Topic: Pk and vegetarians

[Eli Kurtz]

Tombb, why are you steering this topic away from its subject again?!?

Here is what KineticStorm wants:

lol thank you M2
So anyways, does anyone else have an opinion on this topic. I was more interested in just getting opinions on whether or not a vegetarian diet in general is a good idea, and whether anyone else follows one. My reasons for not doing it were originally not posted because I figured what happened when I did post them would happen. I wasn't interested in having my reasons ripped apart, because that's really not going to change my mind, just as I assume that they won't change anyone elses'. I guess what I'm getting at is has anyone else tried a veg diet and was it a good move.

Chris provided some good advice: try it out, and if it doesn't work try something else.  Obviously he's going to include a little bit of his own opinion in there, because that's what people do.  On the other hand, it seems that you've included nothing but your opinion, with no regard to KineticStorm's request whatsoever.  What's the deal here?


KineticStorm, to answer your question my best friend became a Vegetarian a few years ago for ethical reasons.  At the time he was an avid cyclist (around 80 miles/wk.) with way too much energy, and he's largely unchanged now.  He still has a whole lot of energy (maybe because of a caffeine addiction... ), but he no longer bikes.  Instead, he's taken up ballet, and he's progressing really well.  I think he's lost some of the strength in his legs, but I think that's due more to the substitution of biking for ballet than it is due to his being a vegetarian.

Best of luck!

[Chris Salvato]

Seriously, tombb, let it go.  You are being combative/argumentative now.  I am sorry if you don't like what I say but EVERYONE here knows that already.

(1) Your first point you put words in my mouth.  I never said you thought you were changing the world.  You do think that you are living a better life and improving YOUR world by not eating meat.  Jeez...

(2) I don't care if it sounds dark to you.  Death can be very dark.  It is very easy to put people into a false sense of moral obligation by using a blanket statement such as "killing is wrong" and people sometimes don't feel this way but are not well-learned enough to combat such an easy assertion to make.  Of course on the surface we all think killing is wrong -- this is the moral obligation built into our psyche (unless you are a sociopath/psychopath) -- however, many people can believe that eating meat is perfectly alright and not understand why...so yes, we need to combat the false moral obligation some people try to impose on us.  Now, let me be clear, it is only a false moral obligation if you DO NOT BELIEVE in that obligation but for some reason you feel pressured by statements like "killing is wrong".  All I wanted people to be aware of is that any side of any coin can be argued and the other side can be made to look ridiculous -- mine or yours.

(3)  I am talking about the guilt you feel by people who say "killing is bad" or the guilt you feel after eating meat after watching a PITA video.  Some people need to understand ways to be liberated of said guilt -- one of which is to refuse to eat meat, the other is to analyze your beliefs, as I did, to justify the eating of meat.  THAT IS ALL I MEANT.

(4) Yes, I have looked at athletes who are paleo, zone and low-carb.  World class olympic lifters eat more meat a day than I do. For the record, I don't believe in low carb - just the regular joe's diet is very HIGH carb.  If you don't believe that the Zone, Paleo, etc. work, then I suggest you go to Crossfit.com and read their training journals.  I also suggest you go to PerformanceMenu.com and read their training journals as well. Most people indicate their diet type or provide you with their fitday profile.  You can see first hand the results these athletes get by eating whole foods that are not processed.  This isn't about percentage of adoption -- this is about people experimenting with their diets intelligently and noting that they perform better (faster speeds, higher power outputs, more strength) on these dieting ideologies.  Guess what, none of them settled on vegetarianism even though many of them experimented with it.

With all due respect, you really need to experiment and train more.  I have experimented with my diet and training for over 3 years, which is a drop in the bucket compared to most people.  Best results for me, nutritionally?  Limited grains, high protein, lots and lots of veggies/fruit.  Shockingly, other intelligent people also tried this out, experimented with very different ideologies, and came to the same conclusion for themselves.  This type of data has its place right along side the dozens of studies we look at.

With all of that said, some people, albeit a much smaller population, do experiment with vegetarianism/veganism and have great success.  You only know if this can be you by experimenting with it and listening to your body.

These dieting ideologies are never set in stone -- they serve as a springboard for your experimentation.  If you blindly just follow any one diet to the letter, you will not achieve your greatest potential, whether that it is Zone, Paleo, Blood Type Diet (garbage), Vegetarianism, Veganism, Low Carb Dieting, Atkins, Typical Western Diet, etc.  Oddly enough, i have tried 4 or 5 of these out before settling on the fact that I like less-than-strict-paleo high in protein...and I am STILL experimenting.  The common factor in all of these ideologies though is to increase the quality of food.

You have to stop relying on studies and start relying on experience.  Again, with all due respect intended, how have you noticed your performance change with your dietary experimentation over a period of 10-20 weeks?

With all that said, which again, was way too much, I want to ask a favor - person to person.  Please stop critiquing every word I post just because you may or may not "like" what I had to say.  The first three points you made were a total waste of time for everyone - especially that I had to explain myself when I was already pretty clear.

[tombb]

Eli, it's not just about what one person/OP asked, if there's some wrong information or statements that need correcting, people will correct them or discuss them, as I have done.

If someone made some incorrect statement about proteins, pushups, or long-term effects of practicing pk, those will naturally be corrected in the same thread.  If you really have to see it as people "steering the topic away", if anything you should look at the people making unnecessary statements that need to be corrected, not those correcting them.
If needed, it's always possible to break up separate threads of discussion into different threads, although both discussions fit well under the title "pk and vegetarians".

I have given feedback to the OP from the start, and didn't think it needed repeating, correcting some statements about quality protein availability for people not eating meat. None of that is opinion, it's just science.

Chris,
It's not a matter of you or me "letting it go", as I mentioned your post was fine, except you added several statements that were completely unnecessary to your main arguments and very questionable.

It would be like someone saying "eggs are high protein, and (something messed up about superiority of one ethnic group over another)"... We can all agree eggs are high in protein, but you should expect people will say something about the other part.

If you are about saving people's times, you should consider that just spending a few extra moments looking at your statements and considering if they are necessary or just incorrect and hasty generalizations that might be misleading, controversial or insulting might be the most efficient way to accomplish that, or leave them but expect some discussion from people.

You didn't mean things as you wrote them (for example lumping all people not eating meat into people that try to manipulate others by guilt, pretending they must be making blanket statements or some such nonsense), I am glad to hear that, but it's natural to respond and correct on what people write, not what they might have meant.

And often I am not even disagreeing with your conclusions, but with the wrong inference methodology, take your example of athletes who are on a paleo diet or vegetarian diet, first you used an appeal to popularity, then an appeal to anecdotal evidence.  Those are things worthy of pointing out even when the conclusions happen to be true.

[Chris Salvato]

...I want to ask a favor - person to person.  Please stop critiquing every word I post just because you may or may not "like" what I had to say.  The first three points you made were a total waste of time for everyone - especially that I had to explain myself when I was already pretty clear.

sigh

[ZacharyCohn]

Second warning - keep it on topic, tombb. Chris already proposed continuing this argument via PM, I suggest you take advantage of this opportunity and make your next response to chris privately.

[Kineticstorm]

Thank you Zachary. While I don't mean to discard Chis /Tombb argument as irrelevant, honestly it's just giving me a headache. 

[Chris Salvato]

Kinetic, this was my response directly to you.

I hope you did not miss it because this is what you were asking for from the start....

Every athlete that I know who has tried a vegetarian diet has eventually switched out of it once they start taking their training more seriously.  That is just my experience, though.

The reason I asked for your motivation was because if it was not ethical and was based on the dozens of studies that are based on non-causal coincidences, then it is typically not the best choice because of the difficulty of getting good, consistent protein.

Ethical reasons are the only reasons I usually don't touch when it comes to vegetarianism.  If you want to believe you are serving the world better by not eating meat, then go for it.

Only a handful of elite athletes are vegetarians and most of them have the genetics that it doesn't matter what they ate.

None of your reasons seemed to have too strong of a moral tie -- most of them seemed based on an article you read here or there, which is why I asked.  There are a lot of misconceptions on vegetarianism.  The biggest misconception is that the benefits come from not eating meat -- rather, the benefits usually come from an increase in the quality of the food being consumed whether or not it includes meat.

IMHO, you need to increase the quality of your food first.  We have a great article on how to do that very easily that has produced results for many people ( http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?topic=12681.0 ).  Once you do that it will remove a lot of variables.  THEN try your vegetarian diet for a few months...THEN, if its not a moral obligation, switch back to eating meat fora few months.  Compare your performance and your enjoyment of food and see which one you like better.  Don't experiment for a few weeks, it needs to be at least 2 months long for your body to adapt and actually note benefits/drawbacks.

EDIT: And for the record, my above posts were not meant to convince anyone to my line of thinking but rather to show that both sides of the coin are easily fought for.  My argument is one of hundreds that can be used to combat the moral obligations for vegetarianism.  Experimentation and self exploration are the only ways to free yourself of the guilt some people will try to make you feel about eating meat...or to free yourself of the guilt that you do feel by eating meat...and when you tread into vegetarianism this is important because of the lack of a massive population of successful athletes that are also successful vegetarians...

[Muse_of_Fire]

Kinetic:

My personal experience with vegetarianism went something like this...

I am a huge food nerd--I love cooking and I love eating good food. About 5-7 years ago I experimented with vegetarianism mostly because it was a type of cuisine I didn't have much experience with, and a girl I lived with was vegetarian so it seemed like a good time to try it out and expand my cooking repertoire a bit. I had also heard some offhand claims about vegetarianism being healthier, etc; most of the same stuff that a lot of people hear about, I suppose.

I learned how to cook a bunch of recipes and how to work with tofu and other ingredients. A lot of it was quite delicious.

However I always left every meal feeling super hungry. Granted, I wasn't composing each meal with an athlete's mind to training food, but I did have this roommate to help me, she had been a vegetarian for life (mostly since her vegetarian parents, when she was 2, took her to a slaughterhouse, but that is a topic for a totally different forum) so she knew how to cook meals in a balanced way.

I also left every meal having eaten probably 4-6 times more than I usually ate; most of it in the form of carbs (granted they were mostly vegetable carbs but still).

About 6 months into this, I developed a sudden and severe allergy to peanuts and to soy. My theory (although my doctor will not confirm or deny it) is that my experience with vegetarianism, where I tried to get my protein mostly from soy and peanuts, overloaded my body and caused a reaction. My reasons for believing this are because now--after being omnivorous again for several years--I can tolerate small amounts of peanuts and soy without a reaction, or with a very small reaction (a hive on my lip versus my throat closing up), whereas before it would cause throat and tongue swelling.

Obviously a ton of people out there are vegetarians and eat protein from soy and nut sources and are fine. I don't say my vegetarian streak necessarily "caused" my allergy but I believe (read that again--I believe... it hasn't been proven true, just a belief) that I may have had a predisposition that was aggravated by the massive amounts I was eating.

The biggest issue, besides the allergies, was that I just couldn't stand not eating meat. I missed it too much and pretty much felt like I was starving the whole time. Perhaps with more attention to composing my meals properly for my body's needs that wouldn't have happened, but for me personally I wasn't motivated to try experimenting with that because I didn't have a strong ethical or other reason to be vegetarian.

I have immense respect for people who are vegetarian for ethical reasons and live their beliefs; as I have respect for anyone who lives their beliefs honestly and genuinely. But for me personally, I do not share those beliefs and I know from experience that I love meat way too much to not have it in my diet.

It took me years to find a diet that really works for me, and I will tell you it doesn't fit in any kind of category. It's more rules of thumb than a labeled "diet" per se--lots of vegetables and lean proteins, dairy products, some fruits, few to no processed foods, and minimal sugars besides those naturally occurring in fruits. I eat whole-grain carbs in moderation, and there are a few "naughty" foods that I willingly allow simply because I like them too much to give them up. So I accept the fact that (a) I can only have them in moderation, and (b) my performance will not be optimized as a result. These foods are: coffee, French baguette and croissants (but only from France or from ONE bakery here in the city), wine and some spirits, and chocolate. On very very special occasions I will have a beer; usually 2-3 per year, tops. I also try to eat organic/free-range/local foods as often as I possibly can, although they can get expensive. Next summer I will have a garden and grow my own vegetables. With very few exceptions, I eat NO processed foods. I like my food to look as close to how it looked when it was alive as possible.

I don't always follow this diet but when I do it really works well for me. Like anyone else I have my weak moments and my weak phases of life. But I arrived at this diet by experimenting, seeing how things made me feel, reading a lot, doing research, talking to my doctor, etc. And it is a constant work in progress.

You asked for peoples' opinions, mine is the same as Chris's--try it and see if it works for you. Be willing to tweak it if necessary. If you don't have a strong ethical reason for being vegetarian, it is probably not the best diet for you, but only you know your body chemistry and how certain foods make you feel/affect your training. I just figured I'd share my personal experience with you to give you some fodder to consider as you make your decision.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

[Chris Salvato]

<3 Muse

Oh, and FYI:

It took me years to find a diet that really works for me, and I will tell you it doesn't fit in any kind of category. It's more rules of thumb than a labeled "diet" per se--lots of vegetables and lean proteins, dairy products, some fruits, few to no processed foods, and minimal sugars besides those naturally occurring in fruits. I eat whole-grain carbs in moderation, and there are a few "naughty" foods that I willingly allow simply because I like them too much to give them up. So I accept the fact that (a) I can only have them in moderation, and (b) my performance will not be optimized as a result. These foods are: coffee, French baguette and croissants (but only from France or from ONE bakery here in the city), wine and some spirits, and chocolate. On very very special occasions I will have a beer; usually 2-3 per year, tops. I also try to eat organic/free-range/local foods as often as I possibly can, although they can get expensive. Next summer I will have a garden and grow my own vegetables. With very few exceptions, I eat NO processed foods. I like my food to look as close to how it looked when it was alive as possible.

I would actually say that you eat Paleo -- granted, less-than-strict Paleo but very similar to my diet which I describe as less-than-strict Paleo.  IMHO you strive for paleo, that is, whole foods as close to natural as possible, limiting grains, and only indulge in modern day foods as "treats"

[Ben Stampahar]

mostly since her vegetarian parents, when she was 2, took her to a slaughterhouse

I suggest anybody who disapproves of this method should start praying for my future potential offspring. 

[Chris Salvato]

lol

Plenty of people are exposed to this though -- its about how the parents handle it....

My mother and her siblings were exposed to that stuff at a young age too and still love meat.

[tombb]

I think it's good to be exposed to most stuff in general just as a way to stimulate thinking and allowing people to make their own decisions instead of just doing things 'by default'.
Different people will naturally react differently anyways based on their own preferences, personality, ideals etc, (which is one way in which it's better than imposing things as rules for example), but at least they will have thought about it which never hurts.

On the other hand, I don't know if I would really recommend slaughterhouses to kids, it's nice to also have happy carefree childhoods, without unnecessary trauma and disturbing images...
A much more appropriate thing to start Kids thinking about those same concepts would be something like some Disney movies (Bambi or somesuch) and some nice directed questions from the parents.

[Chris Salvato]

i agree -- children don't even know what the hell is going on really - i dont think chucking them into a traumatic situation is really good parenting...but i digress...

[tombb]

Also, to explain a few of the things that Muse mentioned,
Feeling hungry: this is not a feature of not eating meat in itself. It only happens if your meals for some reason are lower in protein and fat.  Meat tend to have a decent amount of one or both and digest relatively slowly.
On the other hand there are many other foods with as much or more proteins (and fat is even easier to add ) that will cause you to feel as stuffed with the same amount of food for as long or longer (depending on average digestion speed for that meal).
Eggs, cheese, and protein shakes are particularly good examples.

Allergies: I am not sure exactly why it happened in Muse's case (it's definitely unfortunate), but personally I have not eaten meat/fish/seafood for the past 15 years and never developed any allergies or health conditions (I am not allergic to anything, don't have asthma, I am not lactose-intolerant etc). 
As Muse suggested, if you are exposed to an allergen in larger quantity and for very prolonged times, you are more likely to become allergic to it if predisposed (true with pollen for example).  But particular events like diseases or contamination happening simultaneously to exposure are much more likely causes, your immune system basically tries to fight off whatever it thinks is an enemy and can get the two substances confused. This has even been used in the past to create biological weapons that would make your immune system attack your own nerves.
While I occasionally eat peanuts and even sometimes edamame (boiled soy beans, if I go to a Japanese restaurant with friends), both being quite good and healthy in moderation, those are far from being staples of my diet, so you should not expect or assume that you will consume more of them just because you don't eat animals. I do consume more eggs, dairy and more purified protein (including some soy protein isolate mixed in with things like whey and casein, and sometimes with peanut-butter flavor if it's a protein bar) than I used to, but again in so many years I have not seen any allergy developing.  And unless consuming meat was immunosuppressant (which is not the case) you shouldn't expect it to prevent allergies in general.

[Chris Salvato]

In short: Try it and if you like it stick with it, if you don't then stop.

[Andy Animus Tran]

Pfft.  I was killing my own animals at the age of four.  Lousy weak-stomached children.