BTW, I just wanted to mention that Rich Roll on his podcast said that he has 5 or 6 bowel movements a day. That sounds like a lot to me but he said he feels good though. I'm guessing if you burn lots of calories on the regular, you must eat a lot to sustain yourself in a healthy way.
Most vegan gains are from the body's "honeymoon" phase where nutrients are grabbed from that body that are lacking in the consumed diet. Additionally, the placebo effect. Finally, typically when someone goes vegan they are making other changes that are positive to performance. However, like most restrictive diets and being a vegan is one of the most limited in choice you will hit a nutrient wall, injuries, and other issues. Leading to a crash that is even more difficult to rebound from both physically and mentally. Also, there is some evidence that points to a long term vegan diet increases chance of mental neurosis. B-12 issues is the most commonly mentioned problem.
Not sure why downvote, but this is true. Restrictive diets "work" for health and performance in some people because of the unintended consequences. If you start arbitrarily eliminating certain ingredients, you make it more difficult to access convenience food, eat out, and it forces you to be more conscious of what you are eating. For many people this change gets them away from the issues in their standard diet that were problematic. It wasn't the meat, the dairy, the gluten, the seed oils, the soy, the fodmaps, whatever.
You notice that people who are on very different restrictive diets such as vegan, carnivore, paleo, IF, etc. all say the same things. This is why. In an apples to apples comparison (ie. mindful, macro & calorie matched diet), there isn't any benefit to these diets. However irl people don't do a control arm to their experiment where they don't eat out, don't eat packaged junk food etc.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having a special diet if you know having these rules helps you eat better. Some people need rules and structure. Some people may have other reasons for these diets such as ethical concerns as well. That's all fine. But I think it's worth acknowledging that it's almost certainly healthier to have an unrestricted diet. Within the running community, also worth thinking about unintended consequences re: eating disorders. All of the vegan runners I know are men. Almost all of them have a history of eating disorders. I think this is how men who do sports tend to manifest that unfortunately.
You bring up some good points and touch on an important Truth. The typical US diet is simply awful and killing people. It is Fast food, high salt, high fat, junk food and sugar. So every diet under the planet recommends that the standard US diet needs to be stopped and replaced with something else. That is why great gains happen with every single diet. It is simply getting away from Junk.
I am lead to believe that Keto, Miami and lots of the other latest fad diets benefit from these initial gains and people get excited about it but they do not have longevity. Once these quick gains are made, they plateau. Then people quit because that type of eating is not sustainable.
But a plant based diet is sustainable and the gains don't stop after just getting away from junk. People have been on plant based diets for decades. It is not about denying food. It is simply about putting the best type of food into your body at all time. This is what I am testing out.
I am finding taste buds "come alive" so to speak. As an example, I had rice and black beans with some greens. I thought my wife had done some incredibly different seasoning on them because they tasted different. But she told me that they were the same as she always made. The only difference is before I would have had a Ribeye steak or Grilled chicken with it. But this time the taste seemed way better. My theory is that my taste buds previously were waiting for the meat and ignoring how good the plant based stuff was.
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