derived fats to replace the calorie dense foods you used to eat is a big mistake a lot of people make in the transition.

The last three days I have also been experiencing some interesting phenomena. On both Saturday and Sunday I had great sustained energy and lightness of spirit for the first half of the day. These were my first periods of the famed "vegan high". I describe it somewhat like having that perfect relaxed 1 to 2 cup of coffee buzz combined with a sustainable indica like marijuana buzz. You just feel on it. It is quite enjoyable and people immediately respond to your energy, vitality, and lightness of being!! I've read a lot of ideas about what this is; some say that the vegan high is just you cannibalizing your own proteins and fats from caloric deprivation - I'm skeptical of this because I actually gained two pounds over this period and I never read about starving people suffering from bouts of happy feet. Others say that it is due to the serotonin high form all of the sugar fruits you are ingesting, hmmm maybe some truth to this? What I suspect is going on is that your body - on a cellular level - is thanking you. Thanking you for not constantly drenching them in cholesterol, antibiotics, and growth hormones form the insidious meat and dairy cartel. Your cells are thanking you, quite literally, for giving them the good stuff of easily digested plant proteins, abundant anti-oxidants, phytochemicals, fiber, good fats, and plant carbs. Your cells are no longer S.A.D. (standard american diet). Your cells are happy and they are letting you know.

Your cells are also cleaning house. Notice I mentioned that I only felt the uplifting vegan high towards the beginning of the day, on both Saturday and Sunday I started getting detox like symptoms towards the evening. I was always skeptical of your body detoxing itself in great overhauls. I always assumed that your liver, lymph nodes and whole lymphatic system were always cleaning house constantly. The problem is that if you are constantly tracking mud into the house on a day to day basis your system never gets to do that deep cleaning that is needed. To really get into the nooks and crannies. And so on both Saturday and Sunday I was met with mild detox like symptoms and today on Monday (luckily I am off from work) they hit like BWAM!! Gnarly brain fog, tired, and a general malaise. Unfortunately it seems a lot of people transitioning to plant based mistake this detox period for their body not liking its new diet regimen and quit. But I know better and it is just time to stay the course and let the body clean house. I also did a bit of a 24 hour juice fast today. Some tea, black coffee, coconut milk and pineapple chunks.

The bacteria in your gut that lived on your previous diet don't want to die. They might even try and trick you into going back to your old diet. Your gut can talk to your brain in ways that we are just beginning to fathom. There are more of them than there is of you, more genetic potential in your gut flora than in your own genome. They don't want to perish and be replaced by a newer, healthier flora. But you, by your choices, decides who ultimately gets to live inside of you. Let them die. They've had their time. I know, not very "vegan" of me insisting on mass slaughter of malignant gut flora that feasts on refined sugars, bad oils, dairy, and putrefying meat.

I guess that since this a "diet" documentation I have to add the requisite fat boy shot for posterity. October 30, 2017 @ 296 lbs