30 Day Non-Vegan Experiment Results

I’m vegan again.

After (about) 30 days of trying a non-vegan diet, I decided to transition back into being vegan.

Here are some of my thoughts on going non-vegan for 30 days after many years of eating a vegan diet.

Note: I make general statements below, but these are just my conclusions based on my own experiment on myself, and the controversial state of science today as I know it.

Protein quantity really matters for gains

One of the reasons to eat meat was to increase my protein intake without significant increases in calories or having to drink several (3-4) daily supplements.

If you do strength training at least 3+ times a week, I do think you’ll feel noticeable results by eating 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight a day, say 160-180g, than if you eat half of that, say 60-80g. The daily recommended protein of .5g per pound is just not optimized for strength.

My strength training’s progressive overload was significantly better under 200g+ of daily protein. It was as if I was cheating. While I assumed I’d see improvements, the immediacy (<1 week) of the effects was completely unexpected.

The truth is that while I thought I was eating a large amount of protein under my previous diet, I really wasn’t. Planning and tracking protein intake made a big difference.

Also, there’s plenty of controversy over whether even 1g/lb is a ceiling, and it doesn’t seem like it is. Presumably, you’d still see changes even at up to 1.5g/lbs, a whopping ~300g/day depending on your weight.

In short, I’m a big fan of more protein = more gains, post-experiment.

But another reason why I wanted to eat meat was to lose weight (ie. cut) while preserving muscle mass, and that was much harder.

It’s hard to lose weight on meat

Unsure why it is harder to lose weight on meat. I wasn’t counting my macros precisely, but I was being relatively good about it, and I still didn’t lose any weight on this new diet.

We know we process different foods differently when it comes to weight gain and loss. There are some studies that seem to point to similarly caloric diets causing different weight loss effects in individuals. From Greger’s How Not to Diet:

To find out which meat may be the most fattening, an epic study was performed. EPIC is actually the name of the study, and it lives up to its moniker, having enrolled hundreds of thousands of men and women, assessing their dietary intakes, and following them out for years. The EPIC researchers also found total meat consumption linked to increased weight gain, even at similar caloric intakes. They concluded: “Our results are therefore in favor of the public health recommendation to decrease meat consumption for health improvement.” The surprise, though, was that poultry appeared to be the most fattening. Consumption of poultry—mostly chicken—was associated with three times the weight gain compared to red meat like beef,1810,1811 and this was after taking into account age, gender, physical activity level, smoking status, overall dietary quality, and calorie counts.

Greger, Michael. How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss (pp. 201-202). (Function). Kindle Edition.

I can’t vouch for the study, and I find all studies on nutrition fishy, but it felt that way for me too: having been on a vegan diet for a long time, it seemed harder to lose weight at similar caloric intakes. It wasn’t necessarily fat vs muscle gain, either, because my waist remained the same size throughout.

The other potential reason is that, while I didn’t eat a lot of junk food, me being relatively disciplined with my diet having been vegan for so long,.. I did eat a lot more junk food than I used to.

Omnivores have too many tempting junk foods

If you think the discipline of being vegan is hard, you should try eating healthy while non-vegan! I’m joking of course, it’s very likely that you are not vegan (given only about 1% of the US population seems to be vegan), but damn is it hard to eat healthy when all processed food is fair game to you.

I ate unhealthy snacks at parties, pizza, fried food, everything. While I knew theoretically how many bad temptations I avoided by just being vegan, it was really crazy to see it in practice.

My willpower to avoid junk while on an omnivore diet was nowhere near my ability to skip non-vegan foods while vegan, even if the effects were theoretically the same. When I was omnivore, I had to make decisions all the time about whether or not to eat, while during a vegan diet none of them were options and it was much easier.

On the other hand, there’s a reason why I ate pizza, snacks, and all of that – it was very convenient, and great for social occasions.

Convenient, particularly while traveling.

Traveling omnivore is so nice

If you hate traveling today, imagine traveling while vegan.

It’s a pain – there’s food for you, but it’s not food really – you get lettuce, tomatoes, and mushrooms, and while you’re not eating any meat, you’re also not at 5% of your macros after a meal.

Many places will have no options for you, or if they do, it’s a bunch of deep fried stuff like french fries, or stuff made with coconut milk and sugar. There’s no “vegan = healthy” while traveling, and forget it if you’re trying to get even 100g of protein a day, let alone 200g.

Traveling while omnivore was a much, much better experience than traveling while vegan, both in convenience and health. It actually got me considering not being vegan while traveling, something I’m still evaluating.

In the meantime, I’m just gonna be vegan even while traveling, but this was by far the nicest part of an omnivore diet.

Importantly, though, keeping iron levels did seem relatively hard while eating meat.

Low iron levels while omnivore are too hard

While I didn’t do a ferritin calculation yet, having hemochromatosis (high iron in the blood) probably means I shouldn’t ever bulk, ever, unless I’m super low on iron already, or just using supplements.

Surprisingly, even if I avoid red and organ meat (or oysters), it’s a lot easier to keep my iron intake lower on a vegan diet than eating meat – in large part because heme iron is more easily absorbed by the body than the non-heme iron variety found in vegetables. I thought it’d be easier than while vegan, but every day tracking showed me otherwise in practice.

The only really safe way for me to ingest a lot of protein is, therefore, supplements – and only the ones with no iron at that.

Yuck.

I think this is a pretty done deal: I have to choose between low protein, supplements, or frequent phlebotomies (medical bleeding to lower iron levels).

Ethical implications mattered

Honestly, while I was vegan mostly for health reasons (that later turned out quite controversial I must say), I definitely appreciated not being a part of factory farming.

The truth is I have no way to buy non-factory farmed animal foods without major inconveniences, and I’m not even super convinced of the lower suffering of regular animal derived foods, either.

The participation in animal suffering wasn’t as top of mind for me when I wasn’t a part of it as when I was. Eating meat made a big difference in whether I cared about it, like working at a slaughterhouse could change your mind about your own meat-eating habits compared to your current profession.

Of course it helped that I really leaned in to try to understand what I was doing.

By my simple calculations, I was responsible for raising in suffering and killing about 3 animals (broiler chickens or tilapias) per week, or 150 per year. I was also avoiding eating pork and beef mostly, but my research on animal suffering led me to think of a benchmark of pigs being about as conscious as dogs, with cows being a little less so, so that also helped.

In the end, I’ve got enough to wrestle with, and it’s nice to keep this one off the list.

One thing surprised me, though: even without having eaten meat in a long time, going back was both easy and uneventful.

My first chicken in ages was uneventful

I had been thinking about this non-vegan experiment for a while, and my wife and I decided to go to this restaurant that we loved going to but has no vegan options (besides perhaps olives).

We ordered chicken, and when I ate chicken, it really, really felt like I had eaten chicken the day before and it was no big deal. I really liked it, but only about as much as I and the regular person typically like eating meat – it was nothing special.

That was surprising, even for me. I thought it’d be like “Finally I’m eating meat, delicious!! Ahhh” but it was more like “Well OK, here’s a nice dinner.”

Don’t get me wrong – it was still very good. But just a regular, very good daily habit of eating meat for an omnivore, and not a special, really good from a haven’t had this in ages type.

That was funny and rather unexpected, so it was interesting to learn.

Social reasons led me to question going back

It was nice to say “sure” when my mother-in-law cooked a fish she was proud of and asked me to try it.

It was nice to go to a restaurant with my wife we hadn’t been to since I was vegan many years ago.

It was nice to celebrate my anniversary by eating the same food as my wife, and sharing it with her.

It was nice to eat pizza with my family, and have them share on the pizza I ordered.

Most people don’t realize it, but being vegan is honestly, kind of an imposition on others, particularly loved ones. They cook for me, go to my events, and avoid sharing stuff with me.

Luckily for me, I have an amazing wife, and while I expected some pushback when I told her I’d go back to being vegan given all the above points, she gave me 100% support and said “Well, I’m used to it, it doesn’t hinder me as much. It’ll be fine.”

It’s hard to really see how much imposition being vegan causes on others, but it is true that, after many years, everyone gets used to you being the fussy one.