There’s a definite “high” associated with first going vegan…especially raw vegan. New converts are bright-eyed, relentlessly energetic, and brimming over with messianic zeal to convert all their friends to the diet that has brought them such joy.

Yet, like a star going nova, this brightness never lasts. After several months their energy begins to flag, they start losing strength and muscle mass, and sickness begins to harvest their days. Friends start to notice their gauntness and pallor. As time goes on they become alternately spacy and snappish, suffering from fatigue, depression, poor memory—and even loose teeth. Women become amenorrheic. They restrict their diet even more in an attempt to recapture that first rush of health, but only succeed in making themselves sicker. Often they cut themselves off from friends and family, and only associate with other vegans who support the dietary choice that is slowly destroying their body and mind.

We all know why this is: necessary animal-sourced nutrients like vitamin B12, menaquinone-4 (vitamin K2 MK-4), and DHA are unavailable in the vegan diet, and must be replaced by supplementation in order to avoid physical and mental deterioration.

But why are the initial months such a rush? Why is “going vegan” such a drug-like high at first?

You feel good because you're going Hannibal Lecter on YOUR OWN BODY.

It’s a metabolically delicious meal of fatty human meat, high in saturated fat and complete protein—and it’s the most nutritious meal you can eat. Of course it’s what your body needs: it is your body!

This is not hyperbole. When you starve your body of calories, protein, and essential nutrients (and if you are deficient in one essential amino acid, that deficiency is your limiting factor for protein utilization), your body will not just burn its own fat: it will burn its own muscle.

The more restrictive your vegan diet, the more delicious, fatty MEAT you are eating…your own.

That’s the reason you had so much energy when you first started your vegan diet. What you were really eating was a paleo diet of your own flesh.

…And That’s Why The “New Vegan High” Never Comes Back

Yet self-cannibalism cannot last forever. Eventually your body refuses to let you eat any more of yourself, because there’s nothing left to eat. And your body starts to shut down, because it can’t survive on the meager portions of rabbit food and birdseed you’ve been feeding it.

You’re not “doing it wrong”, and you’re not “detoxifying”: you’re starving. Colon cleansing and “superfoods” won’t save you, and neither will another juice fast. You have two choices: you can continue your downward spiral into sickness, weakness, depression, degeneration, and a life barely distinguishable from death…

…or you can eat what you’ve really been eating all along…

…rich, fatty, juicy, nutritious, delicious red meat.

Please stop killing yourself. We love you and we want you to come home.

JS

Postscript: If you know any vegans who are clearly sick and in denial, forward this to them. Facebook it, Twitter it, Stumble or Digg or Reddit to your friends with the buttons below. And if someone has forwarded this to you, know that I was a vegetarian once and I know what the social pressure is like. Come with a good heart and you will meet no ridicule here.

Yes, I know that it is possible to maintain a moderately healthy vegan life through creative supplementation, the use of highly processed industrial products like ‘soy protein’, and a constant stream of fruits and vegetables out of season from halfway across the world. But your life and health are to ancestral human life and health as vegan ‘bacon’ is to real bacon: if you haven’t eaten the real thing for a long time, you can convince yourself that it’s good enough. But it isn’t.

Do you enjoy debunking myths? Try the classics “Does Meat Rot In Your Colon? No. What Does? Beans, Grains, and Vegetables!” and “Food Allergies And Food Intolerances Reveal The True Human Diet”. And here’s what I eat, in case you’re wondering.