• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Have you Ever Changed Your Diet?

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.
Even though I grew up in a meat & potatoes family, I abandoned that decades ago and began to eat more vegetarian style. Of the various cuisines, Indian is my favorite, and I eat it at least once or twice a week.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.
I have been trying to cut out junk and eat mostly meat and eggs. But I'm not very consistent. I feel stronger when I combine that with a good workout. Too many carbs is just blah.
 

Sand Dancer

Crazy Cat Lady
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.

All the time. Oy. My cholesterol level dropped 28 points after 3 months of being vegetarian. No serious push back, not even when I was vegan. I am always trying to be in good health, and I try different things to see what works best. I would like to go back to being vegetarian, but my carnivore husband would not be happy about that.
 

mangalavara

सो ऽहम्
Premium Member
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.

When I was in my early 20s, I was an ovo-lacto-vegetarian for two years. About a week or two into it, I felt really weak followed by feeling much better. After the two years, I switched back to omnivore but I avoided pork most of the time. Later, in July 2019, I became an ovo-lacto-vegetarian again. There were a few weeks though when I ate fish, which made my diet pescatarian, and it felt like a phase. Still, I say I’ve been a vegetarian since July 2019. Nobody back in the US cared. In Korea though, my students are incredibly surprised that I’m a vegetarian.

IMHO, being a vegan is a bit of overdoing it. Mother Cow provides so many good things. Why should one miss them unless one is allergic to milk? Some thing that most Indians will not be able to understand.

Yes!!
 

robocop (actually)

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.
I'm on Hungry Root to not get diabetes.
 

InChrist

Free4ever
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.
Back in my twenties I was a vegetarian for a couple years. When with my parents, they thought it was just a fad I was going through, but otherwise they accepted my diet restrictions. I did begin eating meat again, but for years have tried to stick to an organic, non-GMO diet. For a few years more recently I was on a very limited carb limited, paleo diet and did lose about 20 lbs. Now, I just try to eat healthy organic foods and not overdue the carbohydrates. I don’t make a big deal about diet when eating at someone’s house. Rather, I’ll eat whatever is served with thanksgiving even if the food may not be my preference.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
20 years ago I gave up alcohol (matter of life or death) and instantly developed a sweet tooth I never had before. This is a common experience among recovering alcoholics, the body doesn’t miss the alcohol after a time, but it does miss the sugar.

5 years after that, I gave up smoking, man that was hard. My metabolism changed, and despite a fairly vigorous exercise regime, I piled on the pounds, which I’ve never managed to lose. And I’ve tried everything (except not eating ;))

I actually love fruit, vegetables, pulses etc. and have flirted with vegetarianism plenty of a times, but my partner is French, and nobody ever heard of a French vegetarian. Being from Normandy, she also knows how to cook, and this involves much cream, fat, salt, all the delicious but deadly stuff. Hey ho. It’s not a bad life and I never expected to live this long anyway. Could do with dropping at least a stone though.
 
Last edited:

Clara Tea

Well-Known Member
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.

psychological sudden diet change - Google Search

A google search pulls up a plethora of information on diet affecting moods.

In this "new normal" covid plagued world, many people have changed their moods. Whether from fear of disease or the foul economy that followed (people stay home, some work at home, others are unemployed). Many have sleep disorders.

I don't feel particularly stressed about covid, though I worry that it has devastated the world economy, made more homeless, and is used as a weapon to blame innocent (and sometimes very good) politicians for effects of covid that are completely out of their hands. I worry that recall elections (run by Republicans) are falsely blaming duely elected incumbants, and ousting them, in the middle of their terms, from their legally elected positions (it is treason or sedition, in my opinion).

Certain religions (quakers, Mormons, and the amish come to mind) have anti-industrial life, and anti-industrial diets. It is such a pity that tests of nuclear weapons at Area 51, Broom Lake, Nevada, drifted into Utah and caused cancer in such noble, hard working, and pure of body and mind kind of people (Mormons). Tainted by the world around them, they still are a shining example to the rest of us about pure foods, and simple life (horses might fart, but that kind of pollution doesn't seem to be as bad as smog, though some disagree).

Many vegetarians and vegans get a lot of "push-back" from those who insist on eating meat. Some wish to avoid cruelty, especially to the peaceful herbivores that almost never cause grief to other creatures. Cows are turned into meat when they reach 8 months old because it isn't profitable to grow them longer. The poor calves have hardly had time to live. Chickens are sometimes penned in cages that barely fit their bodies, and they spent their whole lives stock still in stultifying cages. Roosters are raised in low-ceiling cages to prevent them from crowing, but it must be awfully stressful for them. It is hard to justify a meat-eating (carnivorous or omnivorous) diet to a vegetarian, because they are right about cruelty.

I think that the peace of mind in not harming another creature gives some peace to the vegetarians.

But, aside from the issues of cruelty to animals and clean living, I think that foods can have beneficial (or harmful) effects. Tea seems calming. Coffee can wake people and make them more alert. Studies have shown that moderate amounts of coffee help (don't hurt) those with heart damage or heart arrythmia (contrary to past ideas).

Over half of the people are lactose intolerant, and many don't even know it. Some are severely so, with constant diarrhea, vomiting, farting, burping, and stomach aches. So, merely eliminating lactose from your diet might help. It is a milk sugar that cannot be digested without taking lactase pills for those whose genetics prohibits it. We inherit one of two genes from each parent regarding lactose intolerance. If both of our genes are intolerant, we are intolerant, though sometimes we don't show signs of it until we refrain for a length of time from digesting lactose. Some hard cheeses and yogurts are somewhat tolerable to "some" lactose intolerant people due to the ingestion of lactose by bacteria (such as sweet acidophilus in yogurt).

There is a symbiotic relationship of gut bacteria and humans. They help each other. In fact, it is very difficult to digest without gut bacteria. This is why it is so necessary to restore the intestinal flora with live culture yogurt.

I wanted to make my own yogurt, but sadly I can't have any. It would take a constant warm temperture to keep the milk from getting tainted by the wrong type of bacteria, so there must be a temperature regulated chamber to make yogurt.

Some buffets never get rid of the old food, but dump it into the new food. This is why you might encounter tainted foods.

Some fungus, such as ergot, can have hallucinatory effects, and some speculate that the puritans of Salem might have been high on ergot when they held witch trials and murdered the innocent.

They say that eating leafy green vegetables would make you think clearer.

Surely clogging one's arteries with cholesterol can't be good. Those who live with heart problems are depressed and some are suicidal. Most are inactive.
 

Clara Tea

Well-Known Member
Even though I grew up in a meat & potatoes family, I abandoned that decades ago and began to eat more vegetarian style. Of the various cuisines, Indian is my favorite, and I eat it at least once or twice a week.

I was going to eat at an Indian restaurant, but I didn't want to starve to death.
 

Guitar's Cry

Disciple of Pan
Back in the early 2000s I noticed I was gaining a lot of weight. I started to do things like switch to whole grains and cut soda out of my diet. Just those two things gave me more energy, significantly decreased heartburn, and I began to see healthy weight loss.

Around 2010 I started eating a more plant-based diet and had been completely vegetarian for a while. This significantly boosted my energy and immune system.

I started eating a little meat again when I started the job I have now around 2019. This was due to seeing some of the food waste at the school where I teach. I decided that morally it would be better to not let some of the meat be wasted.

So while my diet is plant-based, I do not buy meat. But I do eat it if it something likely to be wasted. I have seen some weight gain since.
 

Bathos Logos

Active Member
I changed to vegan about 7 years ago, gradually started letting cheese back in occasionally about a 2 years ago, so now I am classified as vegetarian.

Positive changes - My sweat is less greasy. I know that may sound weird, but I could detect a distinct change in my sweat to it being much more watery. My weight is far more easily maintained. Not that I lose or lost a ton, but when I do fluctuate, it is only ever very little in any upward direction, and I am always usually found to fall back to my base weight. I think I also mentioned in some other thread at some point that my farts stopped smelling almost entirely. I'm sure there is some scent, but I am not about to work hard enough to literally try to smell them. I can basically get away with farting in public now, and as long as it is silent, no one will know.

Push back - people seem to take even my ordering vegetarian or vegan meals to be a challenge to their omnivorous-ness. I don't even bring up the fact that I am vegan/vegetarian unless diet is the topic of conversation to start with, or someone asks directly, but I have had people get defensive, make strange comments, or behave strangely based on me just ordering or eating vegetarian food. People always make fun of vegans/vegetarians for being too forthright with their dietary choice - always making it out like they are being pushy and righteous, but in my experience, the omnivorous among us are super duper sensitive and insecure about their meat eating. Here are a couple examples:
  • Going out for a skeet shooting event with some friends and friends of friends, we stopped for breakfast and I ordered oatmeal and fresh fruit while everyone around me was ordering what was apparently "man's man" food with eggs, bacon and sausage. I said nothing at all about my choices, but they were apparently noticed anyway and were perceived as some kind of problem because I was asked directly by one person "What's wrong?" It took me a second to even figure out what the idiot was getting at. And there ensued a long conversation about dietary choices and lots of passive-aggressive jabbing at vegans and vegetarians.
  • I was at an all-guys cook-out that was organized by the guys at a church my wife and I were attending at the time. They all brought burgers and hot-dogs, and I brought my own veggie burger patty. I threw mine on the grill with theirs, and there was one guy flipping the burgers who I could tell was purposefully pushing the real burgers around so that they touched my vegan burger patty while I was standing right there, watching him. And this guy was a Christian! The level of insecurity astounds.
  • Generally, if people ask me about veganism/vegetarianism, the question "why?" comes up. And it usually isn't the sort of "why?" that someone might ask because they are actually curious about your motivations, but it is usually a more incredulous "why?" that one might ask if they just found out that someone was eating dog feces on purpose. It very often has that distinct intonation that indicates they believe the choice to be ludicrous and unnecessary.
 
Last edited:

Altfish

Veteran Member
Have you ever changed your diet? Such as you stopped eating certain foods or started eating other kinds? Did you notice a positive change? Did you experience any push back from others who didn't understand? Share your experiences.
I stopped drinking bitter and changed to golden ales.
 

JustGeorge

Not As Much Fun As I Look
Staff member
Premium Member
Push back - people seem to take even my ordering vegetarian or vegan meals to be a challenge to their omnivorous-ness. I don't even bring up the fact that I am vegan/vegetarian unless diet is the topic of conversation to start with, or someone asks directly, but I have had people get defensive, make strange comments, or behave strangely based on me just ordering or eating vegetarian food. People always make fun of vegans/vegetarians for being too forthright with their dietary choice - always making it out like they are being pushy and righteous, but in my experience, the omnivorous among us are super duper sensitive and insecure about their meat eating. Here are a couple examples:
I noticed such, too... I can be minding my own business, and all the sudden I'll hear "Well, I'll never be a vegetarian!" I just want to say something akin to "And I'll never wear tennis shoes... what's your point??"
 

Bathos Logos

Active Member
I noticed such, too... I can be minding my own business, and all the sudden I'll hear "Well, I'll never be a vegetarian!" I just want to say something akin to "And I'll never wear tennis shoes... what's your point??"
Not to say there aren't more aggressive vegans/vegetarians - but it really does make me wonder how many of the omnivorous complaints about such are actual aggressive people versus their own insecurities leading them to go on the defensive against neutral vegans/vegetarians and that erupting into a possibly more heated conversation that wouldn't even have happened if it weren't for the insecurity of the omnivore pushing them to go "looking for a fight".
 

JustGeorge

Not As Much Fun As I Look
Staff member
Premium Member
Not to say there aren't more aggressive vegans/vegetarians - but it really does make me wonder how many of the omnivorous complaints about such are actual aggressive people versus their own insecurities leading them to go on the defensive against neutral vegans/vegetarians and that erupting into a possibly more heated conversation that wouldn't even have happened if it weren't for the insecurity of the omnivore pushing them to go "looking for a fight".

The funny part is when some of them end up going vegetarian(without me ever saying a word about it)...

I wonder if it is insecurity because they see some kind of advantage to it, but the idea of making the change scares them.
 

Bathos Logos

Active Member
I wonder if it is insecurity because they see some kind of advantage to it, but the idea of making the change scares them.
I do think that has a lot to do with it. They have been told from every direction how they should "eat more vegetables", or how eating meat can actually cause or exacerbate various health conditions that you rarely (or simply don't) hear as being problems with vegetable consumption. But doing away with something so familiar to them likely frightens them. Plus then they would have to face all of the passive-aggressiveness of all their other non-vegetarian friends!
 
Top