Some people eat a vegetarian or vegan diet for different reasons. There are many positives about a vegetarian diet. Switching to a vegetarian diet can relieve or alleviate many of today's health issues. And a vegetarian diet is not dull or hard to follow; in fact, you will learn again what really good food actually tastes like.
Why I Became a Vegetarian
Like most people my age, I was very active as a teenager and through my 20s, playing all kinds of sports, running, jumping on a trampoline and working in jobs that were physical. Then I stopped being as active and sat at a desk.
Even though I was no longer as active as I used to be, I continued to eat the standard American diet of red meat, BBQ, ice cream, refined carbs, fast food, and processed foods. Of course, I did eat vegetables, but they were a small side dish.
By the time I was 30, my knees, shoulders and back ached to the point it hurt to get out of bed. I felt much older than 30. And then I hurt my sciatic nerve, most likely from being overweight.
A friend who was a vegan gave me two books to read. One book was called “12 Days to Dynamic Health” By Dr. John McDougall and the second book was “Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy” by Dirk Benedict.
Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy was written by the actor Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck on the original Battlestar Galactica and Face on The A-Team, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer and turned to macrobiotics to heal. His book is about his journey and how a macrobiotic diet cured him of cancer.
12 Days to Dynamic Health was written by Dr. John McDougall who is a renowned doctor, author and has his own health clinic. This diet is a strict vegetarian or vegan way of eating, a starch-based diet. As the title of the book, you try it for 12 days.
It will detoxify and clean out all of the past chemicals and and toxins you have been eating. His book has real-life examples of people who went on his McDougall plan and lowered their high blood pressure, got rid of arthritis and was able to either reduce or completely eliminate certain medications for a number of health problems.
What I Learned Being a Vegetarian
I continued to read other books about a vegetarian diet and macrobiotics and I did believe that the types of food I ate affected how I felt and my health. From the macrobiotic books, I learned how healthy miso and brown rice were.
From the Dr. McDougall book, I learned how plant foods can heal most health issues and how meat and dairy can make a person sick.
Changing to a vegetarian diet wasn’t easy. The McDougall plan allows no animal foods, no dairy, no cheese, no eggs, no caffeine, and no oils. Giving up coffee was hard and the caffeine withdrawal was miserable with the headaches for about a week.
I later learned that giving up coffee is not overly important, as long as you don't drink too much, and put milk or non-dairy creamers in it. Non-dairy creamers are one of the unhealthiest foods you can eat. I started making a pot of coffee with half decaff and half caffeinated, which helped me break the caffeine addiction.
The first week of the McDougall plan was not easy since getting rid of toxins from your body can actually make you feel worse than before. Some people reported their face breaking out, stomach aches and feeling sick like the flu or a cold.
This is normal as your body cleanses out the toxins. I remember stomach aches and being light-headed. Some of this could have been withdrawal from caffeine and the chemicals in processed foods.
After the 12 days, my knees didn’t ache anymore and my sinuses were clear for the first time in years. My energy levels climbed dramatically, and I could think clearly.
A vegetarian diet or plant-based diet if done properly will also lower the amount of sodium in your diet since there is not a lot of sodium in plant foods. I checked my blood pressure before I started this diet and throughout the 12 days.
I did not have high pressure that would require medication, but it wasn’t perfect either. By the end of two weeks, my blood pressure was a perfect 110/70. And I lost weight and body fat.
Continuing the Vegetarian Experiment
After several months of this strict vegetarian or vegan diet, I wanted a pizza. I ordered one and the first thing I noticed was how salty it tasted. So salty, it reminded me of a time I was in the ocean and got the saltwater in my mouth.
The next thing I noticed was how greasy and fatty it tasted. The first couple of bites tasted good and after that, I didn’t want anymore. I learned that by changing my diet to a vegan diet, I actually changed my tastes and taste buds. My taste buds and body wanted healthy plant foods, not the oily and salty foods.
Switching Foods to a Vegetarian Diet
In 1990, there was not a great deal of interest in a plant-based vegan diet, so there was not much food in a store you could buy without oil in them. Thankfully, Dr. McDougall included recipes to get you started in his book.
Today, of course, there are hundreds if not more plant-based cookbooks. Learning to cook your own vegetarian meals back then was a healthy learning experience for us. I am still amazed at the huge choice of plant foods and the different ways to cook them.
Some examples of vegan foods that I ate on a regular basis include:
- Whole grain pasta and pasta sauce with a lot of vegetables and mushrooms
- Onion, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on whole-grain toast with Dijon mustard
- Chili with lots of vegetables and various kinds of beans
- Instead of coffee, I drank herbal teas, bancha tea, Teeceno, Yerba mate, and Pero
- Brown rice and Quinoa
- Sweet potatoes and white potatoes
- Bean burritos
- Big salads like taco salad or Greek salads
- Cold pasta salads in the summer
- Plenty of homemade soups like tomato soup, vegetable soup and butternut squash soup.
There are many different foods and combinations you can have and once you change your taste buds, you will enjoy these foods and will not miss the overly salty and fatty foods. In fact, you will find that most of the processed foods are so salty, that you might not even be able to eat them anymore.
Unlike 1990, today there are all kinds of fake hamburgers, sausage, ham, and so-called vegan or vegetarian foods. But when you read the ingredients you will see many of these foods are becoming more and more like junk foods with a lot of sodium and vegetable oils, making them very unhealthy.
I realized early that eating these vegan junk foods were just as bad as the standard American diet or possibly worse and eating them would only make me an unhealthy vegetarian. Today, there are many thousands of plant-based no-oil recipes to choose from.
I Started Reading Misleading Health Headlines Again
After years of eating a vegan diet, I started reading about omega-3 fatty acids and I realized I might not be getting enough. The macrobiotic diet allows some fish in their diet, so I started to eat fish once in a while. Not farmed fish, but wild-caught salmon.
I then let the headlines get to me again and skew what I really knew about healthy eating. I read the headlines about we need more protein, we need yogurt for probiotics for a good gut bacteria, and we need healthy fats like olive oil.
Once I started incorporated all those animal foods into my diet, I slowly started to feel more sluggish, less energy, and my digestive system was nowhere near as healthy.
The “we need more protein” idea is just a plant-based myth, and if someone does need more protein, you can certainly get plenty of protein from plant foods. Just eat more plant foods and you get more protein.
Once I started incorporated all those animal foods into my diet, I slowly started to feel more sluggish, less energy, and my digestive system was nowhere near as healthy.
The “we need more protein” idea is just a plant-based myth, and if someone does need more protein, you can certainly get plenty of protein from plant foods. Just eat more plant foods and you get more protein.
Most of us only need between 46 and 56 grams of protein, unless you are physically active, lift weights or other fitness activities. In that case you probably need no more than 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Which is easy to get on a plant-based diet.
Dairy products are possibly one of the unhealthiest foods we can eat. There are plenty of real studies that prove that today. You can get all the calcium you need from plant foods.
Omega-3 is important, and it is necessary to have a healthy omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. But by lowering the amount of omega-6 foods we eat, especially all vegetable oils, our omega-3 naturally rises. So the idea we need fish is not true. Vegetarians can get plenty of omega-3 from non-animal sources.
Dairy products are possibly one of the unhealthiest foods we can eat. There are plenty of real studies that prove that today. You can get all the calcium you need from plant foods.
Omega-3 is important, and it is necessary to have a healthy omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. But by lowering the amount of omega-6 foods we eat, especially all vegetable oils, our omega-3 naturally rises. So the idea we need fish is not true. Vegetarians can get plenty of omega-3 from non-animal sources.
What I Learned about Healthy Food
I learned how you can change your body, health and the way you feel simply by changing your diet. How we eat really affects our physical and mental health. Here is what I experienced when I started a strict vegetarian diet.
- Eating a healthy vegetarian diet amazingly got rid of my knee pain and all other arthritic joint pains.
- Eliminating chemical-laden processed, high sodium foods and all vegetable oils helped me feel much better in every way.
- My blood pressure lowered to 110/70
- My energy level is even and good all day long without the ups and downs.
- My digestive system works great, which shows me I have a health gut microbiome
- Cheese, dairy, vegetable oil, processed foods, and fast foods can really make you not only gain weight but actually get sick.
By changing your diet to a healthy vegetarian diet can drastically help you feel better, heal medical problems, lower your risk for health issues and reduce or eliminate medications you take.
I find it fascinating that just by changing what we eat; we can actually remake our entire body.
I find it fascinating that just by changing what we eat; we can actually remake our entire body.
Our organs, muscles, hair, gut bacteria, and our cells. As our body renews and rebuilds itself, it is doing it with healthy nutritious plant foods, and that really makes a huge difference that you and others can notice.
About the Author
Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Copyright © January 2012-2022 Sam Montana
Helpful Resources:
About the Author
Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Copyright © January 2012-2022 Sam Montana
Helpful Resources:
