[dyingkneepad]

Vegetarian since 2004 here. Not Vegan yet, but maybe one day. Never once ate meat on purpose since then.

I never loved meat, and I never felt the desire to eat it after I switched (actually, I only declared myself vegetarian after I realized I had no desire to eat meat anymore).

I used to live in a place where pretty much everything had meat on it, even the salad. Although vegans existed there, switching to vegan would add a lot of extra trouble to my life. Over the years the veg(etari)an population increased a lot, and so did my options. Now I moved to a city where pretty much every restaurant has a vegetarian option, and that's great.

Health-wise, I can't say it improved or got worse. It's just that you have a different set of problems to avoid. Before I had to worry about cholesterol and fat and salt and all these other "common" problems. Now I have to worry about B12, too much carb, lack of Iron and Calcium. Every diet has pitfalls to avoid.

I had one major problem with B12 back in the day. Now I get regularly tested for B12 levels and correct it before it completely destroys my life. Never had problems with proteins or iron. I love beans.

I eat a lot of carb, and I have a prominent belly to prove it. I never had a problem building muscle or getting stronger because of the vegetarian diet: I can easily get stronger every time I go back to lifting weights, and I also build cardio just fine when I exercise.

Got heavily bullied with "vegetarian jokes". I always hit them back with jokes about their defects.

The "less educated" part of my family got very confused when they found out I (male) had a girlfriend. After all, I was vegetarian. To them, it was an obvious tell that I'm gay. I'm still with her, even had some kids. Neither wife or kids are vegetarian.

[rl3]

>I had one major problem with B12 back in the day. Now I get regularly tested for B12 levels and correct it before it completely destroys my life.

If it's not too sensitive, can you elaborate on how it completely destroyed your life? Genuinely curious.

A cursory search suggests fatigue and poor cognitive performance can result from B12 deficiency. It seems likely that mental health issues can easily follow from that.

[dyingkneepad]

I should have worded the sentence differently lol, it did not completely destroy my life. But I assume that if it kept undiagnosed it would at some point? I read some bad stories about it once I started researching the problem.

I had some really really really really bad mood problems, poor cognitive performance and extreme fatigue.

[rl3]

No worries, in retrospect it was an incorrect assumption on my part. That said, glad to hear your life wasn't completely destroyed! Definitely sounds like it wasn't pleasant.

For what it's worth, I've a similar story with respect to recently identifying casein in my diet as potentially problematic. My whole life I've simply ate moderate amounts of cheese sans any milk, until earlier this year I started consuming milk on a regular basis. Eventually consumption would result in an immediate mucosal reaction, which was usually followed by terrible effects on cognition and mood. It may explain why I was pretty much in the worst mental health state I've ever been in at the time.

Discontinued all milk/cheese a couple months ago, and now I've no more crippling panic attacks, with dramatically less hypomanic periods. Unfortunately there's multiple factors and dimensions at play, so I can't categorically say that was it, but it almost certainly played a considerable role.

It's really crazy the effect diet can have in some situations. Things you think nothing of can ruin you.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1399-5618....