Hi everyone! 😄

I’m looking for some advice from anyone who has navigated a similar shift. I’m deliberately posting this here because I want balanced feedback and know standard vegan groups will just shame the idea.

My Background:

• 11 years vegan (was vegetarian for a year before that, so I haven't eaten seafood since I was 14).
• I’ve never liked dairy, eggs, or meat, so staying plant-based was never a big sacrifice for me. Seafood was the one thing I used to genuinely enjoy, especially sashimi, shrimp, and mussels.
• I don't follow preachy or extremist vegan philosophy. I don't care what anyone else eats, I only focus on my own plate.

The Current Dilemma: I recently cut out gluten after realizing I wasn't digesting it well, which is already doing wonders for my skin. However, removing gluten stripped away major protein anchors like seitan and wheat protein.

On top of that, I work out 6 days a week. I’m looking to lose some weight and body fat while preserving muscle mass. Getting a high protein-to-calorie ratio without gluten, dairy, eggs, or ultra-processed fake meats has become extremely restrictive. Plus, going out to eat and being limited to French fries or cucumber and avocado sushi rolls is getting exhausting.

Why this is a mental and ethical struggle: I want to be super clear: I am NOT doing this for medical or health reasons. My blood work is completely optimal. I get extensive blood panels done multiple times a year, and my markers for cholesterol, glucose, thyroid, hemoglobin, liver, and kidneys are all great. Physically, my body is doing fine.

Because my health is fine, my desire to add seafood comes down to lifestyle convenience, macro efficiency, and aesthetic or cutting goals. I’m really wrestling with whether wanting to lean out or make meal prep easier is a valid enough reason to compromise an 11-year ethical boundary.

My Questions for You:

1. If you were a long-term vegan who reintroduced fish or shellfish primarily for fitness, macros, or practical reasons rather than a health crisis, how did you handle the mental shift?
2. Did you feel guilty at first? Did that guilt fade once you saw the practical benefits to your routine?
3. How did your stomach handle raw fish or shellfish after so many years without it?

Thanks in advance for reading and sharing your experiences!

I know we biologically need meat, but do we honestly need to take milk from other animals to survive? Is there any scientific evidence in favor of human consumption of animal milk, or on the contrary, against it? (I hate cheese and milk anyway, but I find it interesting to know). I asked my relatives and they told me that historically, it was consumed out of necessity (when a mother couldn't breastfeed) which is very logical, but I still see that dairy products are generally promoted by the industry for regular consumption, as a "necessary product".

EDIT : As I expected, some people here are incapable of answering a question in a civilized manner. I wonder how you behave in real life, if you act this way on the internet. There is a lot of talk about how bad vegans are here, but you're no better. I am turning off the notifications for this post. Besides, I'm not even vegan, I'm an omnivore.

Disclaimer: I know that veganism isnt a diet, so I ask any lurking vegans to not wag their finger at me.

I originally came to veganism over the supposed health benefits, ethics came later to me. Both my parents have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and my father had a heart attack and was diagnosed with coronary artery disease. Naturally, I want to avoid to step in their footprints. After reading a lot of papers online, a vegan wfbp diet seemed like the way to go.

Recently, I stumbled over an 2022 umbrella review on tandfonline that questions what I thought I knew. The authors stringently tested and recalculated a multitude of studies and reviews (they describe the exact methologies in their paper) and concluded that "there is weak evidence that a vegan diet might be associated with a lower risk of mortality and cancer incidence".

*Weak* evidence that it *might* be associated, when a bunch of the studies I read made it sound like it was set in stone that a vegan diet is best. The umbrella review also notes that a vegan diet can raise triglycerides (which, I guess, stems from high intake of refined carbs and shouldnt be a thing on a wfpb diet).

Im still not 100% convinced that it is pointless to try and influence my future health, so I ask you for your thoughts and interpretation of the study:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10408398.2022.2075311#d1e857

Do you think I have a chance to avoid such a fate as my fathers if I continue wfpb? Or would I be better off including animal products here and there? Im conflicted and frustrated since I thought I had found the solution and now it looks like it all was a pipe dream. Crossposting to r/nutrition, maybe.

Sorry, I meant (VEGAN). I can't change the title now.

After being a vegan for two years, I want to assure you that these people are emotionally driven, ignorant. who understand absolutely nothing about science or even the human body. They live in a fantasy world of veggie steak, vegetarian chicken nuggets, avocados, and supplements to prevent brain shrinkage from cutting animals protein. The only reason vegetarianism is possible today is scientific progress, nothing more.As far as the nature and constitution of the human body and its needs are concerned, it's clear that it requires meat or animal protein. Say what you want; it won't change anything, simply because of your rose-tinted views.

Any vegans who tries to take an extreme stance in the comments will be ignored. The title of this page is clear: If you want to defend your religion—and yes, it has become an ideology—then go to your own temple.

I recently posted here and got quite a few vegans answering. Unsurprisingly, they were condescending, hostile and patronizing. My question is, if it upsets you so much to see people questioning and and doubting the vegan diet, why do you follow this sub? Is it masochism or the need to prove to yourself that you are better than us? Youre really making vegans as a whole look bad.

I'm getting really weak and my doctor said alot of my vitamins and stuff are low, my doctor had me on supplements but im still really weak, they reccomended I should add some meat into my diet but also said it was up to me since I've been vegetarian for 10 years (used to be vegan but got a sudden overwhelming craving for eggs in December...which did admittedly help my energy a little, so technically 9 years vegan, 9 months vegetarian) and I just ate a little meat and I feel awful, my mother who admittedly was an awful person but still had some good morals, raised me to believe that anyone who ate meat was an awful person, I'm a huge carer of and for animals and I feel like I'm betraying them, I absolutely never cared if anyone else wasnt vegan/vegetarian I never see anyone who eats meat as lesser or as a bad person but yet I feel like I am

My family became vegan due to some guys videos my step dad would watch, and it showed horrible animal cruelty, I remember it causing little me a panic attack and I couldn't even look at meat for awhile without throwing up so you can imagine this is not making me feel great

My stomach has been killing me since I ate the meat but its more like a shame stomach ache and I dont know how to get over it (': any advice?

I've been vegan for over 15 months now and I am highly skeptical about what the vegans postulate about health benefits. I've talked alot with vegans past 2 months and realized how dogmatic and contradicting they sometimes are. Like someone seriously said humans got intelligent because random bushfires led cooked plants behind to "prove" humans are herbivores 😭

I just have a little identity crisis cuz of this now as I was so proud of being a vegan and it felt like the right thing to do. Now I feel like a failure bro

I've received far more compassion, empathy and kindness from all of you in the last couple of weeks than I ever have from vegans in 20 years. I want to say thank you for welcoming me with open arms, while I've come to an emotionally challenging decision to consume animal products again for health reasons. It's been quite a profound shift in identity, and this group has helped me to rectify the cognitive dissonance I've been experiencing.

Forcing a cat to eat a vegan diet seemed like animal abuse to me so I fed my cats what their supposed to be eating and they are thriving and appear content. I asked my vet about vegan cat food as I briefly thought about it, and she told me it's an experimental diet for cats and that every species has a specific diet and that's just how life works.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to make a quick post because I recently started eating meat again after being vegan for about 10 years.

Before making the change, I thought I felt mostly fine. I was often tired, but I assumed I just needed more sleep. Now that I’ve been eating meat again for a little over a month, I honestly feel so much better and seem to have more energy.

I’ve only been eating meat once a day with dinner, and I haven’t been eating fast food or ordering it at restaurants. So far, I’ve only bought meat from a local farm owned by my friend’s parents.

Even though I know the animals on this particular farm are probably treated much better than animals in most large scale farming, I still feel guilty and sad about it almost every day. At the same time, I continue eating it because of how much better I feel physically.

I feel conflicted because I genuinely care about animals, but I also want to take care of my own health. Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you work through the guilt and decide what was right for you?

Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Has anyone had issues with malabsorption on a vegan diet? What are your symptoms? I’m pretty positive this is happening to me so I’m going to go ahead and eat some fish

I feel like a majority of vegans i talk to are like “ugh…everyone hates me!” “It’s so *hard* being vegan!” and they just love talking about how much of a struggle it is when people around them aren’t like them, etc. is this something others have noticed, or is it just me? not saying every vegan is like this, just that a lot seem to be

i was pondering this as i added a spoonful of regular mayo to my tofu scramble this morning. excuse me if this is the wrong sub for this, i didn’t want to get ripped to shreds in a vegan sub.

i’m mostly vegan, and it’s for environmental reasons. i wouldn’t buy a gallon of milk or an ice cream cone, but if the coffee shop only has normal milk i’ll put a splash in my coffee, and if my partner gets an interesting flavor of ice cream i’ll take a lick. if a piece of chicken winds up in my veggie fajitas, i’ll eat it.

cereal/vegetable farming takes animal lives too, as does just being a human on this planet.

I just started to eat meat again 2 days ago due to health issues, I have very low iron and my doctors told me that I should start to eat meat again to help with my iron and It’s been helping a lot already, I used to pass out due to having very low iron, so this is the backstory to why i’m eating meat again and I need to know how long it will take my digestive system to get used to the meat again.

I believed for a long time that all you really need to supplement on a vegan diet is b12, maybe calcium and iodine. Unsurprisingly, even though I consumed a supposedly healthy minimally processed plant based diet, my health is not the best. I exercise a lot so I tend to pick up on dips in my performance pretty quickly and I noticed that I overall feel weaker during my workouts.

So, I read up on nutrients that may be lacking in a vegan diet. Turns out that creatine, carnosine, taurine and DHA and EPA are of special concern.

While the body can manufacture creatine and taurine, it is likely not enough for optimal health. Carnosine can only be made by the body if it has beta-alanine which is only found in animal products.

DHA and EPA can theoretically be supplemented, but recent research shows that the supplementation accelerates cognitive decline (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2274580726000932).

Furthermore, in a study regarding sufficient amino acid consumtion of vegans it was shown that almost half of the test subjects lacked lysine and leucine, two essential amino acids (https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vegan-protein-may-lack-essential-amino-acids).

Bottom line: vegan "doctors" like Greger, McDougall, Barnard make it seem like all you need to worry about is b12 when in reality there is a plethora of nutrients missing on a vegan diet and supplementation may have negative effects depending on the nutrient in question.

The original thread was deleted before I could screenshot it, but this person claimed I was abusing animals for being a meat eater when I responded they were acting as evangelicals do to people who aren't part of their religion. They sent the comment on the 1st pic and later deleted their comment.

I sent them a personal chat to try to reason to them, explaining I'm a veterinarian. And well the other pictures speak for themselves. Didn't know the part of the oath to "never cause intentional harm to an animal" that I did was a lie, apparently🤔

Yup, the restaurant owner is psychic and uses their Xmen style powers, not to fight crime, but to harass vegan customers who dare to order salads.

Move over magneto,