Ex-Vegan (3 Years): The More I Ate, The More Weight I Lost

Watch on YouTube · 2019-10-06 · 25 min

0:00 You can introduce yourself if you like to and just start at the very beginning what year it was how you got into veganism then just what happened Okay, sure.

[video] 0:09 For those of you that don't know. My name is Willie I've was vegan for about three years. I started veganism March of 2016 and I was vegan until March of 2019 and when it all started was

[video] 0:28 basically just watching a bunch of videos on YouTube and, you know, hearing it left and right that, you know, veganism is healthy and you can, you know, get stronger, you don't have to hurt animals, the whole story. And I was convinced. And it's very hard to convince somebody like me because I need irrefutable evidence. I need somebody to show me like, no, this is the way. So I watched a lot of vegan gains videos. He would you know, cite these articles, you know, published by medical doctors. And I said, look, I mean, people are curing heart disease. People have lower risk of diabetes. And I was interested. Why? Because my father was diagnosed with a heart attack in 2015. And that was my journey to health. My mom is also diagnosed with diabetes. So I figured, you know, this is going to be the right diet for the family. This is something that I should pursue and pursue. I did.

[video] 1:25 So around 2016, I said, you know what? Let's just do it. Full on vegan. No turning back. I had a plate of chicken wings and a pizza. And that was my last meal. No more animal products. So yeah, then veganism started. Initially, like in the first six months, I want to say I had an insane amount of energy. I don't know where it came from. Exercise became easy. I would also ride my bicycle to work. I was losing all that weight that I had despite being moderately healthy. I wouldn't say that I was the healthiest, but I wouldn't say I was unhealthy at the time. But first six months of veganism was just perfect. And then slowly but surely, I started to see somewhat of a decline. I was also depressed for some time around late 2016, so like around December. And then all of 2017 was just terrible. I was depressed.

[video] 2:25 I was eating vegan junk food. I gained a lot of weight, tons of mock meats. It was terrible. And then in 2018, I vowed to myself to go on another journey of health, but this time to do the right veganism, right? We're supposed to do the right kind of veganism. And that's what I did. So I created a nutrition guide. I created a workout guide. And I vowed for that entire year that I'm not going to change a thing about it. Nothing. Same workout routine, same meals, structured, right amount of calories, making sure that I meet all the macro and micronutrients. And that's what I did. And I documented it. I put it on my channel so that everybody can see that this is not fake and that they could lose weight too. And surely enough, you could see a lot of progress from day one to month six. Like I lost weight and everything was good. But then we hit a sharp decline.

[video] 3:25 I began noticing certain things where I would fall asleep in the middle of the day, being tired. Keep in mind, I didn't drink coffee. I didn't drink tea. The only thing that I drank was water and the vegan smoothie that I would make every single day. I would eat tons of kale, tons of fruit, lentils, pasta, you name it, right? Like I was hitting everything. My skin started to get dry. I started losing energy. One thing that was extremely noticeable was my joint integrity. I started feeling weak in my knees. And to top it all off, I thought that I needed to consume more calories, which I did. But the problem was I was losing weight. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine somebody eating 3,000 calories of fruits, vegetables, bread, pasta, lentils and losing weight? It doesn't make sense.

[video] 4:20 So health wise, I knew something was wrong, but I didn't want to admit that it was the animal or not the animal. I didn't want to admit that it was the vegan diet that was causing it. There was no way in hell that was the problem at all. So I said, stick with it till the end of the year. See if it works out next year. You might have some sort of different approach as to how you can fix this. So I stuck it out for the entire year. And then in January of this year, 2019, I decided to explore some more. I was already fond of your channel. I've watched many of your videos in the past. Admittedly, I thought you were crazy. I never wanted to believe what you had to say because I thought this is just craziness. But the thing that captured my attention the most was your viewers and the people that came on about their ex-vegan stories. And I said, if all medical science is pointing toward veganism being a healthy diet, then why is it that these people are suffering from it? Am I suffering like them as well? no, there has to be a vegan solution.

[video] 5:20 So January came around, the more I watched her videos, the more I understood, no, something is seriously wrong here and it had to be the vegan diet. And at the time, I had just gotten into a relationship and I figured she was vegan as well. Notice how I said was.

[video] 5:40 She was walking me through it, and I thought, you know what, I feel terrible, but I just want to experiment. I just want to see what it would be like to try an animal product, to see if I would stop crapping my brains out. Because believe it or not, I would use the bathroom seven times a day at least. At least seven times a day. First thing in the morning, all of it had to get flushed out. And it wasn't a solid stool whatsoever. Every time I would look in the toilet, it would just be scattered everywhere. And I'm like, why isn't my food being absorbed? I would see carrots, pieces of carrots in there. I'm like, that's not right. Beans, didn't matter what, how long you cook them, how long you soak them, beans would come out as beans. Oats would come out as oats. Quinoa would come out as quinoa. The only foods that were safe to eat for me were potatoes and maybe cucumbers that I can think of. Like fruit would be okay, bananas and mango and whatnot.

[video] 6:39 but any other food would come out the same way it came in. And that would bother me so much. So I said to the girl, I'm like, her name is Mila, by the way. I told Mila at the time, I said, listen, I'm super happy that I met you, but would you hate me any less? Would you hate me more if I told you that I'm going to try eating eggs? Because I felt like eggs would be the most ethical, you know, animal product to eat. And she told me, quote, If you believe it will make you healthy, then do it." And from that moment, I just fell in love and I said, man, she's so understanding. You know, she's not like the other vegans in the community where they would bash you for eating eggs. And I said, you know what, let's try it. I told my mom that same day, I said, mom, can we go to the flea market in North Georgia? I live in Atlanta because over there they have the free range chickens and you can get the eggs as soon as they come out of the chicken. You just have to wash them on the outside. I took three of them.

[video] 7:39 I cracked them in the frying pan, let them sit for about four or five minutes. The plate was in front of me, and I said to myself, whoa, I'm really doing this after three years. Took the first bite. And the way that I like to describe it that I've told my friends in the past is that it's almost like you walked into an abandoned factory, and you know how you have that rotating machine? It's like you press the on button, and the machine started turning, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And the cobwebs turned off. And then the energy came out of nowhere. And I said, maybe I've been missing this food for so much. Because I used to eat eggs four to five times a week. Every single day, eggs four to five times a week. And the machine turned on. And everything came back to normal. And I said, why is my body craving it so much? I started eating it super, super fast. I'm like, whoa, what happened? So I said, let me just sit for the rest of the day.

[video] 8:35 I'll go on eating my normal vegan stuff, and I'll see you tomorrow morning when I have to use the bathroom. Funny enough, I didn't have to use the bathroom for that entire day. It just magically stopped. I wake up the next morning to use the bathroom, and what do you know? It's a solid stool. I said, OK, it's just one day. This is not a solution. Let's keep on experimenting. One week later passes by. I eat eggs again and again and again. And I'm noticing differences. I'm noticing that there was a dry spot right here on my face. It was like a white spot. I would have to viciously rub it out because of how dry it was. When I ate eggs for that week, the dry spot went away. My teeth were not as sensitive as they used to be. It was just amazing. I'm like, no, come on. There's still no way. You know what I mean? So from that moment on, Eating eggs became a normal part of my diet.

[video] 9:35 And then later on, I started asking for help, asking people to help me out. You know, is there a different solution? What do I need to eliminate in my vegan diet in order for this to work? And even before that, I went to go visit, I want to say, three doctors. Here's the funny part. All three doctors gave me the solution. They said, oh, you need to start eating meat. And I'm like, these guys don't know what they're talking about. Let me go talk to a vegan doctor. So I went to go talk to a vegan doctor.

[video] 10:11 And they told me that I was deficient in iron and that I needed to eat more beans. And I told them the more beans I eat, the more upset my stomach becomes and that it just all comes out. So then I started seeking help. I got desperate. I went on to the Discord servers and I started asking vegans, what should I do? And they're like, whatever you do, don't eat meat. You know, you could figure it out. Did you talk to this doctor? Did you talk to that? And I'm just like, it's not working. It's not working at all. Eventually, I said, fuck all that, man. Just screw all of it. Seriously. And we started eating meat again, eating chicken, eating fish, salmon, especially salmon. My skin would be glowing. I would have crazy amount of energy. And to top it all off in terms of health, I gained my strength back. I lost about, I want to say, roughly 30 pounds on that vegan diet, which I thought was healthy. And I gained about 15 pounds of it back, around 7 kilos.

[video] 11:09 So health-wise, I want to say that I'm at an all-time high. Although I'm not eating raw meat like you do, I'm eating cooked meat once in a while, around three times a week. Eggs is almost every part of my day. And I feel fantastic health-wise. So that's my journey today. I just want to say that for those people, I'm not sure if a vegan diet works. I'm not sure if they're telling the truth. It could very well be that a vegan diet does work for some people, but I'm convinced that it does not work for me. I was iron deficient, gone. I had so many deficiencies in terms of my skin and whatnot, gone. All because I ate eggs. I don't know what the magical property is in it, but it seems to work.

11:56 Why do you think it is that vegans can't admit that it's the diet? They can't even think of it. Is it the ethics or what?

[video] 12:04 Absolutely, 100% the ethics. Because till this day, I still feel like I don't feel terrible as much as I used to whenever I would see animals dying. But 100% guaranteed, if vegans are having health issues, the only reason they're sticking to veganism is their ethics. Because for me, I told myself for the entire year of 2019 that I would have to push it out. Just keep on going. Don't eat animal products. And people will look terrible at me. They'll say, oh, he's an evil guy. He's eating animals. And they would freak out. I also noticed that I was an angry person as a vegan. Like, why? I would get mad at my brothers and my parents and my family because they ate meat. Because they didn't have any evidence, quote unquote. You know what I mean? But they knew from generations past that they had to eat it. And I'm telling myself the same thing, like, no, it's okay to eat it. There's nothing wrong with it. Like, people have been doing it for thousands of centuries.

[video] 13:03 They'll throw those ethical arguments at you, like, just because we've done it for a long time doesn't mean it's right today. Okay, in a utopian society, it makes sense. You shouldn't eat meat, you know, because you don't want to see animals die. But physically, biologically, some people are not designed, I would say a majority of people are not designed to just eat plants. It doesn't work that way. For me, my health got wrecked and the only reason I stayed is so that I don't look bad in front of the vegan community. I stopped making videos early this year because I was so afraid of how people would react to my experimentation. I was afraid that they were going to come after me and ridicule me. But eventually I said, you know what, I have to come out because enough is enough. I need to move on with my life. I have to tell all the people that follow my channel that I'm no longer vegan.

[video] 14:00 And I knew that I was going to lose a good amount of attention. So they left. Some people stayed. I still talk to some of those vegans today. They're still very nice people. They understood the struggle that I went through. But for the most part, a lot of people left my channel and they're not interested in me anymore. And that's when I began to realize that this is a very cult-like religion sort of dogmatic community. They don't care about your health, first of all. They don't care about humans. You would ask them if they would save a dog or a human, they would pick the dog because humans are evil and whatnot. That's for another day. But I began to notice like, man, this is not right. They just care about winning arguments. They care about starting debates. And for the fun of it, I would go into the Discord server and I would just start things just to see how they would react. And funny enough, they would start arguing against each other.

[video] 14:57 And I'm like, dude, like I would tell them the vegan diet is the unhealthiest diet. And they're like, OK, prove it. You know, show me the facts. And I would say because the Adventist health study, people that ate fish lived longer than those that ate a vegan diet. And they're like, oh no, the Adventists helped study this. And I'm like, well, you guys use it as the holy doctrine. So what's the deal? They would start fighting against each other and I would just watch the fire grow higher. But yeah, to go back full circle, ethics 100% is the reason that these people are still vegan and that most people will drop out when they start seeing their health suffer.

15:34 It's just common sense. Did you also use any supplements?

[video] 15:41 Yes and no. When you say supplements, we have to be clear and specific. I took zero protein powder. Zero. Animal protein powder, plant protein powder, none of it. It messed up my kidneys real bad when I took it, and it tasted disgusting. It didn't feel right. In terms of supplementation, yes. I supplemented with vitamin D and vitamin B12. I took the pill form, which had like how many thousand micrograms. But I took my supplements. I drank my smoothies. I ate my kale. I hit all my servings. You name it. I mean, perfect vegan. I have the records for you. If you want to check it in my channel, I still have the nutrition guide. Sorry, it just makes me angry to know. I feel like I got tricked. Ultimately, I feel like I got tricked because somebody told me this was healthy. I tried it out and it wasn't. Simple.

16:42 How do you see the future of veganism? You call it a religion. What do you think is going to happen?

[video] 16:49 If I'm being completely honest with you, man, if I'm being completely honest with you, I see veganism taking over the world. I really do. Most people can sit there and tell you that, you know, no, no one's going to outlaw meat. It's happening right before our eyes. You know, they're outlawing meat. They're outlawing everything. The advertisements that pop up on YouTube videos, It's all plant-based products. It's all mock meat, by the way. Nobody's advertising broccoli. Nobody's advertising kale or fruit juices. No, they're advertising mock meats like Gardein. You'll see that everywhere. It's all greed. It's all monetizable. And it's all part of the agenda, as we like to say, because what sells the most, right? A nice crispy apple or a fake vegan chicken nugget. People want to eat meat. Why else are they eating mock meats?

[video] 17:46 If you're saying that veganism is all good, why are you trying to imitate the product that you stopped eating? It doesn't make sense. That's where the delusion comes in. It's like, no, dude, if you like veganism, it should be beans, it should be fruits, it should be vegetables, it should be bread. Why on earth are you trying to make a vegan chicken sandwich? I caught myself doing that a number of times as well. so right yeah back when you were eating the muck meats did you ever think while you're doing it did you believe that humans are herbivores or something like that um i would say that i don't believe i didn't believe at one point that humans are herbivores no because for those three years i always had cravings for meat and maybe it could be because of the cooking that my mom made in the house or because of

[video] 18:41 the mock, not the mock meat, but the fun that my brothers would make at me, they would be like, oh my God, this burger is so good. And I know it's good. It's a cheeseburger. Of course, it's going to taste delicious. But yeah, I always had a craving for meat. So no, not at one point did I believe humans were herbivores. I always believed that veganism works for some people. It doesn't work for others. And the studies will tell you otherwise, that it's adequate for stages of human life it's a bunch of bullcrap yeah do you regret going vegan or do you just see it as an experience in life no I wouldn't say that I regret it I did make some friends on that journey I got to see a different part of life I got to experience a different side to myself that I didn't notice from before it opened my mind up to a different world

[video] 19:37 I wouldn't say that I regret it for one second just because of the consequences that I suffered back then. Because if it weren't for veganism, I wouldn't be here today. If it weren't for veganism, I wouldn't be questioning every little thing that crosses my path. You understand? Like now I start to question the silliest of things. Some things that you would just take and look at it at face value and say, this is the way. I say, no, let's think about it a little more. Like whenever I would watch your videos, I would always question whether you were right and the vegans were wrong. Not to say that I was an apologist, per se, but I had to question it and I had to say, this guy's skin is beautiful, first of all. No homo, sorry. I know you have a woman, you have a kid. But your skin looks good. You don't eat any vegetables. You don't lift weights, but you have muscle. The people, they're transforming in a matter of months. Something is wrong here.

[video] 20:37 Veganism is not working for these people. They're pale. They're very skinny. They're angry. A majority of them, right? You could say that few exceptions, but even those people, I don't believe them. Like if I were to throw out a few names, Hench Herbivore, the guy's on steroids. Come on. John Venus, steroids. They're not making this amount of muscle from eating plants. I don't believe it. I mean, those are just a few examples. So like I would take those examples of vegans. I would take the examples that you would have on your channel. And I said, how is it that these guys are looking healthy all of a sudden? Michaela Peterson, Jordan Peterson's daughter, she eats nothing but beef, water and salt. And she if you saw her before pictures and you look at her now, you can see that something is working. I mean, it's a crazy, far fetched idea, but it's working for her. So at that point, you had to think and wonder to yourself, you can't believe the vegans.

[video] 21:36 They're not always right. They're sometimes right or they're never right.

21:44 Do you know of any other ex-vegans who you met on the path?

[video] 21:51 Yes, I do. I had a friend of mine who worked with me and she tried veganism and I would bash her because I was vegan at the time. And I asked her, why did you stop being vegan? And she's like, oh, it doesn't work for me. And I said, no, that's bull crap. You're lying. And she goes, no, honestly, it doesn't work. And I'm like, OK, well, you're just saying that because you miss eating meat. Just tell me you hate animals because you can't love them and eat them at the same time. And she's like, no, no, no. I'm glad that you're doing it, but it's not good for me. I'm like, whatever. And to touch on a little bit more than that, just to give you a little bit more reference, the thing that convinced me to go vegan I was watching a Bobby's Perspective video and I noticed that this guy, he did veganism better than anybody. I mean like this dude was full on, super healthy, he would eat his Michael Greger's Daily Dozen. I would keep up with his videos, right? And then he all of a sudden came out and said that he tried eating eggs.

[video] 22:51 It wasn't the video that convinced me, just so you know, his ex-vegan video. The thing that convinced me was when I was scrolling through the comment section, I saw a familiar profile. You know, it said bio photons. I'm like, I know this profile. And it turned out to be one of my good friends in real life. And I said, oh, let me read this. He puts on the comment. Hey, Bobby, I was just wondering if, you know, eating eggs really helps because I've been having digestive issues for like the last year and a half. I've been eating raw foods. I don't know what's going on. Seeing his comment, it tore my heart apart. My friend over here is dying. He's feeling terrible. His gut is destroyed. And he's over here seeking help. And I said, you know what? Just so he doesn't look bad, I'll take the blame. I'll try the eggs and then I'll let him know how I feel. So when I turned ex-vegan, it kind of inspired him to try it as well.

[video] 23:50 And now he's eating steak. He's eating liver. He's all that stuff. He's so healthy. I'm so happy for him.

23:58 Very good.

[video] 23:59 Yeah.

24:00 Anything else you would like to add? Anything you experienced during the time? Anything you would like to say to any vegans watching maybe?

[video] 24:09 Yeah, obviously I could talk for hours about the experience and give you guys an entire discussion, but the one thing that I would definitely like to say to anybody who's thinking about becoming an ex-vegan or just trying animal products again is try it. Just try it. I'm not asking them to you know, sit there and eat raw meat like you and and to just eat carnivore diet. No. But if you feel like your health is suffering, just know that there's people like me, people like severity, people like Bobby who understand the pain, the suffering and the malnourishment that you might be going through, because. It's rough with the vegan community. I know that they're going to bash you for it, but just understand that you're not a terrible person for eating meat. You're not a terrible person for eating eggs. You're not a terrible person for doing any of that stuff. You're human. You have a lot of things going on in your life.

[video] 25:06 And if you truly believe that it's going to make you happy and healthy, then by all means try it. Because I feel amazing on it. I wouldn't change a thing in the world. I'm back to my normal diet and my health has improved significantly. So for those of you that are scared to come out, don't be. I was unable to make videos for a long time because the vegan community was going to come after me. But now I could care less. My health is better and my life is better. So that's all I have to say on that. And thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

25:38 Thanks for sharing.

[video] 25:40 Okay. You're so welcome.