 What's going on guys? I am here with Marek and he is going to share his ex plant-based story with us So mark if you can just let us know how you got into veganism and just go over You know what type of diets you've tried over the past well Six years now, right? Yeah So basically around 2012 just before like 2011. I was had had some health issues I had a constipation back pain a little stuff like this which make me interested more about health and I was started to research on YouTube and I've stumbled on Documentary called food Inc. which was about Food industry how they raise chickens and all the those other animals how they are pumped with hormones antibiotics and all this and It made me realize like I don't think I want to eat this and after that I saw some people Some testimonials of people who cured themselves from some sort of Diseases like IBS and in all those different stuff with the raw veganism And it all made kind of sense to me that you should post to eat raw foods And no meat So then from from that I was just like quite sure that this is the way so I'll start straight into raw veganism in 2001 early Early let's sorry late 2011 start raw veganism I was doing all those cleanses all that stuff fasting and just pure raw foods lost a lot of weight Everyone was concerned in my family and I thought I know what I was doing Then 2012 I've decided I'm gonna move from my country which is Poland to UK and when I When I moved I went back to eating cook foods But it was all plant-based and for some reason I've added eggs So I was eating plant-based foods with eggs pretty much. I was a vegetarian for three years from 2012 to 2015 then I've decided I'm gonna cut the eggs. I was quite sure this that's that's fine thing to do So I've cut the eggs and then for three years. I was on a plant-based diet and I was having crazy sugar cravings So I would have in the evening. I would have some Some cookies chocolate bars and stuff like this And those most of the time were not vegan if I could get some that were vegan I would have them, but if not sometimes I would have a cookie that had milk in it But I would never buy myself meat fish milk eggs or anything animal from an animal so From those three years. I was pretty much hungry Almost all the time. So if I would have in the morning I would have like a huge smoothie or a big fruit salad, which will Keep me going for like two hours and then I feel like I need something else I would have a vegan protein bar then later on I would have Beans with rice beans with rice or chickpeas And from all those foods I would have Digestive issues bloating burping and Stomach was hurting and stuff so From that because of those digestive issues. I thought it's not it's not the diet But something wrong with me So I was buying digestive enzymes and then I was thinking maybe I should tweak the diet Maybe I should go more into raw veganism again So I was eating more fruits and still some cook foods. I think I was actually doing kind of raw 2-4 And because of that I was eating a lot of fruits. I was losing weight again And obviously I was always skinny. I was not happy with losing weight so I was losing weight again and Yeah, I was I was not sure what to do I was not sure what to do and obviously I was watching all those vegan youtubers and they kind of kept me going they kind of Kept me like into believe that this is still good for me. I wasn't supplementing anything Well, I was I wasn't supplementing B12 Not vitamin D. What I would do is get at Like a wheat grouse wheat grass supplement and I would add it to smoothies So when I was reading that the supplement content that was saying that it has vitamin A has Iron it has this and that so I was like, okay, that's not true, you know, because My first reason into plant-based diet is health. I was thinking it's really good for me. So I Think that's it. That's why I got out of it because if I was doing it for the animals I would probably be still in it, you know So, yeah, so I Had a crazy I was tired sugar cravings Bloating had a brain fog, which I've never experienced before and then had teeth cavities I actually lost a tooth and The worst thing happened to me was epileptic fits and I had like four of them throughout say two three years and Last one was like 2017 in December. So it's more than a year now that I haven't had one and I'm Think I'm almost like eight years eight months in a omnivore diet pretty much so Well, that was nice and quick. Oh my god, I'm so excited and happy about that So ladies and gentlemen, this is how you tell a story Going off on tangents for an hour. So What I wanted to kind of emphasize here was, you know, we're not focused here on discrediting what vegans think as a perfect vegan diet because if a vegan diet was so good for you He's following it 90 95% of what most people would view as an ideal vegan diet Just to give some context of the summary of what he did. He went raw vegan in 2012 for a couple months lost a lot of weight So then he went back to eating plant-based, but he still consumed eggs And then he decided to cut out the exit was there like a thinking behind cutting out the eggs Was it like that all this animal food is the reason was there something negative in your diet that was happening? No, no the thing is I was like I wanted to be vegan But those eggs will hold me back for some reason I don't know why and then someone just told me like if you want to be in proper vegan Just stop eating it. You know, I was like, yeah, maybe you're right You wanted to obviously there's something about people wanting to like Associate with veganism a sense of community. I'm sure that had something to do with it Yeah, you know, it feels it's like it feels nice because you're really about animals, you know And the environment and then yeah, I was thinking is the best diet for your health as well So it's like I should cut all those animal products out, you know And if we actually look at what you were eating This is and this is really cookie cutter and what I mean by cookie cutter If you guys aren't familiar with the term is it's very generic or commonly replicated in the vegan community A lot of vegans will wake up with a fruit salad or a shake Then they'll have a snack. They always have snacks after every single meal, which is preposterous to me So, you know, he wakes up. He has his fruit salad or shake He has a vegan protein bar as a snack then for lunch He has beans and rice then he gets hungry again has another snack He cheats on the cocoa bars the cookies and then for dinner if he didn't have that he would have like falafel tofu high calorie So what we're seeing here is two things primarily we're seeing a fluctuation in blood sugar and sugar cravings That's just inherent to the vegan diet. And the second thing we're seeing is Craving of actual caloric nutrition now whether this is a lack of fat in the diet could be whether this is a lack of Nutrients in the diet it could be that as well But the reason vegans are constantly eating is because their body isn't really extracting nutrition from the food they're consuming and you guys might say Oh, you know, he wasn't plant-based because he was eating chocolate and cookies But the refined sugar and the refined flour in those chocolate and cookies compared to those whole plant-based foods is actually a Usable source of like calories to actually keep him going and sustain himself from an energy perspective this kind of ties into The inability to assimilate enough nutrients from just like if you ever notice anyone following a whole foods plant-based diet a Lot of them tend to look like they're anorexics And and not only that just a high anti nutrient content of these foods The disruption the gut lining all of these things and just the sheer size of the bowel movements It's very clear that, you know, we're not absorbing nutrients from these foods Yeah, I actually didn't know anything about anti nutrients back then, you know And I didn't know anyone and I didn't know anyone who would say oh, yeah I've eaten more meat and I cured myself some sort of health condition Which I know now people are curing themselves with the carnivore diet, which is crazy to me Well was crazy to me. Did you ever hear about keto? Yeah, yeah, I thought that's not good for you because of all that fat or the bacon, you know, that's no wisdom Yeah, it's it's tough It's hard to it's hard to overcome that What made you actually overcome that idea that meat is okay? So basically throughout all those years, obviously people were asking like why are you doing this blah blah blah? So I was never this type of Vegan plant-based person that would say all you have to do this blah blah blah, you know At the beginning I kind of was because I thought is really healthy So I was telling my family and they all think I thought I'm crazy But when whoever met I wasn't telling them if they asked me I would tell them oh, yeah, this is I think this is the best way to eat This is the healthiest way blah blah blah and then I made some people go at least vegetarian Some people went vegan and they all went back and they all said oh I had some issues blah blah blah and I was thinking That's that's not possible. It's not because of the diet. You know, just you know, we don't want to do this and then See some people losing hair and having all those different issues and then Obviously my issues as well and I started to like doubt the diet and Where did you see these issues like in your friends online in the community? Mainly friends and I heard some stories on YouTube as well that someone vegan they look they had cavities lose They have a blah blah blah, but in my friends as well detox. Yeah They say Guys have your teeth fall out This is they say it's detox I think I actually because I was watching vegan gains and I think I saw the debate with Sphiric and I've looked into his channel and I was like oh my god. He's crazy He's mental, you know, and I never saw before him anyone who was in like raw meat And I was starting to go through his channel listen to him Then I was I found out some video of a guy who was like more Science-based and he was saying that maybe vegetables are really not that necessary for us And you say that was Christopher Walker, okay, okay Christopher Walker So yeah, he he done a video and he was saying like he was actually mentioned anti-nutrients I think there was the first time I actually heard about anti-nutrients in the plants and He was saying like like how is it that kids really hate vegetables and don't want to eat it And he was also saying that there are better There are better plant foods to consume rather than like kale you're saying like tubers like sweet potatoes No more potatoes and fruits are a lot better source of nutrition than like kale broccoli or any type of vegetable like that and he kind of and also he had a lot of videos about testosterone and I saw How many plant foods are detrimental for our testosterone levels and it made me like actually question it even more Then I saw Sean Baker and then they made me like All those people made me actually think and also the X vegan videos I could relate to them and that's why I wanted to do it as well because you know people can can relate to this and They can stop the misery for themselves Yeah, I think is one thing important to touch on there is the anti-nutrients and if we actually look at anthropological evidence of indigenous groups that consumed even omnivorous diets with high grain consumption if they didn't prepare the grains properly they would essentially lose their teeth their teeth and have Skeletal problems due to lack of minerals in the in the bones So for those of you that don't know anti-nutrients the primary ones were concerned about our phytic acid Phytic acid is very very high in grains and seeds and certain legumes as well And the way you reduce phytic acid is by soaking or fermenting so what they what vegans should really be doing with foods like oats and Various grains is making things like sourdough breads fermenting them for several days in an acidic medium What that does is it reduces the phytic acid content? But this phytic acid these phytates they bind to minerals in the body and essentially They make it so your body can't absorb them in the digestive tract This is where you know the paper versus the actual available value of plant foods in the stomach Turns into question because you might say on paper you're getting your minerals all of these things that should be Remineralizing your teeth, but reality is your body is not absorbing them not only because of the anti-nutrient content of these grains But because you're not consuming vitamins that are needed to absorb them that are only contained in animal food So it's interesting like we could try to make arguments that oh this is why you got cavities blah blah blah But even our indigenous ancestors would get cavities when they didn't have access to foods like sweets and fruits You know the epileptic fits was something we gloss over a little bit and that can be caused by B12 deficiency, but At the end of that documentary you watched and at the end of those vegan videos you watched on YouTube They didn't say oh make sure to take your B12 or you're gonna develop neurological problems They don't they don't say that they they just try to sugarcoat everything and literally sugarcoat everything Yeah, exactly, and I was I was listening to some people and they were saying all B12 is actually made by By bacteria and we supposed to eat like dirt, you know, like it's in the dirt, bro Yeah, exactly. So what I'm gonna do, you know, and I thought I'm not gonna have any problems because a lot of vegans They're saying yeah, I'm not supplementing. I'm fine. You know, I've been on this diet for so many years You've heard you've heard vegan say I'm not supplementing B12 and I'm fine some of them. Yeah. Yeah, definitely Yeah, you know some people would say I'm fine before they went on a motorcycle at a hundred miles per hour, too, right? And I didn't believe in supplements. I'm not sure how to this day I'm not actually sure how the vitamins from the supplements are being absorbed Are they are they the same as from the foods or is it actually not working for us that well? I'm not actually quite sure, but you're trying the wheat grass, right? Yeah, like the wheat grass all those powders They're like made from Maka maka maka maka powder, right wheat grass. I Yeah, yeah, and all this type of superfoods that were like dried but still in a kind of food So I thought that's what let's start a supplement company Let's take some dirt but make sure to grind up a lot of ants and worms in it And it's actually gonna work for the vegans and they're like, oh my god This is the best B12 supplement ever and I'm not joking. I'm sure if someone did this right now It would work. I'm dead serious. I think it would work But the funny thing is these vegans say that the claim that There should be dirt on vegetables and fruits and that there's B12 in that bacteria that is complete dog shit That is the biggest vegan myth there is and I actually if you guys haven't seen one of my vegan parody videos I took some dirt from my backyard and I put it in a blender with some dates and I drank it It was actually it actually tasted pretty good because it's pure sugar and sugar and water It's gonna taste fine So if you vegans want to actually try to see if there's B12 in dirt you could do it There's nothing wrong with eating dirt in your backyard, but you're not gonna get B12 from it because that's a myth I hate to break it to you. Yeah, it's crazy the epileptic fits though. Wasn't that like a glaring issue, you know Like you didn't really you you just like how you have an epileptic fit You're like, oh, whatever. I'll make one of the things you go to the doctor like no No, no, no, I was into hospital. I was in hospital and I had scans. I had MRI I had EEG had all those different scans to find out, you know, what's the cause and they say everything is fine in your brain You know, we cannot find anything, you know and Yeah, they were saying fine. They gave me some Some pills, but I was like, I don't want to take them. So I didn't really take them over the pills, you know What were the pills? Well, they're anti-epileptic pills. Oh, so they gave you medication that's reading symptoms. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I didn't want to take it I don't know. I'm fine for now I really think it was like really like high sugar and really low fat because obviously your brain needs fat, right? Like oh and I didn't get pretty much any fat Unless from those processed foods, you know, but that's not good for you. Anyway So I hope that's gonna be gone now Because I'm getting more fish, eating more fish, or I mean everything now pretty much, you know, but but but the vegetables So I guess we didn't really touch though. I mean, you're doing much better now Yeah, I mean you noticed, you know, like you notice you gained your way back What's what did you kind of notice after eating animal foods again? It was it was hard to start eating it again, you know, but the main the toughest part was the The thing in your head, you know to change your belief again And then when I started to eat I was fine. I was like it's good and it was filling me up Like I think the first meal I had I couldn't finish it was filling me up the first time you weren't hungry in a while Yeah, it's true though So filled me up of gain like 10 kilograms that this over a couple months And What I felt is like I can sustain myself for longer. So whenever I'm gonna eat a meal I can do whatever I can train I can I can just function basically for longer without being hungry or tired, you know No, that's one thing that's so hard to overcome and something that I haven't really heard anyone else talking about is The conventional wisdom the combination of the conventional wisdom and the propaganda behind a vegan diet There's nothing else that comes close to that So what I mean by that is we have all these preconceived notions about diet that meat is bad fruits and vegetables are good Grains are healthy those things are very hard to overcome then you get attacked with this vegan propaganda saying oh This this is that this does this the environment the animals all this and it makes sense because of what you've been told your whole life but To actually eat animal products again and go against plant-based There's nothing as strong in line with beliefs for me It's never it's always against it's like counterculture in a way to me I don't if anyone thinks about this in a similar way. It's just it's like trying to convince someone that You know, I mean a lot of people believe that Tanning beds are bad for you, right? But if you actually look into the UV rays and tanning beds They're the same as the Sun So if you're saying tanning beds are bad for you then you're saying the Sun is bad for you And then what you're saying we shouldn't go to the beach anymore because you can get skin cancer There's a lot of things in the modern Lifestyle that we've been taught to do that aren't necessarily good for health. It's it's really unfortunate It's just so hard to Overcomment and people will literally take it to the grave. It really really will that's there was I was looking at a video earlier a vegan woman had a stillbirth not a stillbirth, but She conceived and like the baby didn't start growing or something And she was vegan and it took our months and months and months to get pregnant and like these people won't I mean, maybe it's your diet it may be if I mean The problem is people think that Diet doesn't matter and the medical system has been always telling people that diet doesn't matter And when you went to that hospital to get diagnosed with for the epilepsy They didn't even they didn't ask you about your diet. They don't ask you about your lifestyle I went to a if you go to like an infectious disease doctor or like a naturopath They will actually ask those questions. So part part of this It's really unfortunate as much as I like to relate back to indigenous diets and native peoples It's tough. All we can really do is Share these vegan experiences and show people how eerily similar they tend to be So Mark, did you want to kind of give like a message to people or like almost a warning or anything on what your experiences have been? Yeah, definitely. I would say if if you are a vegan and you're watching this I think that the sooner you stop being vegan the better for you And probably most of the issues that you have is from from the diet It's hard to change your belief system, but it's worth it I think I think it's really worth it and you have to think also there was no I think there was no Society they've been like vegan and like they've been you know for years. Yeah, isn't it? So you you might have problems with having kids if you want to have them and if not if you have kids Then they will have problems probably So that's I don't And whether it's a moral or a health or an ethical belief What is how is it going to hurt go to the store buy some not I mean lacto ovo? Vegans the ones that eat shellfish like muscles and clams and oysters because they're not sentient If if your issue is from a moral perspective, it's arguable that consuming things like that and even in the big picture What is the harm in doing it for a day if you're plant-based if you're vegan for years and years and years Why not just try? The animal foods and then hey if it doesn't work and you don't feel better. That's fine. Go back to veganism What's the big deal? There are people like me that eat You know more meat than most people eat in a lifetime in a couple years so The impact in general of you trying something for one day in the context of your overall health really is insignificant and Honestly, if you guys want to do something better for the environment You might as well go back out you might you might want to go outside and dig a hole and get in it and Lay there for a couple months until you stop to death because that's the only way you're truly gonna have no impact on the environment Yeah, I mean that's the most hip the most hypocritical thing to me is these vegans having kids and then They talk about the environment, but they don't realize that One kid is like the equivalent of like 80 vegans or something from an environmental impact perspective So it's just doesn't make any sense By the way mark, thank you so much for taking the time to do this today. Thank you for having me I think we have to do we don't have to do a makeup check. I could wipe my face I'm not wearing makeup today guys. I'm sorry. I hate to break it to you guys and So anyway, thank you guys for joining us If you guys would like to support the channel, please subscribe and share the video Marek was there did you want to share any social media or anything? If I'm not I'm not doing any YouTube, but if someone wants to follow me on Instagram, maybe it's Mentally strong fitness with underscores in between so mentally Strong strong underscore fitness. That's exactly okay And if you guys would like to check out anything from my Amazon shop all that stuff is down in the comments below I will put his Instagram in the description as well, but thank you guys for watching and enjoy the rest of your week All right Let's say bye to everyone say bye. Bye guys. Bye