Ex-Vegan (6 Months): I Chose Health Over the Animals

Watch on YouTube · 2019-05-02 · 14 min

[video] 0:00 So basically I was a vegan for pretty much six months and the reason I actually started a vegan diet was because I had a skin disease called eczema or my whole body was actually covered in eczema and so I was eating the standard American diet just eating a bunch of foods and I didn't realize that my digestion health was actually correlated with my overall health and my skin health And I saw that there was this one YouTuber, maybe he actually has an ex-vegan interview on your channel called Rob Stewart. And he was a vegan for like seven, eight years. So I was like, okay, there's obviously something to this vegan diet that can heal your body. That's what I thought at the time. I was like, okay, so this diet...

[video] 0:41 will help my skin so i was okay i'm gonna try it because why would i not try something it's just like i would literally do anything at that point because it was a very debilitating uh problem you know like being covered in rashes like that like i look fine now obviously because i'm eating pretty much a carnivore diet but i was covered in rashes i had social anxiety couldn't sleep properly at night i think you mentioned one day in one of your videos you had something like that not that bad but you had like skin issues or whatever before you went rock carnivore i had um social anxiety because i had to worry about how i'm perceived in public having fucking the crashes on my arms and shit you know and like fucking random acne and it was really couldn't even take showers properly um and so my health was completely screwed and i even contemplated at some point so go maybe it's not the diet but i was okay let's try the vegan diet so i went vegan and um I started to eat pretty much completely vegan. I didn't even do any of the health.

[video] 1:41 Some people say, oh, you can be eating vegan junk food. I was completely vegan. I tried to eat the whole foods. Like I say, the healthiest way to do is on Dr. Berg's website or whatever. And then I started to eat whole foods. I was eating rice, quinoa, lentils, chickpeas, avocados. I started off with the low-fat, like the high-carb, low-fat, but then I increased the fats. At some point, too, so I was eating a ton of calories. It was not like I was losing any calories or anything like that. Some people might be thinking, oh, maybe it was a calorie issue, and I just want to get that out of the way because it was not a matter of calories. I was eating a lot of calories. And so that's pretty much why I started veganism. I just wanted to fix my health. And the diet did help to an extent. You see what I'm saying? So it did help a little bit.

[video] 2:30 my skin got a little bit better so that's why I was more attached to the vegan ideology because there's tons of propaganda on YouTube and all this research to show that the diet is healthier for you and my body did get a little bit better so that's when I started to develop this ideology in this one-way paradigm where I'm like, okay, the vegan diet clearly is the diet. I started to develop an ego around it. I was like, okay, I'm superior. Everybody else also needs to stop eating meat. All these people are delusional. And I started to really attach this belief. You see what I'm saying? It's like you really start to develop an ego when you become a vegan, which is, pretty ironic because they think that they don't have an ego when they have the biggest egos. And I'm generalizing, right? Of course, there's probably some vegans that aren't, but I'm speaking very generally. So around four, five, six months in, I started to develop some problems. And at first it was okay. At first I was okay. There was not really many issues. I honestly felt really good. Like I said, my body was healing.

[video] 3:30 I started to feel almost high. Like I was feeling like really good. So that's why I attached to diet even more. I did a lot of meditation at the time and I thought that my level of consciousness was getting deeper, but then I started to have these issues that I was kind of ignoring because I was so attached to the ideology. You see what I'm saying? I was so attached to the ideology of my diet being the best and then everybody else is kind of lower than me. This is all subconscious, you see what I'm saying? I thought that like, oh, these people just don't know any better and that I was just subconsciously kind of attaching And so I had all these issues, like digestive issues. I couldn't gain any muscle at the gym, like zero muscle at the gym. And like, because I was watching YouTubers, these vegan YouTubers with a ton of muscle saying like, oh yeah, my gains are even better on the vegan diet. And then the whole protein thing is a myth. And I was completely in that belief.

[video] 4:28 I was like, oh, okay, so it's all, you don't need that much protein. And I really believed it so hard, but then I worked out religiously three days a week at the gym, and I literally could not, and it was like intense, high-intensity, low-volume workouts that are known to build muscle. It was like a structured program, and I could not gain any muscle at the gym, and it wasn't a calorie issue. I was eating a lot of calories, and another thing I wanted to say is that the more calories I would eat, because I thought it was a calorie issue, the more my digestion would be screwed. You see what I'm saying? So it's like, oh, okay, eat more calories. Okay, so that's the problem. I eat more calories and now I can't sleep at night because my stomach is fucking turning the whole night.

5:07 Did you also take any protein powder supplements and any of that?

[video] 5:11 I mean, yeah, I started, I had the smoothies, right? Because you need to get the calories and I was tossing in some protein powders in there just to try to get the extra gains. I didn't really like how they tasted though. And I didn't really notice any benefit from those either. Like no matter how much protein powders I added, I didn't really notice any gains. Like I think I noticed a little bit of gains when I started veganism, probably because of the reserves that I had from the animal products. But then there was a very quickly I peaked out at the gym and I couldn't gain any muscle. And it was very confusing because I was so indoctrinated from the videos. I was like, what's going on here? Why am I not gaining muscle? You know, I went from a six month, 100% disciplined, whole foods, plant based vegan diet, no animal products. And then I completely switched over. The first night I had salmon. And then the second night, I just said, Scooter, and I just got two fat steaks. I was like, whatever, let's just try. Because I needed to know. Because I watched your videos. And I was like, okay, I'm closing my mind right now. There's something that I'm missing. And I'm explaining it very nonchalant now.

[video] 6:10 But at the time, it was not easy to restructure my beliefs. And I can feel empathy for vegans switching over. Even though they're literally delusional, I understand what that feels like. Because you're so attached that it's hard for you to switch. But I was like, no, that's just my ego. let's try the animal product. So I had a steak and the very first night that I had a steak, I literally had ridiculous, intense, lucid dreams. So that was interesting because my body was just like, just, I felt like, and I honestly felt a little bit high when I ate that steak. My head had this feeling, I have no idea how to explain it, but I started to just feel so calm. And it's just like, there was this pressure in my head where I honestly felt like I smoked a little bit of weed in a way. Like I wasn't high. I was just like very

[video] 6:54 calm and I haven't had that calm feeling in months looking back looking back as a vegan I couldn't even like you know stand up for myself in an argument I was like subconsciously I'm like oh I don't have enough energy for that I'll just go home he's just you know what I'm saying like I couldn't even argue back to people I couldn't even stand up for my beliefs another thing I didn't mention is my sex drive was completely nothing on the vegan diet completely nothing and I was also abstaining from uh I was doing nofap at the time so I was like oh that's probably just nofap you know it's probably just nofap or Because I'm not watching porn or whatever, because I cut out that, I think that's really bad for you. But then right when I started eating animal products again, my hormones started to work a lot better, which correlated with my skin health as well. So when the hormones started working properly, when I started having a sex drive, when my digestion started to get better... My skin got better too. The eczema got better and my acne got better too.

[video] 7:48 When I introduced the animal products back into my diet, my vibration wasn't affected negatively at all. In fact, I feel like I have more life force in my body now because I introduced nutrition that my body needs. My meditations are even better. My state of consciousness, whatever you want to call it, I just feel good. I feel better as I eat the animal products. And I was just because there's all these like monks that eat a vegan diet or whatever. And they say like, oh, that's healthy. And it's like, bro, they're just desensitized to their biological needs. You know what I'm saying? They're trying to desensitize their egos. And the reason they eat a vegan diet is because they're trying to lower their fucking sex drive. And if you want to do that, by all means, go ahead. But I want to have my sex drive.

8:39 Did you take B12 or any of those supplements?

[video] 8:43 Oh yeah, I took a ton of B12. I even remember at some point that when I started to have energy issues, I was like, oh, it's probably the B12. So I ate more B12. And I still had energy issues. I even started to believe that whole mentality where like, oh, you need to get B12 from the soil or whatever the hell. And that's where people got it. It's just ridiculous. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't working at all.

[video] 9:10 Like you said, there's over 10 to 15 nutrients that you can't get from the vegan diet. People can't accept that, but even if we get rid of the nutrients that we have labeled, my experience shows me And I value anecdotal experience because some people attach too much to science. Like you just eat it and you'll feel, because who knows how many nutrients that we haven't pinpointed yet that you need from those animal products. You know what I'm saying? There's so many things and B12 is definitely one of them because my energy levels just came back. I started getting strength back at the gym. And yeah, so I did eat a lot of B12 and no results from that.

9:50 How do you see the future of veganism?

[video] 9:55 That's a very interesting question because right when I started to open up my mind about veganism, and then I saw you make that video about McDonald's going fully plant-based, it all started to click in my head. Well, the carbohydrates and the nutrition, and then I connected it to marketing. And I'm not trying to go into conspiracy theories here, but like Literally, it makes sense. I'm not going to even go to conspiracy theories where people have an intention to kill people. That's different. But if you look at it from a marketing perspective, it's way, way, way cheaper and easier to produce all these plant foods and just sell them and then label it as healthy. And just go, it's whole grains. It's healthy for you. And there's no science to back that up. But here's the marketing. And let's just believe it because that's what we've been told.

[video] 10:44 And so I don't really want the future to go in this direction, but it seems like it's getting popular and it's getting, people are believing that it is healthy when it is actually lowering their level of health. And I think more people are also going to wake up to the fact that these animal products are necessary because humans will have to realize that eventually we are so smart, but we haven't figured out diet and it's just right in front of us. And, um, I think there's always going to be a switch. I don't think it's going to be really popular because as more vegans are leaving, more are coming in, but then they're leaving again and more are coming in. So I don't think it's going to get super popular, but there's still always going to be a push of people trying to market it. But I think our biology will override that eventually because we can't be completely oblivious to, even if somebody stays vegan for five, 10 years,

[video] 11:37 They'll realize that their health is going to shit eventually and so I don't there's no possible way For veganism to get on a mass scale in terms of the bit like they can market it as much as they want But the smart people will realize that they're losing their health from fully plant-based products Were you also into the ethics?

11:57 Did you believe that killing animals is wrong or was it mostly about the health?

[video] 12:02 I actually didn't mention that when I started it was just for the health reasons and But then because of all the propaganda, I actually started to develop compassion for the animals too. And then I connected my spiritual beliefs to that too. I'm like, oh, we're all one. So why would you consume animals? Because you're consuming yourself and all this. And I did develop a little bit of ethical beliefs. But I started to slowly realize that that was my ego being disconnected from death. You see what I'm saying? Because as a society, we're very disconnected from natural instinct and then we like to be all happy and healthy and to go how vegan you ever notice how the vegans are always so like happy and healthy and like oh everything's good and it's like no you're actually stressed and you're running away from the reality that's in front of you and so I did develop those beliefs at some point because because in your mind you connect the health with the ethics and it builds your ego even more

[video] 13:01 So you're like, oh, I'm being healthy and I'm saving the animals. It's a win-win. It's all good now. I'm just winning. I'm winning in life and everyone else is losing. And that's the mentality that you get into when you start connecting everything. I was connecting my spiritual beliefs, my ethical beliefs, my health beliefs that were false. And you see how this ego construct starts to come together in this way. Listen, if it was up to me, if I could thrive on my health as a vegan, I would. You see what I'm saying? I didn't want to believe that I needed those animal products, but now I'm realizing it's just stupid. because you need to have those products in your life to thrive. And my ethics, if I need these animal products to thrive, I need to let go of those ethical beliefs, in my opinion, because I have priorities where my health goes above my ethics. And I hate to say that, some vegans will disagree, but my health goes above my beliefs. You see, my beliefs are just a thought, and my physical health has a priority over

[video] 14:01 A belief that I hold. So that's where my ethics are right now. And if you want to do it for ethical reasons and you prioritize ethics over health, then by all means, go ahead. But I value my health.

14:14 Very well said. Thank you. No worries, man.