With all these hundreds of diet plans floating around claiming that you can loose x lbs within x days/weeks. Raw food diet, juicing diet, vegan, duncan, cabbage soup, high carb, low carb, high fat, low fat, whatever diet. They all have one thing in common: they focus on calorie restriction (albeit indirectly). It’s a no brainer that you’re going to lose weight if you stop eating. Especially within the first week or so of starting a new regime. Calorie restriction “works”. But what people fail to understand is the nutritional impact these diets have on your health and well being. Losing weight is not an indication of health. Likewise, eating something “healthier” than a cheeseburger does not mean it’s the best nutritional source for you. Your body is healthiest when your hormones are in balance. Everything we put into our mouths affects that balance, whether you’re eating fruit, dairy, meat, tea, or nothing at all. Balanced hormones = happy hormones = healthy body. :)
Excuse me but what? Maybe being vegan is a fad to some, but it’s entirely more to others. I am the HEALTHIEST I’ve ever been vegan, and I eat TONS. nothing in the vegan life style promotes this, at all. I agree with everything else you said, but being vegan has NOTHING to do with weight loss. It’s a personal choice, one that most people make to do the complete opposite of starve themselves: find optimum health! (and for ethical and environmental reasons as well!)
I’m sorry, I think you misunderstood the point of my post. I wasn’t trying to say the a vegan lifestyle is a fad. To some? Yes, it certainly is. And there are plenty of people to whom it’s not—people who put in lots of effort to nourish their bodies and make sure they obtain all the nutrients they require.
But the post is geared towards a vegan diet in terms of weight loss. Lately I’ve been seeing so many more blogs posting, “well… I’m not losing as much weight anymore/I’ve plateaued. I think I’m going to go vegan in order to boost my weight loss. And it will make me healthier! A vegan diet is healthy!!” So they use this as a means of losing weight, and it’s typically done in a non-healthy manner. Especially when 80% of their diet is comprised of whole wheat pasta, brown rice, and fake turkey “meat” aka a chemical shit storm. Or the only things on their plate are fruit and veggies. That’s not the epitome of health. Will they lose weight? Certainly. Eating 800 calories a day anyone can lose weight. But they think that labeling themselves “vegan” simply because they don’t eat animal products automatically makes them healthy or something; or what they’re doing is healthy. When reality is that they’re actually jeopardizing their health.
And this applies to every single diet “fad” geared towards reaching a weight loss result instead of striving towards true health.
I never really gave much thought to it before until I came across a testimony about someone on a raw food diet. It kind of really opened my eyes to how mislead we can be when it comes to our own bodies. He was a perfectly healthy individual, he just wanted to lose a few extra pounds. He followed the plan exactly to the T as a raw food vegan. In the beginning he experienced amazing energy levels, uplifted mood, he had felt better than ever on any other diet. He thought he felt healthy. Fast forward 7 months. His energy levels began to decline, his mood was on and off, and he was no longer losing weight. He continued the diet thinking it was just a slump. He began feeling worse so he went to the doctor to get checked out in case there was an underlying issue. He got blood work done and his cholesterol spiked, his triglycerides were really high, and he was on the path to developing type II diabetes. He was stubborn and continued on the diet thinking he just had to ride it out. After a month or two later he continued getting worse. Afraid he would actually screw up his hormones forever and develop full onset of diabetes—afraid he was actually going to die (because that’s how he felt on days he couldn’t get out of bed). He completely stopped and resumed to a low-carb, high protein/fat diet and recovered after a couple of months. We may think we are healthy and we may feel amazing. But there could be a completely different story happening “under the hood”. Our health could be slowly deteriorating without knowing it. Until it’s too late and it takes a toll on us physically. And it often takes a couple months for that to happen.
That was kind of my biggest inspiration for making that post. People are so focused on losing weight at the cost of their health. And something seemingly “healthy” can have a very negative impact on our bodies. It’s not enough to simply say “oh I eat healthy, I eat my veggies and workout, and feel good”. It’s simply not. Everything we eat (and don’t eat) influences our body’s homeostasis. The things we don’t eat (and therefor missing nutrients) are just as important as the things we do eat. And it’s scary that we won’t find out if we’re doing something wrong until we get physically sick.
e.t.a // A bit off topic. I couldn’t help but browse through your blog a bit. You’ve been vegan for how long? A week? Two? How are you even sure that you’re “the healthiest you’ve ever been” within that week-long time period? That’s not enough time to make that kind of conclusion IMO.
