Are vegan diets healthy? Another day vegan & I’m still alive

Are vegan diets healthy?

Is going vegan really healthy in the long-term?

You need meat to survive, right?

These are the most common questions that I have received regularly but the answers can’t be further from the truth.

Okay, I admit going vegan done wrongly can quite rightly be unhealthy however done correctly and you can reap the full benefits of a plant based diet whilst also meeting all of your recommended daily intakes of vitamins and minerals.

So a little background story…

If you were to describe someone who was on the opposite spectrum of a vegan, then that would have been me!

Just a couple of years ago, I was a chicken‘n’brown rice kind of guy. Often having chicken twice a day with three eggs in the morning, and, at first I felt great. It wasn’t until after a few years of following such a diet that I started feeling crappy: I was tired and sluggish, and I lacked the energy that I once had.

I wanted to find out why and so I started tracking and seeing what had changed in my diet. Nothing! So why the decline in energy?

Now this post isn’t about what I ate previous to becoming vegan but more so about the fact that I thought I was eating a well-balanced nutritional diet. But how wrong I was!

Even though I had dismissed veganism in the past, my research kept directing me to it. That’s when I thought; why not give it a try? It wasn’t till going vegan that I realised how unhealthy my old lifestyle and eating habits actually were.

Today, my diet is completely different, and I’ve never felt more alive.

People are living longer than ever but are they really living longer healthier lives?

Improving one’s health is the foundation of living a meaningful vegan life: without your health, nothing else matters. I’m not looking to convert anyone to tracking their food intake 24/7 but more so to just be aware of what you are putting into your body so that you can make your vegan lifestyle a healthy one. I want you to feel great so you can better enjoy your life for many years from now.

My current vegan diet…

Post-workout snack

• 1.5 scoops (40g) Bulk Powders complete vegan protein blend
• 100g medjool dates

Breakfast

• 80g wholegrain oats
• 30g Linwoods Organic flaxseeds
• 30g walnuts
• 50g raisins
• 1 medium banana
• 300ml coconut milk

Lunch

• 100g watermelon
• 1 TREK Cocoa Coconut flapjack
• 1 serving of my Mexican Kidney Bean Avocado Super Bowl

Dinner

Vegan Sushi Buddha Bowl (recipe coming soon)

• 100g (uncooked weight) sushi rice
• 80g (drained weight) chickpeas
• 100g cucumber
• 100g carrots
• 100g kale
• 25g spring onions
• 1tbsp soy sauce
• 10g Harissa paste

• 1 braeburn apple

Pre-bed snack

Bedtime smoothie

• 100g spinach
• 150g frozen berry mix
• 1 PACK’d frozen fruit & vegetable pouch + superfood sachet
• 1tbsp organic crunchy peanut butter

Not bad at all! I still think my diet can be improved however, therefore in order to do so I will apply the following:

1. Switch the Trek bar with 50g sunflower seeds and add this into my Mexican Kidney Bean Avocado Super Bowl. This will increase my Vitamin E and selenium levels.
2. Consume a Vitamin D3 supplement (2500iu).
3. Consume a vegan BCAA supplement.

By making just these two changes you can clearly see what great impact this has on my overall health.

I urge you to start tracking your eating habits TODAY! So next time someone asks you is “going vegan really healthy long term?”

You can show them a screenshot of your diet and how healthy it really is and then ask them to compare.

(Caution they may decline)…