Three years vegan. I feel about the same as I did when I wasn't a vegan

@flyingforjesus I know healthy vegans who started out healthy, so they say they didn't notice any difference.

On the other hand I was suffering from a bunch of issues, and EVERY time I went to doctors or specialists they told me I was fine and healthy. I litterally got a tube put down my throat which ended up doing more damage than the heart burn I was dealing with to learn that "there was nothing wrong with me", but it wasn't till I went vegan that my heart burn and other issues totally cleared up. Then only one days where I fucked up on reading labels or people conveniently forgot about the animal products they had cooked with until after I'd eaten some, did I learn that things like dairy had been causing my agonizing period, digestive, and joint pain, or that eggs were definitely that cause of my heart burn.

So my theory is that if you start out pretty OK, you're not going to notice much when you go vegan, but if you start out with a lot of problems, then you're more likely to find that much of it was caused by eating animals and their products.

I went vegan at 28, and have been vegan for a bit over 2 years. Do you mind if we ask (roughly) how old you were when you made the switch?
 
@deathbeforedishonor9453 I'm open to a variety of possible facts regarding dietary changes. One is that different people have somewhat different "best diets" based on their genes (I mean, we know this is true with things like celiac disease or phenylketonuria). Perhaps there is something similar with vegan vs. non-vegan diets across different people.

I also think the state of nutritional science is far less than I wish we had and we don't have a great handle on anything other than the obvious diseases of deficiency, such as scurvy or beriberi.

I went vegan at 28, and have been vegan for a bit over 2 years. Do you mind if we ask (roughly) how old you were when you made the switch?
Click to expand...

On this occasion, made the change around my 46th birthday. On a previous, 18-month attempt at a vegan diet, that was around age 37.
 
@flyingforjesus Yeah, I can't have wheat or grains related to wheat AT ALL unless I want my immune system to start attacking me and giving me serious confusion and bi-polar types symptoms when my brain starts to swell. Urgh!

I guess looking back at my decades of suffering, I WISH at least ONE of my doctors would have at least suggested checking for allergies or anything along those line! Or even just asked me what kind of diet I was eating, because honestly I ate total garbage including ~10-12 can of soda a day in my teens and could never understand why exercising once in a while and doing the minimum in PE wasn't fixing my fat problem that everyone kept harassing me about. I dunno, litterally any kind of questions they could have asked might have opened the door for me to make healthier eating habits earlier in life, and I'd have probably benefited. I grew up eating beef almost every day, and my mum believed the myth the news started spreading around that "soy is dangerous", so I wasn't surrounded by knowledgeable people or healthy examples :/

Now I try to focus on eating nutrient dense foods, working out at least a little every day (even if it's only dog walks plus some light cleaning sometimes), and I focus on avoiding foods that either hurt people/animals/environment or that cause me to have reactions, and it seems to be a pretty solid system :)

My mother tried going vegetarian when I was a kid (apparently, I must have been very young), and she seems to be leaning in this direction again, so hearing that you made the change so late gives me hope for her! Her health has been going down hill, and I suspect the change would do her a lot of good! Thank you! :D
 
@flyingforjesus You can remember eating greasy eggs in a restaurant about 25 years ago. So I will assume you are at a minimum in your mid 30's (or 50's?) . Folks eating the Standard American Diet will see a decrease in health as they age. The older the general population is the more likely they are to suffer from a chronic disease.

If you didn't go vegan you would likely be thinking about some prescription pills right about now. Health appears to decline rapidly at times because the underlying damage is hard to see as it is accruing. You are safeguarding and reversing all sorts of things like cancer for example. Cancer cells are part of our functioning bodies so they are always there - it is a matter of if our bodies operate right whether or not they stick around and clump up ... some times clumps build up for a decade before they are noticed at all...
 
@flyingforjesus I started feeling somehow "lighter" (not actually in weight, just a feeling) when I dropped my red meat consumption by a whole lot. When I ate white meat few times a week but mostly vegetarian, the feeling may have increased just a little. I felt no increase in the feeling after finally dropping all meat and dairy.

So, less felt made me feel good. Had I transferred directly from meat-heavy omnivorism to a plant-based diet, I'd be telling that veganism made me feel good.
 
@flyingforjesus You should feel mostly the same unless your diet before was very bad or you had a personal negative predisposition to animal products. Plant based diets aren't some magic pill that are gonna make everyone feel like superman. Provided you are vegan for the animals or environment at least to some extent, I would say those are much stronger reasons (if you are just as healthy, then that's great because it means you can continue).
 
@flyingforjesus Plant based or vegan diet in general can't do magic, unless you used to eat regularly fast-food before. But I bet you're more healthy now even if you maybe don't notice it, as others suggested blood test can confirm that.
If you want to feel a change for real, start to train. Vegan + gym it's gonna have a great impact on your energy levels.
 
@flyingforjesus In that case maybe you're expecting too much from yourself, and maybe, just maybe, I don't want to suppose bad thing, but have you ever got depression issues? Or using some drug? I know many people with this kind of issues and often are related to this stuff, so think about it.
 
@dawn16 I might be giving the wrong impression. If I get 7.5 hours of solid sleep, don't eat a giant meal, have a fairly happy day, and don't exercise, I have what I'd consider decent levels of energy for about 17 hours and then I go to sleep. The first hour of waking up is quite groggy, but the rest is OK. Never bouncing-off-the-walls energy like some people have (which I think is a genetic gift I don't have), but fine. It's not like I'm a rag doll.

However, as you start to remove these ideal conditions, I start to lost steam fairly quickly. Give me six hours of so-so sleep, a stressful argument, a little overeating, and my usual exercise routine (which i do every other day and includes a 4-5 mile run) and I can be just wiped out tired for 3-4 hours and quite tired for the remaining time until bed. And that's annoying and really harmful to making my life better.
 
@flyingforjesus Okay but you made a clear example: sleep it's so damn important, me too whenever I sleep a few hours I feel BAD, and keep in mind that stress literally kill people! Arguments aswell and bad thoughts can mess wirh our immune system and lower it and can make you ill for a day or two. So, sleep early and for long, wake up planning your whole day and not too far in the future. Also many people recommended me to meditate every day for 15 minutes, never did that but gonna give it a try, everyone says it does miracle for stressfull and anxious people, like me. Consistency it's the key for everything.
Edit: I meant Perseverance, sorry for my english, not my main language.
 
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