Ex-Vegan (4 Years): From Healthy Athlete to Lifeless Couch Potato

Watch on YouTube · 2019-01-13 · 30 min

0:00 You can introduce yourself if you want to and then start at the beginning, what year it was and how you got into veganism and then what happened, okay?

[video] 0:11 Sure, so my name is Robert, I'm 28 years old, I'm from the Netherlands and basically

[video] 0:23 It all started around 2011. I wasn't fully vegan yet at that year, but I already started using dairy and stuff like that. Basically, I was only eating chicken, so I removed dairy from my diet and I was eating chicken still with vegetables. starches all those things and I was also pretty active I lifted weights at the gym and I also Yeah, I had a couple of runs here and there and I cycled a lot and I was doing fine like I could do Whatever I wanted to do and I had no sleeping issues basically life was good and for some reason

[video] 1:17 I thought like, hey, I want to improve myself even more. So let's go on Google and YouTube and see if I can, yeah, find new ways to do that. So that's when I came across veganism. And yeah, I thought it was cool. You know, you're saving the planet and you're not killing animals, stuff like that. So, yeah, then I saw, what was it, Gary Yourofsky, you know, you probably know that guy. Yeah, and I watched his speech on YouTube and that for me was basically the turning point. So, yeah, so I saw the footage of cows being slaughtered and stuff like that.

[video] 2:15 Like, I think they cherry pick those videos just to make sure that you go vegan, you know, if you're watching it. So I went vegan. So the next day I cleaned up my fridge and stuff like that. No more animal products. And I guess the first year I was doing fine, you know, no big issues. But I already started to lose weight and muscle. So I can remember me and a couple of friends of mine, we were going to the spa. And in the Netherlands, it's quite usual that you go nude, so fully naked. And I can remember one of my mates telling me like, hey, where's your ass? Like, it sounds quite funny.

[video] 3:12 But in the gym, I always did some glute exercises. So it was strange to hear that. Like, hey, where's your ass?

[video] 3:25 And then came a few months later, I got a new job, which was a pretty tough job. I had to clean staircases. There were no elevators, so we had to carry our stuff up to the top floor and then cleaning from there. It was quite tough. So you need to do that. And the strength, stuff like that. And I just started to lose it.

[video] 4:05 And I lost my energy to go to the gym. So I quit going to the gym, and I tried to stick to the veganism, but it was getting really tough. But I was still brainwashed. I felt like this is the way to go. I just need to educate myself even more. I was probably doing it wrong. Yeah.

[video] 4:41 And then came the third year. And that was a pretty tough one. Actually, my parents, they started to worry about me. Like, dude, you're losing weight. You're losing your strength. And they got mad at me, basically. So yeah. our relationship wasn't as good but I managed to keep pushing forward I just didn't blame it on the veganism that I was basically wasting away I thought like it was my sleep or something like it must be something else you know I'm eating the diet that we are being designed to eat.

[video] 5:48 I lost more strength and I'm a quite tall guy. I lost a lot of weight and I basically became underweight.

[video] 6:02 That's when my parents really, really started to worry about me. like crazy. So they told me things like, well, if you come over to our house, you're not going to eat that vegan crap shit. Yeah.

[video] 6:23 But for some reason I still couldn't see it. I was still brainwashed and I kept on watching videos on YouTube like Unnatural Vegan, Bananiac, Dr. McDougal of course.

6:44 What did you eat as a vegan? What was your diet approximately?

[video] 6:51 A lot of rice. a lot of grains, basically a lot of grains, like I tried to do the 80-10-10 ratio and I was aware of the phytic acid, the anti-nutrients, so what I did was I soaked my grains overnight and I thought that it was working but

[video] 7:23 after a few weeks I noticed like hey things are not changing and I also ate a lot of beans, lentils, chickpeas basically I tried to get more protein into my diets because I thought that that will help me with my energy levels and I tried to keep the fats as low as possible but looking back at it right now I think that was the dumbest idea ever. Yeah, we need the fats, we need them. So I was also taking some protein powders. They did help a little bit, but still I was just going to the toilets like a zillion times a day, peeing a lot. So

[video] 8:21 My body was just not tolerating those foods. I still kept on losing weight. And even though I was working out at the gym, there were no gains. And that was quite frustrating because the people around me at the gym, they were making improvements. But here I was, the guy eating only plants and stuff like that. trying to show the world that it is the way to live your life, but yet I was the one just wasting away.

9:00 Did you eat low-fat the whole four years then?

[video] 9:06 Almost, almost, yeah, because I actually found it quite hard to find... plants that were high in fats, like avocados. We all know those.

9:23 Right, the problem is that plants only have oils, not actual fat, which is saturated fat, so it hardly helps anyway. It helps somewhat, but not much.

[video] 9:32 I tried to get in some avocados and Nelson seeds, but

[video] 9:43 Yeah, I was just getting hungry so quickly after consuming those. And then another problem is that nuts and seeds, they are high in folic acid, so I tried to soak them as well and tried to get my minerals that way, but it wasn't working. I tried so many things on the vegan diet and nothing really worked. Next, I want to talk about fruits and vegetables. I took so many of them. The vegetables, I would always have them raw or steamed because I try to conserve the good things in it.

[video] 10:44 The fruits, yeah, oh my God, so many cavities. Like my teeth, it's like, yeah, it got so many holes, you know, so many cavities. And I even had to get a root canal surgery, which...

[video] 11:04 Exactly one day after I had the surgery, I was on YouTube and I saw this video like, don't get root canal surgery, it's bad for you. And I was like, oh, fuck. Yeah, so.

[video] 11:19 And I hear like so many ex-vegans, they talk about their teeth and cavities and stuff like that. So, yeah.

[video] 11:32 And I also got into distilled waters. But since my body was already in a pretty bad state, like adrenal fatigue and stuff like that, so that's when your kidneys actually fail to keep up the pH balance in the body. And then you decide to drink distilled water, which is already acidic by itself. So your body has to work even harder to try to keep up the pH balance. And it was just a pure mess. I got heart palpitations like crazy. And I think that it just drained me so much, like potassium, all those minerals. And oh my God, what have I done?

12:22 Did you use supplements also?

[video] 12:27 Yeah, quite a lot of them. I started with a vegan multivitamin. But only after a few months, I discovered that the ratios are really out of balance. You get an insane amount of vitamin A, and then you just get almost little to nothing potassium or zinc and stuff like that. And I also took magnesium citrate, I think it was, like this one. I got probiotics, I got organically active vitamin B12, bioavailable. Yeah, bioavailable, that's what it is. And I got vitamin D3. I had it all. But then I went to my physician and did some blood work.

[video] 13:27 And it was like nothing but deficiencies all the way. And I was like, how could that be possible? You know, I'm soaking my nuts and seeds and my grains. So there should be little to no phytic acid or anti-nutrients whatsoever. And I'm taking the supplements, but still I have deficiencies.

13:45 Did you know that there's no vitamin A in plants?

[video] 13:53 Well, that's the thing. Like, I wasn't aware of that. I think that makes a lot of sense actually.

[video] 14:03 No, I wasn't aware of that. What else? There was something else that I took. Maca powder. This is a really interesting one because I pretty much lost my libido on the vegan diet.

[video] 14:23 Okay, like this is interesting. Like I see so many vegans doing nofap. So they decide to quit porn, masturbation and ejaculation altogether. And they say that they feel better. But I think they're doing that as a last resort. Like they're not getting the results they wanted on the vegan diet. So they escape to nofap, which is what I did. And it was only after two weeks that I noticed a little bit of increase in my libido. So that's when I decided, like, hey, I'm taking some maca powder. But maca powder is a heavily goitrogenic food ingredient. So you need to cook it first. And I wasn't aware of that. I didn't know that. So I took it and I felt just absolutely worse, like really bad.

[video] 15:22 But it did raise my libido a little bit. But that stuff is like, it smells like shit.

[video] 15:31 So yeah, I took maca powder. And yeah, that's basically it. Yeah.

15:43 So what made you quit veganism in the end? What was the tipping point?

[video] 15:51 Yeah, so I wanted to get back to my old fitness routine, like being an athlete. So before I went into veganism, I could run 50K without any problems. I could cycle 150K in one day without any issues.

[video] 16:20 As the years went by, as a vegan, it was just so frustrating that I couldn't even cycle 40 kilometers anymore. I couldn't go for a run anymore. Even two kilometers was just exhausting for me.

[video] 16:41 Then I saw Kasumi Chris on YouTube. We both went vegan around the same time.

[video] 16:50 then like Kasumi Chris she is always real about everything in her life like she doesn't hide anything at all so she shows it all and I thought that she was doing pretty well up until the video that she posted in which she explains like why she quit veganism why she quit veganism and for me that was the turning point like Oh my God, if Kasumi Chris, who is doing everything right, cannot sustain on a vegan diet, then probably the same thing counts for me. So I decided to go to the grocery store and just get some steak. Boy oh boy, I loved it.

[video] 17:47 I loved it so much and I started to feel better almost instantly. And my sleep improved because I had insomnia big time. I could lay in bed for three hours and still not fall asleep. And I took plenty of bananas and other kinds of plant foods that are high in tryptophan, they say. but nothing was working. So, yeah, and peer pressure, of course, like my parents, they would always try to turn me back to eating meat again. Yeah, and then also my friends, like my friends, they called me crazy, like the vegan nut piss lord whatsoever. Yeah.

18:45 My best friends.

[video] 18:46 Yeah, because I also tried urine therapy for three weeks and it's just freaking disgusting.

[video] 18:59 Yeah, that was another mistake, you know. I think it's because the deterioration of the brain as you're going vegan, like... You're not getting enough fats to sustain functionality of your brain. So, I just went crazy.

[video] 19:27 And then also, my best friends, they were basically there the whole time. They were there to support me, but even they were telling me like, dude, you're just wasting away. we miss those times like a few years ago when we were able to cycle together or go for a run together but right now every time we ask you if you can join us you're you're saying things like no i'm too weak i can't do this and yeah so i lost a couple of friends as well because they were like Wow, you're such a crazy, hypochondriac fool right now. You're not the same anymore as you were a few years ago.

[video] 20:16 You were all energetic and always happy and right now you're sad and depressed and you don't have any energy whatsoever. You only just had to take a look at my face and my eyes and you can see the bags underneath my eyes. My skin was also really... It looked like I was a 40-year-old guy, but I'm only 28. Yeah.

[video] 20:46 And I do know that vegans actually age faster. They tend to age faster than meat eaters because when I was hanging out with my friends, then some outsiders would always think that I was... the oldest one. But my friends, they're older than me.

[video] 21:10 One of them actually thought that I was the father of one of my friends. Like, oh my God. It's crazy. Crazy. So I'm so glad that I got out of this madness.

[video] 21:31 So yeah, I got my libido back. I got my mood back, my energy back. Actually, today I went for a 5K run and I did it in 25 minutes, which for me is a new record. And right now I'm running even faster than I was before I went vegan. So that's crazy. And I just started running a few weeks ago. So this is really... Telling me, you know, this is really cool. Yeah.

22:05 How do you see the future of veganism? Where is it heading?

[video] 22:10 I think it's going to explode like crazy. Like, here in the Netherlands, there's even advertising alongside the roads. Like, maybe you have seen this one. It's like, plants are the new cows, and stuff like that. It's just... vegan propaganda everywhere even in grocery stores like there is in many grocery stores there is this vegan section and it's only getting bigger and bigger and bigger and yeah I think it's going to explode but I hope I hope that it's not too late to turn the tide

[video] 22:59 Yeah, because in those four years, it was pretty interesting to see that one vegan after another was collapsing. Bigger names like Tim Chief, for example. And it's just a matter of time before the others also collapse, I think. Yeah.

23:27 Do you regret going vegan now when you look back at it, or how do you see it?

[video] 23:33 Yeah, totally, totally.

[video] 23:39 Four years is just down the drain, just wasted.

[video] 23:46 Basically, I forgot to say this, but I lost my job thanks to me not having enough energy anymore to sustain myself. I lost my job, I lost my income, and I also... Yeah, I was in a relationship, but we broke up, and I was just such a big piece of sadness. Yeah. And, yeah, I totally regret it. And I'm always... I was always interested in...

[video] 24:24 like living a healthy lifestyle and going to the gym, like getting stronger, building some muscle. Now, I'm a hard gainer and I cycle a lot, so I will never be like big and stuff. But it was just so frustrating to see myself wasting away. And sometimes I think about like, where could I have been if I didn't went vegan? And I think that I will be at such I would have been in a better position for sure than I am right now. I think I might have some chronic health conditions right now. I sometimes have heart palpitations and I actually had to go to the hospital a few months ago.

[video] 25:19 And I got to the cardiologist because I had the heart palpitations. And we did a couple of scans and some blood work. And then the result was that I had some irregular heartbeat. But they couldn't find a real cause whatsoever.

[video] 25:45 I blamed it on the sleep. I wasn't sleeping right. But I wasn't sleeping right because of the plant shit that I was eating. And it's just a vicious circle that was just continuing day after day after day. But it's interesting, now that I eat meat again, I feel so much better. And I actually was able to get myself off of the medicine so right now I'm completely medicine free and yeah that's totally awesome I feel like I'm getting my life back week by week and the fact that I was able to do a 5k run today and beat my own personal record Yeah, that's a good sign, totally. I also started swimming again.

[video] 26:44 I'm swimming three times a week and I'm improving like crazy.

[video] 26:52 And it's also funny that one of my friends, we went for a swim together and she has seen me as a vegan, so my body was kind of like You know the skinny fat body type? I was like that. And right now it's like there's no skinny fat anymore. So we went swimming and she actually commented on me like, wow, dude, you're actually looking pretty good now.

[video] 27:28 nice yeah totally awesome um so yeah um is there anything special you would like to say to any vegans for watching maybe something you learned always listen to your body like um if you go vegan like if for whatever reason you are completely convinced that you should be vegan please please please don't close the door behind you and listen to your body. I was completely ignoring the signals my body was giving me and it just wasted me away completely. It's going to take a long time to recover.

[video] 28:26 So I'm starting to get convinced that maybe we aren't designed at all to only... Yeah.

[video] 28:38 So yeah.

28:40 Anything else you would like to add?

[video] 28:45 So yeah, a few weeks ago I started to drink raw milk. Like I just have to cycle a few kilometers to the next village and I can get some raw milk. And there's something special about it. Yeah, there's something special about it. I haven't been consuming milk in over six years. And then when I took my first sip of raw milk, it is something special.

[video] 29:19 Then I also started to consume organ meats and yet again I feel very fortunate that I only have to take my bike for a couple of kilometers to visit my local butcher. It's of a very decent quality so I can get my meats right there and it just makes me feel amazing. It is such a difference. So people actually don't recognize me anymore compared to how I was as a vegan. And right now I feel like I'm alive, you know? So yeah, basically that's my message to anyone who is looking into veganism or someone who is a vegan and is struggling

[video] 30:18 you know just yeah be careful be very careful all right and maybe consider veganism yeah thank you for sharing yeah it's been a pleasure