 So today is a celebration. It's my 10 year vegan anniversary. Everyone said, you know, Joey, you won't make it to 10 years. You're going to start to deteriorate. You're going to start to dissolve your body. You will start to shut down because veganism will kill you. Well, that hasn't happened because it's a load of conspiratorial nonsense. But in today's video, I'm going to give you the absolute truth about being vegan for 10 years. And I got some tips today to make sure you don't make the same mistakes that I did when I first went vegan. There is some advice that you might not want to miss, so make sure you stay to the end. And don't forget to subscribe, leave a like if you like this content, and let's get into it. So I'm going to briefly go over my vegan story. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I was arrested with a loaded firearm when I was involved with gangs. I used to be involved with drugs as well as 10 years vegan. I'm also 10 years sober. But whilst I was on house arrest, I was overweight and I was looking for a diet to lose weight. And I come across a guy named Dan McDonald, the life regenerator who was doing all the raw foods and raw vegan kind of lifestyle. I did it for a little while, drunk a lot of green juices, lost a lot of weight, felt amazing, understood that plant foods are extremely healthy. He planted a few seeds about karma and what happens to animals and eating that suffering and how it's bad for you spiritually. And I kind of did have a belief about karma at that point. Anyways, I'm on house arrest for about 18 months. I go to prison. Bang, it's the first time I've been sober in like 12 years of my life. I see my life from a bird's eye perspective, from a whole new point of view. I realised I didn't want to be there in prison with the other gang members who were doing long stretches. And I just saw that that was like a dead end and I started really evaluating my life. But I was also eating a lot of raw fruits and vegetables, especially when I got down to a medium security prison. I could buy my own shopping, but I was still eating chickens. I was still eating skin milk powder. I thought I needed it for protein. Now I got out of prison probably around October 2013. It was today, 10 years ago, when I was having a conversation with my mum about smoking. You shouldn't be smoking cigarettes. What are you doing, mum? And she's like, looked at me like, what about you kind of thing? Like, we've all got something about us and you've just put me through 12 years of hardship through your addiction and through your violence and for your gang behaviour and stuff like that. But when she said that, I kind of reflected and I always felt like a massive hypocrite for claiming to care about some animals whilst eating others. And I said, you know what, mum? You're absolutely right. There's a lot of things people have about them that they don't change that they know are like inconsistent. So after that conversation with my mum, the next day, literally, I went completely vegan. What was my first mistake? Well, my first mistake is I didn't even know what to eat. I knew I wanted to be a vegan. I knew I didn't want to be like a moral hypocrite. I knew that I just wanted to make this kind of change. So the first thing I did was started looking up. I was like, well, I can't be a raw vegan. I mean, raw vegans, where do they get their protein from? So I'm like looking up raw vegan bodybuilders and they're like eating all these almonds. And so what I'm doing is I'm eating a bunch of almonds. I'm thinking I'm going to get protein out of it. And then I'm eating a massive watermelon afterwards. I remember I had to nearly go to hospital because, well, I actually did go to hospital because I ate all this watermelon on top of all this other food. And it like passed through my digestive tract and gave me like watermelon belly. And I was like in the emergency room like, oh my God, what's the matter with me? And it just went away. And I was like, what was that? So the first mistake I made was just smashing in too much raw food. I mean, I just my stomach wasn't used to it. It was all this fiber and water is extremely healthy. I felt really good, but I like just shocked my digestive system. And I also went on like something like a super high calorie as many calories as I possibly could eat. And I basically can eat out, eat most people I know. So that was a very bad idea for me. And I was just, I just put on like 10, 15 kilos from eating nothing but just sugar and carbohydrates and just overstuffing myself. Just stuffing myself until like I wasn't even hungry. And I was just stuffing all this food in sugar and that. And I could just literally keep eating and eating and eating. And I was eating no fat, nothing. It was just terrible. Be careful of fad diets when you go vegan. Just eat normally. I remember making a few mistakes at the start, like looking at the back of the containers and realizing, oh my God, there's dairy in there. Oh my God, there's honey in here. So like getting to know the products that were vegan took me a little while because I didn't have a bunch of vegan friends. I didn't have a bunch of vegan resources back then. I didn't know anything about the vegan animal rights community or this, that, the other. There was no veganuary back then. It was 2013. Not that I knew of anyway. So I didn't know about any of this stuff. I just come out of gang. So I was kind of finding my feet myself and doing my own research on YouTube and things like that. But after a little while, I started to find my feet. I started thinking, okay, well, just how much food do I need to, to satiate myself? And maybe I'll just eat like a normal amount of food and then maybe I'll eat more protein and things like that. And I started measuring how many calories I should be eating and, and then I just felt a lot better. I started losing weight again and I felt better and felt didn't feel as stuffed. And I just, if I want a burger or have a burger, if I want vegan ice cream, I just find some vegan ice cream. I just started eating like I normally did eat with a bit more of a focus on health than I did in my past. Then I started realizing, well, maybe my blanket has like feathers in there. Like I don't like that. So I remember just getting rid of my blanket, getting finding that my shoes still had some leather on there from when I was not vegan and just getting rid of them because I didn't want to support that or like, I didn't want to promote that. So I didn't want to wear it, especially if I'm going to sanctuaries and advocating. So I just, you know, started to clear out everything in my life slowly that wasn't vegan. And I was like learning along the way. So for me, without all these resources around, I still managed to like slowly learn and look into this stuff. And then I become an advocate for animals too. So like, I was really kind of dialed in the food thing happened straight away unless there were like some accidents along the way. But the rest of the products sort of like was like, oh, really? That's not vegan or what? They test on animals or what the this isn't vegan. Oh my God. Okay, I get rid of it all. Okay. Find vegan versions of everything. That's how I did it. Like it was more of like a step by step thing. I didn't really have the knowledge or resources or even like, I didn't really know what to look for. So luckily now there's plenty of resources around for what isn't is not vegan and, you know, how to be vegan. And I use challenge 22 for people. There's also the January. There's also a bunch of organizations who focus on helping people be vegan. And, you know, you can find so much information now. It's amazing. It's all at your fingertips. I'm going to share with you some of the best apps for you as a new vegan. And these ones we still use to this day use them all the time. Like it's really like easy for me to be vegan these days. I don't even think about it. It's not even a choice. It's like, yes, I'm vegan. I don't like go, oh, I can't be vegan here. So I'm not going to eat. No, that's never the case for me. I always use an app called happy cow. Now happy cow is great. You can find vegan restaurants near you. You can find vegan options near you anywhere in the world. It's it's one of my travel companions. It really is amazing. Definitely support happy cow use happy cow download the app. It's free and there's also an app called veg safe. It just finds if there's any additives that are made of animals or whatever stuff like that is also one called the vegan passport. So basically it will have like whatever language translated. Like let's just say you're in Cambodia and you want to tell the person at the restaurant that you're a vegan. It will explain what a vegan is to the person who's not an English speaker and whatever language it will translate it. Hey, I don't eat honey. I don't eat this. I don't eat that and then they will understand it. So then you don't have to worry about translation issues when you're overseas. You can go to this page called accidentally vegan. I think they've got a few social media pages. Reading labels becomes like second nature now. Like I suppose there are a couple of derivative things that you might not know, but there's so many things that that don't say vegan on the packet that are just just default vegan. The vegan section at the supermarket is only small, but the whole supermarket is filled with vegan friendly products that are just not labeled as vegan, but they just don't contain animal products, which is a revelation. The longer that you're vegan, you're like, oh my God, that's vegan. That's vegan. Wow. And then you just have no worries finding anything vegan that you used to enjoy. You can find biscuits and cakes and this and that like no problems at all. With meal planning, it's simple. How did you plan your meals before? Veganize those meals. You know, for me, I eat a lot of pasta, eat a lot of beans, I eat a lot of rice and bread. I love bread. Wholemeal bread, super healthy for you. I like mock meats and some people don't like them. I think that they're absolutely fine. Some are healthier than others. But yeah, I love mock meats. Eat a lot of soy. We'll be talking about soy in a sec. Just whatever I want. I eat whatever I feel like. If it's pizza, if it's vegan cheese, if it's a cheeseburger, I eat whatever I want whenever I want. Sometimes I'm more healthy than other times. I just make sure that I'm keeping a good balance and that's it. But if you want to know what to eat, if you want the best advice for meal plans, check out what I eat in a day. YouTubers and Tik Tokers and recipe people like Bosch or like Brian Turner or you've got like cheap, lazy vegan or you've got all these people on YouTube that are specifically creating recipes for vegan food or vegan meal plans and they're everywhere. You will have no issues. Whatever you want. You want a vegan lasagna? You want a vegan this? You want a vegan, I don't know, wedding cake? Anything you can possibly conceive in any culture, there's a vegan version of it. So you'll never miss out on anything. You only miss out on violating the rights of animals, which is definitely a good thing to miss out on. There's a couple of concerns. And one that I think is something that you really, really should think about. Vitamin B12, obviously everyone should be supplementing with B12. There's a lot of fortified food. Nutritional yeast is fortified. There's a lot of fortified cereals and milks with B12. B12 is an extreme nutrient of concern. Make sure you're supplementing B12. The next one I want to talk about is one that I completely missed out. You know, I felt like so foolish for this. I'm from Australia. I've got kind of olive skin. I'm half Italian and I've always been in the sun. Australia, there's sun all the time. It's sunny place Australia, isn't it? But when I come to the UK in 2018 and I've been here for five years off and on, there is no sun in the UK. There is hardly any. And even if you're out there, you're not going to be out there marching. I'll spend a lot of time in the office and I did develop a vitamin D deficiency. I didn't actually know that if you're in a cloudy country. Well, I did know it, but I never really took it seriously. And yeah, developed a vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight. It was nothing to do with diet. There are seldom real foods with enough vitamin D in there anyway. I mean, there's some in murdered salmon or something like this, but there's fortified vegan foods with vitamin D. But really you need to be supplementing vitamin D if you're in a cloudy country. Or even if you're in a sunny country, like I went from an outdoor job, bricklaying, traffic control, like working on construction sites to an inside job editing and da-da-da-da. You know, so you're not going to get sun. Even if you're in a sunny country, if you've got an inside job, let's just say you get up at six in the morning, you go into work in the office and you get out at six p.m. And you don't get sun. So everyone should be supplementing with vitamin D3. If you don't, it can affect your bone health because vitamin D promotes calcium absorption. So your bones can become thin, brittle or misshapen. Like that's what rickets is in children. If you have vitamin D along with calcium, it can prevent osteoporosis when you're an adult. The RDA for vitamin D is 400 IUs, but I actually take 8,000 IUs. I want to show you what I take. Vitamin D3 and K2. 4,000, I take two of these. I take two. This is a vegan one because there is non-vegan D3, which is made of sheep's wool, lanolin. So make sure you get the vegan D3. You might think 8,000 IUs is too much. I don't actually think that based off of this study here. Long-term supplementation with vitamin D3 in doses ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 IUs a day appears to be safe. So I just went for 8,000 because I was already a bit deficient and I thought, you know, I'm not letting that happen again. Actually, when I started dosing with vitamin D, I started feeling heats better, could concentrate more my mood, got better. I think there's a link with immunity and stuff like, too, you've got to be really careful of this. And I honestly think this is one of the main reasons we get ex-vegans, or that's probably, it is probably one of the reasons, especially in the UK, if you start feeling crappy. I want to show you this other supplement that I use, multivitamins and minerals. So I take this for B12, but it's a multivitamin. So it just covers me for iodine. I'm not going to go through it all. There's a bunch of stuff in here. Really cool, really cool vegan tablets, vitamin minerals. It's a multivitamin and a vitamin D. That's it. I'm not going to get the vitamin D deficient ever again. I'm feeling amazing, I'm feeling focused, feeling switched on. So just be careful of it. Trust me, supplement. Use Chronometer. This app here is amazing. It will tell you your nutrition scores, your vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, calcium, iron, all of the nutrients that are in certain foods, the calories that are in certain foods, because let's face it, a lot of people, they don't eat enough calories when they go vegan because they go from eating calorie dense food to calorie dilute food when they should really be matching the calorie density. So basically different foods contain different calorie densities like lettuce will be less calorie dense than cheese, for example. So you have to be mindful of that. And I think, you know, I personally think like getting into Chronometer, it's a free app. Use it so you understand what is in certain food. And that's how I know, I know how many, how much protein is in tofu now and how much that tofu is really good for you. We're going to talk about tofu in a sec. But yeah, use Chronometer to make sure you get enough calories, get enough protein, get the nutrients down pat. You actually see, oh my God, I'm not getting enough vitamin D. Oh, that's right, I got a supplement. Like Joey said, just use it. It's fantastic, vitamin K tells you how much fiber you're getting, how much saturated fat, which is, you know, you want to limit. So yeah, really good app. Chronometer for new vegans, 100%. In my 10 years, it's been very, very helpful. Could probably live without it now. But at the start, like I really needed to understand what's in food, I needed that. And now, like, I won't run into any issues. Now, the great soy debate. If you are a vegan, new vegan, vegan for 10 years, going on vegan, I personally have the belief that you should be eating soy if you don't have an allergy. Soy is so healthy, it's such a great dairy replacement, you know, it's full of calcium, iron, fiber, low in saturated fat. There's a lot of myths been spread about soy and I've got a conspiracy about that. I honestly think it's the dairy industry because they know that soy could put them out of business. I mean, you can make soy into like amazing healthy meat replacements like TVP, which is full of fiber, full of protein, low in fat, super satiating and healthy. Soy and milk, you know, soy is such a versatile being and it's honestly so healthy, but they're eating it for thousands of years. And you know, if you've been doing something for thousands of years, it's okay. No, I'm joking. So let's talk about some of the fear mongering on soy by conspiratorial loony people. I said that soy increases your estrogen because soy has a plant estrogen in it called phytoestrogen. Big problem with that because when you look at actual outcome data, just because something is in something doesn't mean it does something to your body. You have to actually like look at outcome data. Now, there's a big meta analysis and 41 studies were included in the meta analysis. And basically they found regardless of the statistical model, there are no significant effects on soy protein or isoflavone intake on any of the outcomes measured. So basically regardless of the dose and study duration, neither soy protein nor isoflavone exposure effects, total testosterone, free testosterone and whatever this is, estradiol 2 or estradiol. That's basically estrogen. All right, so there we go. Very high quality study, meta analysis of clinical studies, very high quality data, high on hierarchy of evidence, nothing to be afraid of with soy. In fact, soy is associated with many positive health outcomes. There was also this umbrella review of 114 meta analysis and systematic reviews which are like meta analysis, just like a study of studies. And soy and isoflavone consumption seems to be more beneficial than harmful for a series of health outcomes including cancer and heart disease. Isoflavone is a plant-based compounds found exclusively in beans like soy beans that mimic the action of hormone estrogen. So these isoflavones in soy that people say, oh, they've raised your estrogen, you know, phytoestrogen, all this stuff. They're actually associated with positive health outcomes including cancer and heart disease. Wow, do not fear the soy. Become a soy boy. There is a study too. Vegans have 13% higher testosterone when compared to meat eaters. And also, it's nothing manly about abusing, torturing, harming innocent animals. That makes you a coward. Ex-vegans, look, after 10 years, I've seen so many people come and go and they're always these flaky, hippy people who lack principles, lack basic moral principles. They're always, they're always apologists as well. Oh, you know, living like, live man, like spiritual. These are the kinds of people who turn out to be ex-vegans. The journey has just begun. And going through the journey, and his journey had a lot to do with my journey because obviously a journey. This is just my own personal journey. Journey. This is just a journey. Well, they're easily susceptible to conspiracy theories and lack critical thought. That's been my experience. I've seen them all come and go in my last 10 years and they tend to cite some ridiculous anecdote. Oh, I had a sore tummy. Oh, basically I felt like I had brain fog or this, that, the other, but provide absolutely no evidence that veganism was the cause of it. I honestly think most cases boil down to like improper planning, stupid fasting, juice fasting or just eating, drinking nothing but water or eating nothing but celery or drinking their own piss. I tried it all. I drank main urine for two years, almost every single day for two years. Or lacking proper supplementation because some people, they report, oh my God, I ate some salmon and I felt good and salmon and it's got vitamin D in there. A lot of these like natural spiritual, like yeah, no offense to anyone who's liked that out there, but I'm just saying that people who use this as a justification to murder animals deserve to be ridiculed because they're murdering animals. A lot of these natural people don't want to supplement vitamin D and they live in the bloody UK and no wonder you feel like after five years, supplement vitamin D. Three, don't make my mistake, but I would never, never in your wildest dreams think, oh, you know what? It's probably veganism. My thought was I fucked up. I should have been supplementing vitamin D. Have a blood test. There's something called the nocebo effect. It's basically the reverse of the placebo effect. Now what happens is a lot of these ex vegans, they hear these conspiratorial claims and there was this big carnival movement and then a bunch of ex vegans followed the carnivores down there. Ludicrous, pseudoscientific, personal anecdote, rabbit hole of lunacy. Nocebo effect is basically, oh man, I think that this is doing this to me. So, and it's very powerful. They have to actually account for the nocebo effect in studies and they also account for the placebo effect in studies. The placebo effect is actually so strong that, you know, they can give people a placebo drug and it can actually have an effect on them that is similar to the outcome that they're trying to study. So they have to be very careful of the placebo and the nocebo effect in research when they're doing like crossover trials and they're giving people like a placebo drug that they account for the placebo effect. That's how powerful your mind is. What these people should have actually done is gone and got a blood test. If people are going to claim, okay, I had a blood test since I've been vegan, I'm deficient in something. Then you have to have a blood test before you went vegan to compare it to. You have to have a before you went vegan and after you went vegan and say, look, since I've been vegan, this has happened. Okay, well then what is it? Well, let's B12. Okay, we'll supplement it. Okay. Oh, it's vitamin D. Okay, we'll supplement it. Oh, it's iron. Okay, we'll increase your iron rich foods or supplement it. But it's funny. They always say that there's some, oh man, I'm not getting enough iron. We'll show us your bloods. I wouldn't got my bloods done straight away. If I feel something's right up, go and got my bloods done. Okay, bang, done, sorted, finished. If you have something that doesn't feel right, go and get your bloods done. It might be vitamin D. It might be something simple. Just don't self-diagnose would be my advice. Speak to someone who knows what they're talking about and it's not Sean Baker or any of these carnivore quacks. Honestly, I believe the number one reason for people to become an ex-vegan is to disregard the plight of the animals. They start seeing animals as nothing again. They start thinking that they're more important than animals. They're so important that they get to stab them in the throat because they've got stomach issues or whatever. It's pure disregard for the rights of non-human animals. They think they're special. They might think they're godly or spiritual. Look at me, I deserve to live why animals deserve to suffer and die so I can get some iron from their blood or something nonsense like that. But if you maintain your respect for the animals rights, if you be careful of the nocebo effect, don't go down conspiratorial rabbit holes. Get your bloods tested. Watch dominion from back to front. Make sure you're making decisions not on personal anecdotes or cool stories but on high quality health outcome data, okay? Now, once you realize the scale of the horror that animals are going through, you realize that this movement has nothing to do with us. It's a movement of justice for them. If you make everything about you, oh my God, this, that, the other, then you're going to lose sight of what veganism was actually founded for. A movement to recognize the rights of animals and to respect them and to start exploiting them and treating them as commodities. So if you keep that in your mind and even get involved with activism, activists, it will solidify your commitment and also you'll be doing a moral good by not just removing your support for these horrific industries by being a vegan which is more of a neutral position but by actually actively helping animals which is what I do and what I've done for the last going on. Well, essentially the whole 10 years I've been doing something to help animals but the last eight years full-time activists and gone through amazing highs and terrible lows. I am not going to stop. I'm going to keep going obviously. This has been 10 years. My primary focus is the animals. It is always the animals because that's what veganism is. It's a focus on the animals and they are suffering terribly right now. We're the only one who have that kind of power in this world to try to stop what's happening to them. Have perspective. Don't be so self-centered. Don't focus on yourself all the time. If you've got an issue, sort it out. Be mindful of your diet planning. My advice to new vegans is it doesn't take much. Get chronometer. Get happy cow. Get a few vegan resources. Find some new recipes. Don't be afraid of soy. You can do a cheap diet. You can do expensive diet. You can do extravagant. You know, you can do like desserts and chocolate. Whatever you want vegan. No matter, you know, you can get everything vegan and you don't miss a thing and it really has changed my life for the better. Like I start thinking, I think of issues of injustice differently. I've stayed sober. I have a purpose to help those who are less fortunate than me and it really has made me into a better all-round person and honestly like I do really believe that the way we treat animals emanates out to the way we treat each other and if we begin to respect the rights of a chicken and a fish then obviously then that's going to make for a more peaceful world because we're going to apply consistency here and see that hey, you know, will we ever have peace while we're doing this to these animals in this way? I mean this horrible, horrifying, like mass murder and torture. How can we ever claim to be a moral race while we're doing this to the most vulnerable beings on this planet? So there you go, there's some pitfalls. Be careful of calories. Be careful of fad diets. Be careful of supplementation. Don't be afraid of soy. Plan your diet well. Be careful of the nocebo effect and conspiratorial nonsense. Focus on the plight of the animals and I'm sure you'll be vegan for 10 years in no time and here's to another 10 years for me. So I hope you all enjoyed that video. If you found it helpful, leave your comments down below and I'll see you all in the next video. Peace.