Ben david-a case study

They say a picture tells a thousand words. But here's a thousand words to go with them anyway.....

OK so quite simply in the photo on the left I was still an avid meat eater, my life revolved around lifting weights, work, socialising (not a bad thing) and eating a LOT of food. I was in all honesty pretty unhappy, regularly ill, unfit and felt my life lacked purpose. This is the last photo I have of me at over 200lb when i was at my 'strongest'. After years of abusing my body solely in the pursuit of strength and quite frankly an addiction to lifting weights I eventually grew tired of the same old routine and took up climbing. This is when I had my first true realisation that strength isn't all it's cut out to be without functionality. Climbing for the first couple of weeks at 205lb I both fell in love with the sport and the community but at the same time suffered acute tendon injury as a result of the previous years of abusing my body and my excessive weight.

For a short while I was unable to exercise my mind or body and felt pretty hopeless until a good friend of mine introduced me to a local yoga studio. Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of people I'd never expected but always hoped to find myself in. There were fighters, artists, businessmen and women, entrepeneurs, musicians, footballers, yogis, runners, bodybuilders, climbers and everything in between. Very quickly my focus shifted from strength and aesthetics to health and wellness. Being surrounded by these people and learning from them daily was an asbsolute blessing and all i wanted to do was emulate their habits and learn from them in the hope I too could one day reach similar levels of happyness, fitness and health. It wasn't until months after joining the studio that I became aware that most of the people I was looking up to were actually vegan.

This completely changed my view on the raw potential of a vegan diet. Completely ignoring any morality or ethical issues (something that I have to reluctantly admit I was always somewhat aware of as a meateater but not enough to make a commitment) I had just discovered that these absolute athletic and awe-inspiring beasts were all living off of a plant based diet. For whatever reason, be it cultural stereotypes, the media, my education or my own ignorance to believe otherwise spent the last however many years with the preconception that vegans were bound by their dietary or ethical choices to be 'skinny' or emaciated, unhealthy and unfit. ''Where are they getting their protein from, why aren't they constantly breaking their brittle calcium defficient bones, where are they getting their calories and energy from?''

I already had some vegetarian friends and with a little bit more discussion and persuasion I dropped meat from my diet. The benefits became aparent very quickly and the effects this simple change in diet made to my body and mind were incredible. I watched fat melt off my body, my brain fog and anxiety began to lift, mental clarity returned, I slept better, I felt generally happier and more content, injuries and pains began to subside (granted regular yoga and weight loss will have had an effect on this) , my skin became brighter and clearer, I lost any symptoms of IBS and my health and fitness were consistantly improving on a weekly basis. Whilst vegetarian I stopped getting regular colds and nagging ilnesses also. These benefits understably seeped into my confidence, my relationships, my work and my overall quality of life. I'd love to claim I'd found a cure for baldness but that would be a lie : ) .

The biggest issue for me making the shift from vegetarian to vegan was my taste. In all honesty when i was a meat eater the only vegetables I enjoyed and I use the term 'enjoyed' very loosely were potatoes, mushrooms, leeks and onions. When I went vegetarian I was pretty much eating my body weight in homemade soup and supplementing with processed soy products for the protein. But astonishingly (something I had vehemently disagreed with but my parents always had try to teach me) my tastebuds changed. Over a couple of months of a vegetarian diet I had gone from pretty much detesting all fruit and veg that hadn't been processed and cooked beyond recognition to genuinely enjoying freshly prepared raw or cooked natural produce. Dropping dairy and animal products was the next logical step and one I'd planned on taking at some point just not necessarily so soon.

Again, with the relatively simple adjustment to my diet all the previously mentioned benefits grew at a remarkable rate. There is less than 20 months between the photos ive posted on this page. At a quick glanse from a purely aesthetic point of view it would be difficult to argue which is the healthier body but take a closer look at my expression. Genuinely when i look back at old photos I struggle to find many where Im smiling especially ones where Im trying to critique my physique. The mental benefits of this diet are arguably more important than any physical changes it'll have on your body. Im certainly not trying to argue that a physically fit and aestheticly pleasing body is unobtainable with the use of animal products but at what cost. Through a lot of research and my own experience I certainly no longer believe the consumption of animal products to be healthy for your body or for your mind and thats without consdering the harm it has on the planet or on those we share the earth with. I truly and whole heartedly believe that all the positive beenfits I've witnessed over the past two years are a direct consequence of a much healthier and proportionately less damaging diet. If you were to ignore any ethical reasoning or even ignore any posts I share on this blog in the future, from a purely dietary perspective I'd love for anybody whose even slightly open to the idea to experiment with it yourself and see how you too have the potential to positively affect your lives.

I believe leading by example and inspiring others is a powerful way to make a change in this world.