Can You Even Be an Ex-Vegan?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 69. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:07

Hi, everybody. Did you say 69?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:09

Yeah, it's episode 69. All right. This week, we're going to be talking about ex-vegans and why it comes up so much in discussions. The question we're kind of going to tackle is, can you even be an ex-vegan? And we've had opinions on this in the past on the podcast. I think I've probably even said some things on threads. And my opinion on this has definitely changed over time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:27

Mine has also kind of changed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:29

Yeah. So first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:31

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:33

So the first piece of news we have is that the FDA in the U.S. has planned to remove references to animal testing in regulations.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:40

That is very exciting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:41

The impact of that could be that you basically don't need to do animal testing to get your drugs approved anymore or some level of that. Yeah. The reason that I saw was basically that technology has improved so much that you have other alternatives. and also you know um the current government is pretty big on deregulation anyway yeah yeah this has uh, you know two implications one is that the companies have less hoops to jump through to get their product market which probably makes them more money but also you know if it lowers the testing on animals and we do have modern you know high-tech alternatives if those can provide the same safety then you know maybe that would be a good thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17

Yeah definitely seems like a good thing but uh yeah i know the motivations were likely not driven by animals and more were like oh how do i make my billionaire friends have an easier time making money

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28

Yeah pretty pretty low chance this was done to help the animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31

I think like a zero chance really you know what's funny is i also saw i don't remember as some republican person was like i think is it called tweeting anymore xing what do they call it when they post on not twitter

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:46

I have some opinions about what I used to call it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:48

Anyways. I think it was. Anyways, they were like, ooh, the price of beef is up. But have you tried veggie burgers? They're delicious.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:55

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it sounds like from the article on Humane World, which we'll link in the show notes, they said that animal testing really doesn't even work a lot of the time and it causes a lot of suffering because there's so many animals involved. But apparently over 90 percent of the drugs that appear successful in animal tests go on to fail in human clinical trials anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:16

Makes sense. Animals are different than humans, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:20

Yeah, so if you can just use like a machine model or like some kind of artificial thing or something like that to get a 90% failure rate, then you're in the same boat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:29

Yeah, and we had news a few episodes ago about how they were going to use AI modeling for some of the testing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:36

Yeah, like growing, I don't know if they were actually growing, but modeling human ears and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So we'll see how that goes. The next piece of news is that Revo Foods has made a dairy-free cottage cheese out of apricot kernels.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:48

This is interesting because I remember a few years ago, Miyoko's was going to launch one made out of watermelon seeds, but then I don't think it ever hit the market.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:57

That's interesting. Yeah, they're not actually calling theirs cottage cheese. They're calling it cottage protein plus, I think, but it's in the cottage cheese can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:05

Probably because they're not allowed using the word cheese. Yeah, cottage protein. Love that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:09

What the hell does cottage even mean? I've never understood what cottage meant. I don't even know what that means.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:12

Also, we don't know what that means. You can make it in a cottage.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:17

But this product is currently only available in Germany, I believe. It should be available in the UK soon. If it isn't already, it just got released this month, actually, September 2026. They haven't said anything about U.S. distribution that I've seen so far. You can order direct on their website. I don't know if they'll ship to the U.S. It has to be refrigerated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:35

You'd probably have to pay a lot of money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:36

Yeah, probably not worth it until it makes it. to our neck of the woods at some point, hopefully. Yeah, I was always a big fan of cottage cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:43

Apparently a lot of people are.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:45

Yeah. I used to eat it before bed because there was the idea that cottage cheese had casein protein, which was slower digesting, which was something that used to get talked about a lot. Try to eat a slow digesting protein before bed so your muscles aren't like starved overnight. It's probably not as big a deal as they made it out to be. But also a lot of the vegan protein sources are because they include so much fiber and they're slower digesting anyway. they digest around the same rate as casein so even if that is a thing you could just eat you know just normal food before bed and that's still kind of the same.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:14

I would uh i always hated cottage cheese yeah um i think texturally it disgusts me but it seems like a lot of people really like it i always see people saying they miss it while i'm like reddit and stuff so Hopefully it gets everywhere it needs to go.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:29

I know. I'm definitely going to try it out the first time I see it. I don't know if it'll be any good. And I don't know exactly what depth in my food it fills, but, you know, it might be nice. And then the last thing we want to talk about is Torre Washington competed in the Mr. Olympia competition in the men's physique category this year, just this weekend. Yeah, he is a vegan. He is also, so he's 52 years old, so he's the oldest competitor in his category at Olympia this year. Second oldest man to ever be on the Olympia stage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:56

That's crazy. Yeah. He does not look 52.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:59

Oh, I know. It's insane.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:01

I don't even think he looks 32.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:02

Yeah. He looks like straight out of college, like going to the NFL combine. Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:06

No, he looks amazing. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:10

He is the first vegan natural competitor at Olympia. Wow. Olympia itself is not tested, but he actually qualified from a natural bodybuilding competition, which was tested. Wow. So he's basically, you know, a natural bodybuilder competing with a bunch of enhanced bodybuilders.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:26

That's crazy. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:28

And the fact that he qualified is awesome.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:30

It is awesome. I don't really have opinions on the whole steroid usage thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:35

But I see on Reddit a lot, like, people that do use steroids get ganged up on a lot and, like... Their hard work gets discounted because they're on steroids. So I think it is kind of nice to see somebody at like the highest level that is vegan and also fully natural. So that it's like you can't really. Yeah. You can't say, oh, he got that body because of steroids. Like, no, he's like fully natural, fully vegan. I just think that's kind of interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:00

So, okay, cool. Let's go ahead and get into the main segment here and talk about ex-vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:05

Mmm. This is a spicy topic. I don't know if people are going to get mad at this topic. Ex-vegan seems like one of the most divisive things that I've personally seen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:14

Yeah, it's interesting. You've probably seen on social media in general the whole thing of like, I'm not vegan anymore. Yeah. Like a lot of quote-unquote vegan influencers will post a video that's like, I'm not vegan anymore because X. Yeah. And it turns into a whole thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:28

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:29

So, you know, typically there's like the initial post and there's a bunch of reactions and rebuttals and engagement and commentary. So I guess it's probably good for that video a lot of the time. But I don't know if it's, I don't know if they do it intentionally to try to get engagement or if, I don't know. It's hard to see people's motivations.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:48

It also is like, I guess, what I find always surprising about it, it's like, if you are a vegan and you're like vegan for the animals, it's odd to me that you would want to publicly announce that you're not vegan anymore. Like if you ever cared about the animals, I don't know why you would, you know, kind of like hurt a movement that you believed in, if that makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:07

Right. Yeah. And I think that the prevalence of ex-vegans is not super high as it looks, because if you see a video where somebody's like, I've been vegan for nine years and I'm still vegan, that's not going to get like a lot of. Well, yeah, yeah. But if you get somebody who has been vegan for two years and got a lot of followers and they post, I'm not vegan anymore, that's going to blow up and you're going to see it everywhere.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:25

Yeah. And I also think. They are using it to get a lot of clicks. They're probably going to say ex-vegan instead of ex-plant-based, regardless of like what their initial motivations for being vegan were. Yeah. Or being plant-based were, you know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:38

Yeah, definitely. So, I think the question we want to talk about here is like, can you even be an ex-vegan?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:46

Yeah. So, I remember that I said no.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:49

Yeah. I think I felt that way too. I think I maybe even, you know, a year or two back said something similar to people on threads at some point. But, you know, the more I think about it and the more I like see people kind of going through the vegan thing, I think I feel a little differently about it now. So veganism is a philosophy and a way of living that includes the dietary component. So the vegan diet is not all the veganism, but it is a big part of it. Yeah. So I think there are four different types of people who might use the term ex-vegan. So the first one is like an ethical ex-vegan where, you know, they say that they were an ethical vegan, vegan for the animals, that kind of thing. But then they had changed their belief or they stopped living as a vegan or stopped believing in vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:30

And this is the one, and this is what I used to believe that this could not exist.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:34

But, um... Honestly, like after conversations that I've had over the last few months online and stuff with different people, I do think this could exist. But I do think it's like a very, very, very small minority of people that are calling themselves ex-vegans would fit in this. But because it's like a philosophy and like personal ethics, there are tons of people that change their ethics over their lifetime. Right. There are people that go from Christian to atheist or atheist to like now they're religious. or even think about like somebody maybe who grows up in a liberal household that believes in all kinds of like you know like lgbtq rights and like uh you know a lot of progressive a lot of progressive ideologies and then all of a sudden they're like watching red-pilled youtube videos and now all of a sudden they're like racist and homophobic like those are a shift in ethics like whether you agree with that or not is a different thing but like people can shift their views so like absolutely somebody could fully have believed in veganism and then yeah maybe they went down a youtube rabbit hole of like Carnivore propaganda or like red pill ideology or something and then all of a sudden now they no longer believe that that i'm not saying that's a majority of the people that are calling themselves ex-vegans but i think it would be pretty weird to say that that couldn't happen yeah when like people do change their beliefs on all other things Why couldn't this change? Now, I will say that like several episodes ago, I said this couldn't possibly be a thing. But I have since changed my mind after, you know, thinking more about it and having conversations with people. I've changed my mind on this. Like, what are your thoughts on this part?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:13

Yeah, I think so, too. I mean, I don't necessarily think it's a lot different as far as the possibility from turning vegan in the first place. Like, my ethical belief used to be like I didn't have an ethical concern with animals for food or whatever. But then I changed that ethical view. So why would it be impossible to change it back in the other direction?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:33

Yeah, it's interesting because like initially I was like... How could, you know, me personally, like, I don't, there is no way I can unlearn what I know and uncare about what I do care about. But I am not everyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:49

No.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:49

I guess is my thing. It was a little confusing to me originally because I was like, how could you learn something and develop, like, new ethics around something and then throw that away? But people do do that around other things. You can get propagandized into just about anything anymore, you know, like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:09

Definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:11

So, yeah, I don't think it's the majority of people calling themselves ex-vegans, but I do think there is the possibility that somebody was like fully ethically vegan and then something happened and now they aren't.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:22

Yeah. And I think another type of person is like a dietary ex-vegan. So they actually just ate plant-based, but they use the word vegan, which is really common. I see this all the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:32

I think the most common. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:34

And it was never really about the animals for them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:36

Yeah. It maybe was like a health-based thing. And a lot of plant-based people use the word vegan because that's more widely understood. Yeah. And I think especially like the other thing I will say is like a lot of the people that we're talking about, a lot of these scenarios we're talking about are people that have a social media presence. Yeah. So like everything is built around what is like the easiest way for me to get likes and comments and engagement. Like I need to use terms that people understand. So a plant-based person might just use the word vegan because that's easier and it already builds them in a little audience, right? Yeah. Even if they don't fully believe in all of the ethical principles of something, they might call themselves vegan. And this is true outside of social media as well. It's just like if you're plant-based and you're telling new people, they're asking like what your dietary thing is because they see you not eating meat, you might just say I'm vegan because that's a little bit more understood than the plant-based thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:30

Yeah. Thank you. Now, we'll say just, you know, from the standpoint of, like, running the social media and the websites and stuff that we have, like, I've looked at traffic differences and potential for, like, terms plant-based versus vegan. And vegan is, like, far and away a higher, like, people search for it more, people engage with it more. It's just way more, I guess, known than the term plant-based.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:54

Right. And you think about, like, something like Veganuary, where it's like you're trying, realistically, you're trying a plant-based diet for a month. Yeah. But it's not called plant-based Annuary. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But you're not trying veganism for a month. Like, you're not trying the ethics on for a month. You're trying, like, plant-based food for a month.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:12

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:13

It's just a term. They're used pretty interchangeably, even though they are different. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:17

And I think that leads into the next type of person, which is, like, an experimenter. Yeah. So, they will try it for a couple weeks. And you'll see people say this. they'll be like oh i think i'm gonna go vegan for three months and it's like okay well you're using the term wrong which is where this gets a little dicey it's like and so after those three months you're not an ex-vegan you just you weren't really ever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:33

Yeah you just played around and you did a plant-based diet for a couple weeks or whatever right yeah i met somebody at work that said oh i used to be vegan and i was like i pushed that and i was like like what what do you mean and she's like oh yeah i mostly ate vegan food and then like my boyfriend moved in with me and then And he is an omnivore. So now I'm just an omnivore. And I try to eat. She's like, sometimes I usually eat vegan for breakfast. And I'm just like, oh, my God. But, you know, like, if you're not fully ingrained in that, you might think I just can use this word like... you know, interchangeably with plant-based diet. Like, I just think a lot of people don't understand it when, like, you know, if you don't get fully ingrained and understand what exactly veganism is, people are walking around being like, yeah, I was a vegan. And they mean that they ate, like, a vegan diet for two weeks, you know, but they're calling themselves ex-vegans. It's just not really, like, the same.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:25

Yeah, and then I think, you know, the last one is people who are just, they're mostly plant-based all the time, but they just go by vegan. Again, because I think it's just easier to convey what your situation is as far as food goes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:35

Yeah. And they might be eating animal products sometimes the entire time that they're calling themselves vegan. And I've seen this too. And like, I, there was another person that I worked with who they called themselves a freegan, but I don't know if at some point they called themselves vegan to someone because somebody came to me and they were like, oh, have you met blah, blah, blah. Like he's vegan. And I was like, oh no, I didn't know that. And then I like, I messaged him cause I was really excited. And I was like, oh my God, I heard you're vegan. And he's like, no, no, no. So he's like, I'm a freegan, like I eat vegan at home. Like I only like will buy plant-based foods. He's like, but like if I'm at work and there's not a plant-based option, like I'm going to eat whatever is given to me basically. And then I like pushed it a little bit and he was more like health focused.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:19

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:20

He was doing it for health anyway. And he just saw it was like a cheat meal, I guess. Okay. Whatever. I mean, still like very much reducing animal harm. Cause I mean, I think he was eating vegan 95% of the time. Right. But yeah, I mean, people also just mislabel you sometimes if they don't really understand what you're doing because it's just easier.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:36

Yeah. A lot of the research will kind of lump some of these people together, but also a lot of like the discussion will group these people together. So it looks like there's a lot of ex-vegans, whereas in reality, you know, most of these people were just doing some variation of a plant-based diet. Right. And then stopped.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:54

And I think part of the issue is that vegans in general are such a minority in society and it's hard to do studies that have very many people in the first place so like if you if you were like oh have you ever tried like a vegan diet that's make you can maybe get a survey with 2 000 people in it right but then if you like narrow it down you're like i want to only focus on people that held the ethical beliefs of veganism and somehow like change their minds and it's like yeah that that might narrow it down to like 50 people out of the 2,000, right? Yeah. That's not a good survey.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:27

A lot of studies have to do like vegan and vegetarian together just so they get enough people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:31

It's such a small group of people, like it's just hard. And you want a worthwhile survey that's going to give you some information. Yeah. And then what I will say is like the motivations that would make you go from like a fully ethical vegan to a not ethical vegan anymore, I feel like those must be way different, right? Than like what would take you from like, oh, yeah, I was like mostly eating whole food plant-based for three months and then I quit. Those are probably going to be very different things.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:54

Yeah, I mean, that's just a diet change. People do that all the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:56

But... Like, what are you really trying to learn?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:00

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:01

Which is like how to keep people eating plant-based. So I could see like wanting to combine those just as like, what is the ultimate goal of talking to these people? Oh, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:10

Would be like, how can we keep you not eating animal products?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:13

Yeah, because, you know, we've talked about it before. Like veganism is obviously way more than the diet, but the diet is like 90% of what people interact with day to day. Yeah. So, I mean, if you can get people to connect to that part and, you know, solve that problem, then, you know, you're almost all the way there. So, we talked about this study probably a few times, but there was a big study back in 2014 that people referenced for, like, people going ex-vegan or, like, leaving veganism, basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:42

It included, like, people that self-identified as either ex-vegan or ex-vegetarian.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:45

Right. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:47

This was a Faunalytics study.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:48

Yeah. And it measured diet only. It didn't talk about, like, do you use leather or any other animal products like that? But it did ask why people ate what they ate. Yeah. Interestingly, like going by what people called themselves, 21% of U.S. adults would have counted as former vegans or vegetarians. But if you actually go and look at their food list for what they said they ate, it would have only been about 10%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:10

Right. It's basically half of those people don't know what that even means, right? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:14

Which is interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:15

But it's like if they don't even know what the food part means, I wonder how many of them are actually like vegan instead of plant-based because you can't even narrow it down from there because like you didn't add on like, oh, do you still buy leather? Do you still do this or that? So like it's probably less than 10% too, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:30

But I do think it's interesting that 20% of U.S. adults are saying, yeah, I was either vegan or vegetarian once. Right. But I have heard that. Like, I have met very, very few real-life vegetarians or vegans. Yeah. I would actually say, like, zero people. In real life, like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:50

Vegetarians even? Yeah. I've met a couple vegetarians.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:53

Like, I'm talking like currently practicing vegans and vegetarians. I don't think, maybe one. Yeah. I'm trying to think. I think I met a contractor at work that he was vegetarian.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:05

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:07

But like, that's it. Like, I'm talking people that like actually follow it. They're not like still eating animal products sometimes. sometimes but i have probably met like 20 people that said like oh i tried vegan for a couple months or like i was vegetarian for a few months or i was vegetarian in college or oh i was vegetarian as a kid

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:25

I've met a lot of people that said they tried to be vegetarian at some point yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:29

Like a ton compared to like current like fully principled vegans or vegetarians yeah i think i've met one yeah one guy at work that's interesting and and he was from india and i think a lot of people from india follow a vegetarian diet yeah yeah and i only found out because like he was going to lunch with the other contractor guys and they could only go to certain places because he was vegetarian and there were just like no options near work so i was like i feel you

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:55

Faunalytics also had a newer study of people going vegan vegetarian from like 2020 and only 47% of the vegans quote unquote also aim to avoid all non-food animal products So basically, they were saying they were vegan, but it was only in relationship to their food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:10

Yeah. So that's interesting, too, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:12

And Faunalytics decided not to split them up into, like, vegans and plant-based eaters. So they were just all marked as vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:18

Right. And I've seen people... you know, get annoyed about them not splitting this up. But the group is so small already that like you do need a large sample size to get any kind of useful information. So splicing it up and stuff is just like not very helpful for good takeaways to use.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:39

Yeah. So I think, you know, if somebody did like Veganuary or something even more than that, and they eat vegan for like three months for like a New Year's resolution or like an extended Veganuary or something like that, what do you think we would call this person?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:51

Yeah. Like me, personally, what would I call them? I would be like, oh, yeah, you tried a plant-based diet for three months. Yes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:59

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:59

But they might call themselves, like, I used to be a vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:03

Yeah. And maybe they're doing that to try to, like, immerse themselves in it and really give it a chance to, like, oh, I'm vegan for three months.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:09

Yeah. Or, you know, they're trying Veganuary, which has the word vegan in it. And they didn't look into, like, anything other than it's a diet. Because that's what, I mean, Veganuary does have stuff on their website, I think. about like the other tenets of veganism, but they are mostly pushing like the recipe thing, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:25

I think even in the Veganuary like campaign, they send out other non-food things. But yeah, I think most people are thinking about it in terms of food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:34

Yeah, and some people like me personally, so I went vegan on Veganuary on January 1st. I actually didn't know that Veganuary was like a campaign necessarily. I had just heard... Veganuary like a month before I uh did it yeah I just thought it was like a new year's resolution people did of like Veganuary or whatever yeah um but I actually didn't realize it was like a campaign that you could follow like with emails and stuff until I don't know it's already vegan for a few months right so I think some people like might say they're doing Veganuary just because they know the name of it they might not even know that it's related to an actual organization called Veganuary that does recipes that's possible yeah like they're just kind of doing it on their own Like they're just like a New Year's resolution to try vegan food for the month of January.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:21

Yeah, definitely. So I don't want to name any like specific people who've like said they were ex-vegan or whatever at any point because that's not really fruitful. But back in 2023, there was, I guess, a popular philosophy YouTuber who was well known for like arguing about ethical veganism in favor of ethical veganism. But in February 2023, he said that he was going to start eating animal products again. So this is like an example of one of the videos that kind of blows up and makes this conversation. So he gave two reasons. He spoke to, I guess, a vegan charity and gave two reasons. He said he had been reevaluating his ethical position on eating animals, and he had privately struggled to keep up a healthy plant-based diet, but he still opposed factory farming. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:10

You know, that actually sounds a lot like the guy who wrote the book Eating Animals, because that's basically the conclusion he came to at the end was, like, I am against factory farming, but I will still eat animals from, like, very specific small farms.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:24

Yeah. I see a lot of people. You know, we post, when we do podcast episodes, we post some stuff on, like, Reddit or whatever. And a lot of people come back with that. They're like, yeah, I really hate factory farms, but that doesn't mean I don't think we should eat animals. That seems to be a really common stance.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:38

Chance it's surprising i guess it's a little surprising to me that he would be like arguing for the ethical case of veganism and then decide re-evaluate yeah i mean maybe he visited a farm that he was like okay this feels good but it sounds like there was a health situation in there like maybe he wasn't what i mean i don't know this person

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:59

Yeah and i think maybe if you feel i don't want to put words in the mouth or anything but i'm just thinking like if i like what would put me in this situation. Yeah. And if like you have this health thing and you feel kind of desperate, maybe you could like, you would leverage that to justify to yourself that maybe your ethics are wrong and kind of convince yourself or something. Yeah. I don't know. It seems like a, it seems unfortunate, but this is the kind of thing that leaves people thinking like, oh, there are so many ex-vegans out there. Right, yeah. Because these videos get so popular. Right. It seems like generally there are three different reasons people leave something like this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:33

And that would be like the actual ethics of it, right? Not just like, oh, I tried it and now I'm not trying it anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:39

Yeah, like you ethically leave. Right. They're called residue, ambivalence, and reaction.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:45

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:45

So residue is basically, and I'll link the piece from this, but residue means I still think veganism is right, but I couldn't keep it up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:54

Yeah. And that's probably more around health or convenience or just time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:59

Yeah. Like that. Could be money.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:01

Yeah. You know, I, so this is where my brain started shifting actually. So I posted a video a couple of months ago that was quoting the Faunalytics study talking about why people left veganism or a plant-based diet or whatever. And I quoted the study in my video and it was basically like, hey, I have a free ebook if you're looking for vegan recipes. Because a lot of the stuff was around, like, I had trouble with health. And usually when you dig into the health piece, it's like, oh, I couldn't get my protein. I couldn't get this or that or whatever. um and then it was like the convenience aspect or the cost aspect there were like a few other things but it all kind of came back to like i don't know how to do the vegan diet like healthily cost effectively and time effectively essentially and i don't like the food so it was like hey here's a free resource right um Which a lot of people really appreciated. Like a lot of people wanted the free resource. But I got a shit ton of hatred from current vegans that were like, there's no such thing as ex-vegans. And like, it was crazy the amount of vitriol that came my way for quoting a fucking study. But I got a couple actual, like what I would agree, people who could call themselves like true ex-vegans. Some people that were like, oh, I had been vegan for 10 years. and all of a sudden I developed, what is it, MCAS?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:25

Yeah, that mast cell thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:26

Yeah, and it's like I'm trying to like incorporate more plant-based foods back into my diet, but like it's a struggle basically. I had a couple other people that were like, I already had a gluten allergy and then I just randomly developed a soy allergy and like, you know, like I'm still working through things trying to figure out like how I can do this like safely and still get my protein and stuff. The reason I think they were true ex-vegans is they were like asking for help. Like, do you have any suggestions? Like here are my limitations. I would love to go back to being able to be fully vegan. Do you have thoughts? And I think I also got a comment that was saying they were fully vegan and then they became houseless. And then that makes it really hard to keep up with the vegan diet obviously

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:08

Right i think there's a pretty good argument and i'm sure a lot of people won't agree with this but i think there's a pretty good argument that those situations still fall under like as far as possible and as far as practicable yeah like you still have this ethical belief but it is not possible and not practicable in your current life situation for you to like fully avoid animal products or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:29

And i i think it's Similar to, you know, I've seen a lot of reddits from like teenagers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:35

Just posts saying like, I want to be vegan, but my family literally won't let me, like they will not buy me products that let me be vegan healthily. Like I'm kind of stuck in vegetarian. I desperately want to be vegan. Like give me advice, give me advice. And most people have like, I think pretty kind advice, which is like, do the best you can, but like, don't put yourself at a health risk because you can't, you physically can't buy your own food right now. Like you live at your parents, yada, yada. Yeah. Um. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:03

I think there may be situations, you know, you know, you probably wouldn't go around labeling yourself or anything, but I think there may be situations where you are like, you are an ethical vegan who is unable to practice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:13

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:13

So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:15

Like, yeah, maybe that's where it's like, I probably wouldn't, you shouldn't call yourself vegan, like in front of other people, because it does confuse the term. But like in your heart, you're vegan. You can't get there right now. But there are people like that, and they're trying to get, like, help and resources to maybe go back to fully vegan or figure out a way to do it healthily.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:34

Yeah, I think a lot of these people, like, if those constraints were gone, they would stop using the animal products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:38

So that was actually what changed my mind on this whole thing is I had comments like that. Right. And then I put them side to side next to the very angry comments I got from current vegans basically saying that all these people are horrible shitbag asshole pieces of garbage. And it's like, these are people that are like actually telling me that this is them. They want help. They want resources. They want advice. And then on the other hand, like... There are current day vegans that are like just being absolute assholes in my comment section. And it's like that actually is what changed my mind because I was like, these people are looking for help. We are being so mean to them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:19

And I don't understand how anybody thinks that's helpful to like the cause or the animals or anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:24

It's not helpful. Right. Because it's like I think the other thing that we talked about in this last podcast, but that video did really well. It kind of like broke the containment of my normal group of people that see my video. Yeah. And it's like, so it's going outside of my normal followers, which means it's probably making it to like non-vegans or vegan curious people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:41

Yeah, people who are maybe thinking about it. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:43

And then they see a bunch of vegans and they're just being like, really fucking mean. It doesn't really make you want to join us.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:49

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:50

You know what I mean? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:53

And hopefully still, you know, it's not really about joining the vegan club. It's about the animals. So hopefully people still do the thing and they just don't want to interact with the other vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:01

But the problem is, is like, you know, and we'll get into this too, but a lot of what makes a successful vegan is being able to find that community and being able to ask questions and get resources and get help from current vegans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:14

Yeah, it helps so much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:15

And if you feel like you can't talk to these people because they hate your guts, it does make it significantly more difficult to do it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:22

Yeah. So that was residue. The next, the next reason.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:26

Sorry, that was kind of long. If you're enjoying this podcast or hating this podcast, but you want to know when the next one's coming, be sure to like and subscribe and maybe leave a comment.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:37

The next reason or the next thing that people use to explain leaving is what they called ambivalence, which is I changed what I do, but I'm conflicted about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:45

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:46

Which, you know, I've seen some of those too. It's like, I know I'm doing the wrong thing, but I do it anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:52

Yeah. And I'm not really sure exactly what this would be. I think it's just like... Maybe you just kind of lost your way. And then some people do find their way back. You know, like I've heard of people that they maybe were vegan for 10 years. And then, like, I don't know, along the way they became, like, vegetarian. Maybe they had kids, a family. Like, it became difficult to maybe make two meals constantly. So they kind of, like, started moving their boundaries a little bit. And then maybe they refound it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:17

Yeah. And I think there are probably a lot of people out there who eat animal products and are conflicted about it but never even really considered being a vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:25

I definitely know that's true. I've talked to people like I have friends that have said this to me. Yeah. Of like, I feel bad eating it, but like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:34

I'm going to eat it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:35

But I'm going to eat it. Yeah. Or like, yeah, I live with my husband and he will never go vegan. So like the best I can do is he's agreed to three vegan meals a week, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:44

Yeah. And then the last way that people explain leaving is called reaction, which is I now think veganism itself is wrong. Yeah. Which I think is one that we're talking about is kind of like an edge case. probably one of the least common ones.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:58

I agree.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:58

Because it involves a pretty big shift.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:00

It's basically like a deconstruction of like your entire ethical belief system and way of thinking, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:05

The researchers actually said that they suggested thinking of leaving veganism less like leaving a religion and more like becoming less religious. So like people who you know are religious, but they don't go to church anymore. You never hear them talk about religion, but they still like know they're religious or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:21

Okay, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:22

So they recommended kind of thinking about it in these terms.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:27

For the reaction one?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:29

For all of them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:29

Or just all of them? For all of them, yeah. Because the reaction one for me, I feel like that would be like the equivalent of someone going atheist to Christian. Like that's how drastic that one feels for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:41

Do you know what I mean?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:41

No, I agree, yeah. And I have known a couple of those people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:44

Oh, I have too. It always shocks me. Yeah. I'm like, what? I knew you in high school. What's happening?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:52

Usually that doesn't come on its own. Like, there's a whole series of life events that lead into something like that. But, yeah. And I'm sure it's probably the same for...

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:59

But I think that's the same with, like, the reaction one, right? Of, like, I now think veganism itself is wrong. It's, like, how did we get here? Did you end up on, like, some YouTube rabbit hole where, like, they were telling you, like, this is why it doesn't matter, this is this, this is that? Like, it would... It has to be a lot of programming changes in your brain to get from, like, one ethical viewpoint to another. Yeah. But it does happen. Yeah. Like, there are super, super liberal Democrat types that end up far-right Republican, right? It happens all the time. And the other way around. And the other way around. Like, ethical views do shift. It is shocking.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:32

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:33

I'm not going to say it's not shocking. And I do think it's a lot more rare than the other types we've talked about, but, like, it is something that does happen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:39

Yeah. So, one of the things that gets shared a lot is kind of the big statistic that 84% of vegans quit veganism at some point. Yeah. You know, you've seen some variant of that, probably, if you've seen anything around this conversation. That did come from that 2014 Faunalytics study we were talking about. It said for... Basically, everybody who had been surveyed that had ever been vegetarian or vegan, 84% of them no longer were. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:05

That seems crazy. But, I mean, that includes all the people we just talked about, right? Yeah. Of people that, like, tried it for a little bit and then they didn't want to keep doing it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:13

Right. And it's, you know, a point in time with those people surveyed. So, it shouldn't really be thought of as 84% of vegans quit. It should just be, like, 84% of those people. and we know with the issues we already talked about a little earlier where it's like they lumped everybody together people called themselves vegan when they weren't vegan so like in that scenario it's effectively like, i would think of it more as 84 percent of people try to plant-based diet and then stop.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:37

Which still is is like data we need to dig into right because if like and i think we've talked about this on other podcasts but it's like to get somebody to the point where they're actually interested in trying a plant-based diet or a vegan lifestyle yeah that takes so much work from like a lot of people, a lot of different media that you've seen, like movies, books you've read, people you've talked to, you finally get to a point where you're like, I'm going to try this thing. If 84% of the people that we finally got there are quitting, that is information we need to know. So like, even if we don't think the data is exactly representative of like ex-vegans, it's still people we, those are still people we wanted to keep plant-based. So like we should be looking at the data because I've had like on that same video, like I had a lot of people that were just discounting the data altogether. And it's like, you're kind of missing the point because like, even if we're mislabeling them, they were still people that were planning on doing plant based. And if we could have made it better for them or provided resources or like whatever they needed, they might've stayed plant based or eventually became vegan. You want to capture those people. Like we shouldn't be arguing the semantics. We should be discussing the actual data that gets us to people eating less animals because I don't know if you guys remember, but we're in it for the animals, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:53

And also, you know, when we talk about the food so much, because I feel like it's, it's what holds it all together. Like if you are eating less animal products in your food, then there are like less cows being raised at some point to be used for leather, less, you know, farmed animals to use for wool and things like that. Like it all, if you reduce the amount of animals that are being farmed for food, all of those co-products and byproducts and stuff like that also get reduced. And those aren't food. So, I mean, it's all tied to like these billions of animals that we're raising for food. So if we can like really focus on the plant-based diet and get people doing that, that, you know, really kind of pushes veganism without even having to get into vegan versus not vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:35

Exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:36

Also in that study, one interesting thing to note is that most of the people that were surveyed were vegetarian and not vegan anyway. So there were 1,166 people out of those 1,037 were vegetarian and they weren't vegan. There were only 129 vegans in the study at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:50

Oh, that's interesting. They just lumped it together, but there's no way to parse the information, right? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:56

Yeah. They said also a lot of those stints of people who had stopped that were in that 84% were really short stints. So 34% of those had kept it up for three months or less. And And only 6% had lasted for more than 10 years.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:10

Yeah, which kind of falls along with what we're talking about.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:12

Another interesting thing is that as a group, all these people who were surveyed, even though they may not have still been vegan or vegetarian, they were still eating less meat. So the former vegans and vegetarians averaged about 1.1 servings of meat per day versus like 2.1 servings of meat per day in a normal U.S. sample.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:32

Wow, so they were down to like half.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:33

Yeah, so they were still like half the meat consumption.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:36

See, this is the part that, you know... I think, comes down to putting the animals above your own ego, because I think if you really think about the animals, you're looking at this and you're saying, well, that's pretty great, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:49

Yeah, I mean, this is like, if you extrapolate it a little bit, if I can get somebody to try a plant-based diet for a month or three months, maybe that would lead to them eating half as much meat the rest of their life.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:59

Yeah, that's massive. Yeah. We've talked about this before, but there's a pretty big trend of vegans hating on vegetarians, and as a former vegetarian, that always pisses me off, right? But like they're also, you know, reducing like they're still doing more than most people. And so are these people. So I just think like being really, really mean about it is not helpful because they're doing more than most people. Like I'm not necessarily saying they're like on our side. Yeah. But they're doing more than the average omnivore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:28

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:29

And like you could probably pull them back, but you're not going to do it by calling them names. You know what I mean?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:35

Yeah. And also, you know, just from personal experience, several of the people I've talked to and like I told them I'm vegan and they're very not vegan and they're never going to go vegan. But like several of them have come back and been like, oh, well, I've been thinking about eating less meat or like not using dairy anymore. Various things like that. Like a lot of the people I've talked to about veganism have come back to me with like asking me for tips for things like that. Like how to, you know, do the reduce the dairy and think like they're not calling themselves that, but that's how we're thinking about it. So I think just, you know, planting the seeds of like, you know, veganism helps just have a general reduction in everybody else's consumption when they're like exposed to those ideas, even if they're not going to be a vegan or be a vegetarian.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:16

Right. And it's like not everyone. You're not going to be able to convince everyone no matter what you do. Yeah. But, you know, like we've talked about before, I think just celebrating the small wins is helpful. Yeah. Like, I know my parents will never be vegan. Like, you know, I went vegetarian when I was 12. Like, they've known that I've had issues with the ethics around this stuff for my whole life, right? Yeah, yeah. And, like, that has not made really a difference on how they conduct their, like, eating. Right. You know, like... They know my very strong beliefs, and it hasn't changed them, and it's been a very long time, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:49

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:50

But they do. They do eat non-dairy ice cream now. And I'm excited about that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:55

So, for the reasons in the study, like we said earlier, they did ask them why they stopped and stuff like that. So, the reasons they gave in the Faunalytics study are 32% were unsatisfied with the food. Yeah. Which is crazy. That's such a high number to quit. And that's how you know they were doing it for, like, the health reasons, the plant-based diet. They're like, I don't want to eat salad or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:14

Yeah, they probably didn't know how to eat. Yeah. That's the other thing is like if you don't find a little like a community or you don't find like recipe creators that you like or you don't really look into what you're doing, you probably won't like the food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:27

Yeah. And I think that might be why so many of them still end up reducing their meat because they're like, okay, I'm going to go back to the food I like, but maybe I like just won't do the meat as much. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. 26% of them stopped because of their health. And, you know, that could be perceived health issues. It could be real health issues. It could be, like, a very poorly planned diet in the first place. I think a lot of people that try to go, like, plant-based probably really lean heavily into salads for two months.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:52

They definitely do. No, because I see a lot of Reddit posts that are like, I've been doing this vegan thing for two months, and I am, like, starving all the time, and I feel lightheaded. And you get to the point of, like, well, what are you eating? And it's like they haven't figured out a protein source. Like, they basically just pulled meat off their diet, meat and dairy off their diet, and then they didn't replace it with anything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:11

Yeah, or they're eating 800 calories a day. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:14

Yeah, I mean, if you just eat leafy greens all day, you're probably not going to be able to get many calories in.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:18

Without any kind of fats or protein. Social issues and inconvenience, we're both at 13% for reasons for stopping.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:27

I mean, this makes a lot of sense based on where you live. Like, if you don't live in a larger city where you have vegan restaurants or... just good vegan options at your grocery store especially when you're starting out that can be really hard because i know when i started out i was relying pretty heavily on um just like processed foods yeah like meat substitutes or like chicken like vegan chicken nuggets and stuff like that yeah because i didn't know what to cook you know yeah yeah and i think a lot of people rely pretty heavily on that when they go vegan but like i also was able to find a couple of like vegan options at nearby restaurants but if you don't have that either like if you live somewhere that doesn't have anything. That's not good. Like that does make it harder because now it's like, not only are you having to cut out all these things, you're also having to teach yourself like a whole new set of skills on like how to use tofu and how to use TVP.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:18

Learn what TVP is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:20

Yeah, I mean, I could definitely see that being way harder if you're living somewhere that just doesn't have good options. And then, yeah, I think this part's really not talked about enough is the social impact. If you're like extroverted and you have a group of friends that's maybe likes to go out to eat every night or like go out to eat a couple times a week and now you can't eat anything there, like that does start to get to you. I can't relate to it because I don't really like to go out with anyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:47

Yeah, if your life is like one of those TV sitcoms where you meet up with your friends for dinner every night, it could probably be a little annoying.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:55

Imagine one of the girls from Sex and the City all of a sudden going vegan. That would have been hard, you know? Like, probably all the drinks they ordered were not vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:05

Yeah. And then the last two, both at 6%, were cost and lack of motivation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:10

Yeah. And I think the cost one, if you're relying heavily on the meat alternatives or the dairy alternatives, yeah, that can get up there pretty high, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:20

Yeah. And it looks like maybe the food options, since the initial 2014 survey, have gotten a little better. they had a like some other surveys since then Faunalytics does a lot of surveys but i think they're seeing less and less of like the unsatisfaction with the food being a component because there's so many more options now than they used to be 10 years ago.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:40

I mean that makes so much sense yeah but that that is just a side note that's another benefit of these people that have reduced their intake by half even if they're not vegan or plant-based yeah because that means that are probably eating like tofu or TVP, which means that there's a higher demand for it, which means you're going to be able to find it in more places. Yeah. Or like meat alternatives become easier to find or, you know what I mean? Right. It's like- Yeah, we'd all like everyone to be perfect vegans, but like people that reduce their intake and do add in, you know, plant-based options, they help the cause too because they make it easier to find foods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:18

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:18

Which helps, especially new vegans that don't know what to cook and stuff, like if they have options in grocery stores and restaurants.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:24

Yeah. I mean, that's why I always tell, like the first thing you should do if you're trying to go vegan is download HappyCow. Oh, absolutely. That way you know what your options are around you when you're like, I don't know what to make. I don't have any food in the fridge. Like, I just need to eat something. I need it to be vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:37

Yeah. You know what's, like, funny is I've been seeing a bigger push for, like, yelling at people that are, like, eating at Taco Bell because Taco Bell has omnivore options. I'm like, eating at omnivore. I'm like, this drives me fucking crazy because, like, if you're boycotting omnivore restaurants that offer good vegan options or you're boycotting vegan products because their parent company is omnivore, that's a fucking problem. Because, like, who is relying that heavily on those things? It's new vegans. You're going to make it, like, if you boycott all this shit and now all of a sudden, like, Burger King doesn't offer impossible, what do they have, impossible burgers?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:16

Yeah, impossible.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:17

Or like taco bell no longer lets you i mean i guess taco bell vegan options probably won't go away but like vegan options have been going away for a while like uh panda express used to have beyond orange chicken that's gone you know or like stuff's like coming off the grocery store shelves and we've seen like three vegan butters just fucking disappear over like a year and it's like yeah you start boycotting these companies and then new vegans are going to have nothing to rely on and they're not going to know how to cook from scratch or maybe they don't have time or like it's a convenience issue or whatever and it's gonna make it way harder for people to go vegan so like being a perfect vegan and like not supporting these like omnivore owned companies it fucks over the cause honestly like it makes it harder for new vegans to be born yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:01

Absolutely and I think, You know, from a cost perspective, we're probably better off if the bigger companies do it. Because, you know, I think a lot of the reason, like with butter, for example, like when I'm looking at vegan butters on the shelf, there are a couple of the small, fully vegan brands that are like 40% higher price than the country crock or the I can't believe it's not butter vegan options. And it's like, okay, well, I mean, like people who are just getting into veganism are just going to pick the major brand. They already trust this brand and the price is lower. And I know, like, the smaller brands can't match the price. But at the same time, like, we shouldn't really be getting mad at the bigger brands for, like, meeting the demand in this space. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:43

And that's not to say, like, don't support the small brands. You should absolutely support those small brands.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:47

I mean, there are a lot that are just a better product. Yeah. So definitely support those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:51

But I've just been seeing this, like, trend of, like, boycott anyone that's not owned by, like, a fully vegan company all the way to the fucking CEO. And it's like, what? What are we doing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:59

Yeah. And every time I go to the grocery store, I've got to do like a business analysis. Yeah. Ownership chain or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:05

I mean, it also makes veganism look harder for from an outsider because it's like I don't just need to learn how to cook and eat vegan food. I also need to like. do research like detailed research analysis on

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:19

Like i'm looking at the ingredient label yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:21

That's me too call me a shitty vegan i don't really care i feel good about it

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:26

Yeah we mentioned it a couple times but i think a lot of people will try a plant-based diet to improve their health and a lot of the time what that equates to is like you're trying to lose weight yeah so that is one of the biggest things that gets people to go and try a plant-based diet because they think maybe it will help them cut a little weight. That is obviously different from being a vegan. Right. We've talked about that several times. But the diet looks pretty similar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:54

So there was a study in Australia of 292 people back in 2020. We'll link it in the show notes. But this basically was looking at, How likely are you to stick to your diet? And by diet, I just mean your food choices, not like a weight loss diet necessarily. How likely were you to stick to your diet based on why you were engaging in that diet? So vegans and vegetarians were particularly high in adherence. Adherence just means you're sticking to it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:23

Right, because they have the ethics probably, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:25

Right. And weight loss dieters were a lot lower. So being motivated by controlling your weight made it much less likely that you would actually stick to the diet. That's just not a very strong driver. Yeah. But if you were able to identify with your diet, like you're a vegan or you're a vegetarian, you stick to it better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:41

Which makes sense. Like, you know your why.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:43

Right. And in that study, 80% of the vegans named ethics as what kept them going in the diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:49

That makes sense. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:50

Also, there was a book in 2013 where vegan was basically sold as a weight loss plan. It was called like Eat Vegan Before Six to Lose Weight or something. And that author was a flexitarian is what he called himself. So this kind of thing doesn't really help. Right. You eat vegan before six. Like what does that mean? Yeah, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:12

I mean, this is where I think it is annoying when you see plant-based people call themselves vegans. Yeah. But this is like, I think a really strong example of why people are confused is because authors are getting published with these book titles. that basically create mass confusion across anyone who sees this. Same with like, you know, podcasters or social media people or influencers that are using the word wrong. Now millions of people are hearing it used wrong and now they think that's how it works.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:43

So, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:45

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:46

Yeah. And, you know, again, referencing a Faunalytics study, people who only started a vegan or vegetarian diet for health stopped the diet at about a 95% rate. So it is just very not sticky to start doing a thing for health.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:00

Well, I mean, think about all the other weird diets. Like, remember the grapefruit diet for a while? It was like, yeah, you eat grapefruits in the morning or whatever. And it's like, that lasted for like, I just remember that was popular for a few months and then it just disappeared.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:15

Yeah. Or even like the newer, like the carnivore diet thing. I think this is falling off now, but it was pretty hot for like the last year. Yeah. And that's mostly health motivated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:23

I mean, yeah. Yeah. Health diets are like constantly changing. I mean, they come up with new names for them or whatever. Just like the juicing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:30

Yeah. Juice cleanses, detoxes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:33

I mean, it's just.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:34

I see a lot of parasite cleanse now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:36

Yeah. Like, what? Yeah. You need this parasite cleanser. You definitely have parasites in your stomach. Just drink this for 14 days and you'll be all better.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:45

I think the parasites might be a little higher up in the body. for the identity part of the diet like when people identify with the diet that actually seemed to increase so Faunalytics had another study where they did a six-month follow-up report to one of their previous studies and it seemed like people who, were identifying maybe ethically with the diet like that had that identity grow during the course of the diet so, they said their strong identification with the diet rose from 36% of the people at the start to 66% of the people six months later. So six months into it, you're like feeling like, oh, this is kind of part of who I am now as a vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:25

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I remember feeling like that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:28

And the more you feel like that, the less likely you are to quit it. Yeah. It all kind of goes together.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:32

Part of who you are now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:33

Right. Yeah. It's like I mentioned a couple of times, like non-vegan food now just looks like a pile of rocks to me. Yeah. I don't even...

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:41

That's not food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:42

I'm not going back to it because it's not food to me. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:46

But yeah, I mean, you probably didn't feel that way like a couple months in.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:49

Oh, sure. No. Yeah, definitely not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:50

Yeah, I think the more, the further you get into it, the more it seems just like absurd that you would stop.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:55

Right. It's kind of freeing, actually, being able to walk through the grocery store and drive by a bunch of restaurants and be like, no, no, no, those are even options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:02

Those aren't even food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:04

They don't even sell food there. Why do they have so many rocks in here? It's a rock store.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:08

Yeah, I remember at first, at first when I went vegan, it was like a mourning thing. Like, I was like looking around. I'm like, oh, I can't eat there anymore. I can't eat there anymore. I can't eat there anymore. Yeah. And now it's just like, I don't even see those places.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:21

I'm just like, hmm. Just random buildings.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:25

There was also a survey, I don't think this one was by Faunalytics, but they found that 56% of U.S. adults think that plant-based means vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:33

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:34

So more of the conflation of terms that we were talking about. So when they see like a plant-based person quit being a plant-based person, they read that in their mind as, oh, another vegan quit being vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:43

Yeah, even if they use the terminology correct, people still misinterpret it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:46

Exactly. Even if, that's the point, even if they never called themselves vegan, people are reading that as, oh, they stopped being vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:52

Oh, and I'm sure that not only are they thinking that, I'm sure 1,500 people made a video about it and called them vegan, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:00

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:01

When they're giving their two cents on the matter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:03

Right. You also have to think, like, if you're doing it for weight loss, what happens when you get to your goal weight?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:08

Yeah, do you go back or,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:10

Yeah. Is it part of your, like, is it actually part of your identity? Is this an ethical thing or do you go back to eating animal products?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:15

Yeah, now that you've lost the weight you wanted to lose.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:17

Right. Yeah. So I think that's interesting. Like if it, maybe if it takes six months to lose the weight, if your identity is increasing across that time, maybe by the time you get there, you feel like, oh, I'm a vegan now. I guess there's no point in going.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:28

Yeah, I could see that. I mean, there are a lot of people that start a plant-based diet for health and eventually develop the ethics because I do think like, for example, on social media, if you start a plant-based diet, so now you're down into like vegan recipe, TikTok or Instagram or whatever yeah eventually you're gonna run across like a vegan video talking about the ethics and you might stick yeah and like watch it right and then maybe your ethics start changing because you see more of that stuff and you're like oh that's why people are vegan and then your mindset shifts from i'm a plant-based diet eater to like i am a vegan and then you start eliminating leather and like everything else yeah and i think that happens all the time

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:09

And i think it's also a lot easier to i guess accept the, like the factory farming and stuff when you're like okay i don't really i don't haven't eaten that stuff in months yeah so like i don't really feel as strongly about we have to eat that stuff right then you're like okay so why do we have to farm the animal you kind of get.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:27

There exactly like your cognitive dissonance stops because you're not participating in this stuff exactly and i think that kind of happened with you i don't want to put words in your mouth yeah but like you know initially you kind of like ate a vegan diet because i was like when you move in no more meat for you no more no more anything for you right yeah and like i don't think you were like totally sold on the ethics also

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:49

Free food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:50

You know, also free food and i'm cooking for you but then like i think you started developing the ethics as it went right do you think that's like an accurate representation oh

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:00

Yeah definitely it's like you know it wasn't But it was definitely, okay, so when I started looking into this stuff before, it was like I was looking at whole food plant-based diet strictly from a health perspective. Yeah. And then, you know, you were vegan and we started talking about veganism and I was like, okay, well, maybe like this is sort of like a whole food plant-based diet and I'm still thinking about it from a health perspective. But, yeah, definitely, it was, like, further on, the more I, like, learned and got into it, and it's, like, okay, well, yeah, now I'm on board with the ethical thing. Right, right. And then, so now it's, like, okay, well, the ethical thing is the most important thing, and the health thing's a nice bonus.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:30

Yeah, exactly. And I just think that's a great example of, like, how your motivations can just drastically shift in a very short period of time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:37

I think something else that's interesting is, like, the health benefits are, kind of always up for debate, too. Like, you'll find some things, like, you thought it was healthier, maybe it turns out not to be healthier. So, like, if you're using that as your guiding light or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:53

Right. Well, yeah, if you're just trying to search for the healthiest diet, like, it could, yeah, something new could come out and be like, oh, actually, the Mediterranean diet is, like, slightly healthier than a plant-based diet. And it's like, oh, am I going to go do that? Yeah. But if you're, like, ethics-based, you wouldn't shift on that, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:09

Well, yeah, and I think that is actually probably reality because I don't know that there is any really clear science that says a vegan diet is better than a strict Mediterranean diet. Yeah. So if you were doing it just for health reasons, you might have a hard time crossing that line. Right. So, yeah, I think there definitely has to be more to it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:26

Yeah, just for staying power.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:28

Now I want to talk a little bit about our favorite time of year, Veganuary.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:32

Yay!

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:34

So we've actually interviewed Stu Giddens from Veganuary on the podcast before.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:38

Who was awesome. And if you haven't listened to that episode, you should listen to it because Stu was hilarious and just like a super nice guy. I really liked him.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:45

I did, too. He's a great guy. But yeah, so Veganuary every year, basically in January, they send out a 30 day email campaign to everybody who signs up, tries to help them, you know, tries to help them become vegan. But if nothing else, like do the vegan diet for the month of January.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:59

Yeah, and provides them with, like, good recipes. They actually have, like, I think, like, a celebrity cookbook, I think, too, of, like, celebrity, vegan celebrities' favorite recipes, but they have, like, thousands of vegan recipes on their website, too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:12

Yeah, yeah. So they've got a lot of support for people trying to do the thing. So they gather a bunch of data. So we've talked about Faunalytics data a bunch, but actually Veganuary has a ton of data about this. Oh, yeah. So in their own 2025 survey for who is actually doing Veganuary, 47% of people said animals were the top motivation. Wow. So that's interesting to me because Faunalytics tends to show that people do it for health more than anything. But Veganuary, it seems like people are starting out with doing it for the animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:39

It's pretty interesting. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:41

20% were personal health, and 14% were the environment.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:46

You know, I could see that because I think a lot of the recipes that Veganuary posts look like, they're like cozy comfort foods. They look like really, really yummy. They're not like the ones you see pushed from like the whole food plant-based diet where it's like, oh, look at this like super healthy looking salad. Yeah. You know, like this is like ooey gooey delicious food that Veganuary pushes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:06

Yeah. Also, 45% of the people were still eating meat or fish when they first took part in Veganuary. 26% were already vegan. So just kind of re-establishing. Re-establishing, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:19

I mean, I've definitely signed up for their emails. Oh, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:21

Yeah. I mean, it's always good information regardless. Yeah. There's always something to learn, you know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:26

Yeah, and if you aren't following Veganuary on Instagram, you should.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:29

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And then how many people stay vegan or stay like involved with the vegan diet or Veganuary, plant-based diet, any of that stuff depends on how you ask about it. So at the end of the 31 days, they do a survey for all the people who participated in Veganuary. Among the people who were not vegan before, 32% plan to stay vegan after Veganuary 2026. So the one from this year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:54

Dude, that's an impressive number.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:56

It's impressive, and it's also up to 32% from 25% in the 2023 version.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:02

That means they're doing a great job educating if people feel like they have the tools to stay vegan afterwards.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:07

Yeah. Also, six months after January 2025, 32% of those who weren't vegan before were fully vegan. Wow. So that's six months later.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:16

So Veganuary, you were doing some good work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:19

Yeah. But only under 1% of the people that they sent the email to replied.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:24

So, dude, that's just how it is. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I send a lot of emails out and I don't know who opens. Probably not many people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:33

So, I mean, they had 2,000 people reply. 32 percent of those were fully vegan at that point. Six months later. So that's still you're creating thousands of vegans every year, if nothing else.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:41

Yeah, no, that's amazing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:42

They also gather information about, like, reasons why you didn't stay vegan. Six months after Veganuary 2024, 20% of them said eating out was a big component of that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:54

Yeah, you hear that a lot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:55

20% of them said they missed foods. Mm-hmm. 14% said health. And then 11% said pressure from friends and family.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:03

Which I kind of feel like goes hand in hand with eating out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:05

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:06

You know, and what I will say, though, and this, you know, I would rather people be fully vegan, but... if they're going to be fully vegan at home or they're going to eat a fully plant-based diet at home and then like they go out with friends and family and maybe they aren't eating plant-based, that's still better than where they were before they started veganuary, right? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:25

In 2025, out of the people who said they were not staying vegan, 91% of those said they were very or extremely likely to try vegan again, which is kind of what you're talking about, like trying veganism. They see it as a trial. So they're thinking like, I'm going to go vegan for a couple of months yeah but i mean really technically okay that means they're just trying a plant-based diet but the end result is the same like we're not eating animal products we're large chunks of the year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:50

Yeah and that goes kind of with the Faunalytics data because they were asking like if you are a former vegan or vegetarian would you go back and like it was asking questions around like what would make you go back and we kind of covered that in one of our episodes in more detail but yeah yeah that's pretty much what the data says it's like a lot of these people that are like quote-unquote ex-vegan, ex-vegetarian are like still willing to go back. Yeah. Which is why I think this data is super important because if you have a bunch of people that say, hey, I tried this, I didn't stick with it, but I want to try it again. Yeah. You need to look at why they said they stopped.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:25

Oh, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:26

And you need to fix it or like provide resources or support.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:29

Yeah. And I mean, it's like, you know, across Veganuary and the Faunalytics surveys and stuff like that, the thing that becomes clear is like, people go back and forth quite a bit and people will go a plant-based diet they go to eating meat again they'll come back to a plant-based diet so like flip-flopping so you can tell like these people really want to do the plant-based diet thing they just have things that come up that stop them and those are the things like you're saying we need to we can address yeah and like maybe then you don't have a reason to go back to the animal products yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:55

And that's that's for me why i get so frustrated when like i try to talk about these studies because people get really hung up on the semantics of like what are we label the labels like vegan, plant-based, like, whatever, I'm looking past that and I'm looking at the actual data because like, regardless of If they're using the terms correctly, they were eating a plant-based diet. They stopped eating a plant-based diet. Why did they stop? And they're also interested in doing it again. This data is incredibly relevant to figuring out how to keep people eating a plant-based diet and eventually maybe going fully vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:26

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, I think vegan has a definition. Like, you're an ethical vegan. You don't use any animal products. You're doing it for the animals. Great. You're in the club. You're in the vegan club. Yeah. I also care about all these people who are outside the club. Like, I care about having them reduce their animal consumption through whatever means possible, through whatever, like, amount that is, whether they do it once a month, once a week, meatless Mondays, you do Veganuary every year. I don't care. I want to support all that stuff so that we can actually reduce the animal harm, the animal consumption. And then, you know, what these surveys are telling us is, like, the people who do try any variation of those things probably also eat less meat, in general throughout the rest of their lives. So, like, anything we can do to get people, like, comfortable or, like, trying things or doing trial periods or whatever, all of that stuff probably results in a lot less animal harm cumulatively over time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:18

And, you know, we're finishing up our book club on The Impactful Vegan. But something that, and this is my second read of it, and I love this book regardless of what our book club thinks. You know, and, like, my main takeaway is, like, there are parts of the book that's, like, you know, maybe not my favorite. Yeah. But, like, my main takeaway when I read it the first time and when I'm reading it again is that, in general, to be an effective, like, animal advocate, you need to take your ego out of it. So it's like, for instance, like... maybe it makes me feel good when i argue with somebody yeah like were you are you an ex-vegan were you an ex-vegan whatever that does make me feel good right like because like i like i love being right okay like you know this about me yeah i really like being right and i like correcting misinformation um but i think there is something to like if somebody is saying like they were ex-vegan regardless if they were ex-vegan or ex-plant-based i think the more important question is like why did you stop how can i help you what resources do you need like you know what i mean like approaching it from like why did you stop yeah like is there any help that you need you know what i mean i don't know i just think that's more important

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:28

I agree like what was the main thing that made you stop how can i help you with that so exactly start again.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:33

You know and maybe i need to read The Impactful Vegan once a year because man i get some crazy comments on my social media stuff and like i get pissed sometimes and i sometimes say rude shit yeah because it feels good in the moment but like i don't know just rereading the Impactful Vegan it's like my main takeaway is just like ego shouldn't be driving what you're doing like you have to remember the animals like first and foremost and like that can be hard yeah do you know what i mean like when you're responding to people like that are annoying to you leading with kindness can be difficult yeah Do you know what I mean? Like, it is a challenge sometimes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:09

Yeah. In these discussions, it gets very hung up on, are you actually vegan? Like, what is your label? Like, what are you doing? It's like, that's not really the right focus.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:18

It's not the right focus. And I don't think it really helps.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:21

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:22

You know what I mean? And yeah, I don't know. Me personally, being online as much as I am, I think I need like a refresher every couple of months to remember that like it actually isn't about me and like I need to be having effective conversations regardless of if that was like a satisfying conversation for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:37

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:38

Do you know what I mean? And like I do think leading with kindness first and foremost is like the most helpful because... I just know me as a person, I do not respond well to, like, being bullied online. I will do, like, the opposite of what people say almost always, like, and I've always been like that. So, I don't know. Anyways, it's just something that came up to me when I'm thinking, like, just The Impactful Vegan in general, like, has been making me rethink about, like, how I have conversations online and stuff. Or, like, how I present information, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:08

Yeah, I agree with that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:09

I think it's like, and I think a lot of these conversations, we're like a lot of the back and forth on the ex-vegan ex, it's like, we're really missing the whole plot, which is like, who cares about the label? Like, why are they quitting? What can we do to stop people from quitting?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:21

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:22

And so I think if we were thinking from the animal's perspective, we wouldn't be fixating on you're not using the correct label. We would be talking about why did you stop? That's bad for the animals. We need to figure out what happened there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:36

And provide solutions.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:37

Yeah, exactly. Let's let's overcome whatever objection or problem you had with, whatever that you need that to be education, support, like maybe even point you in the direction of products that fill a need that you need, whatever that is, you know. There are a lot of examples out there over time of those, you know, I'm not vegan anymore videos that I was talking about earlier. Again, I'm not going to like name any creators because I don't think that helps. But there were back in like 2018 to 2019, there were at least five well-known vegan YouTubers who announced that they had stopped being vegan in that time frame. Between November 2018 and March 2019. It's like a four-month period.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:19

That's interesting to me because it makes me think that some of them maybe had quit a while before and they just saw it as like, okay, I can kind of fly under the radar here because like someone else already did it first and I can just like rip the bandaid off.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:31

Well, that or they saw, you know, Billy Bob got 4 million views on his quitting video. Also true. I'm jumping on that trend.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:38

Oh, absolutely. And I think like, especially, you know, I don't know anything specifically about these people. Yeah. But, like, especially if you're not, like, an ethical vegan, maybe you're, like, a plant-based whatever. Yeah. And it's, like, there is a cap on how many followers you can get as, like, a plant-based or a vegan account because, like, you're just not appealing to the, like, general population. It's a very niche group of people. So, like, if you aren't in it for the ethics, like, yeah, having an exclusive video like that could get you a bunch of followers overnight. Oh, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:06

It's like the vegan restaurants who start trying to add meat to the menu to get more customers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:09

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:10

What are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so basically all of those would post like a long video that apologized to their fans and talked about like the health problems they had that led to them eating animal products most of the time. One of them had like digestive issues, but said that their strong ethical attachment had led them to overlook how serious the digestive issues were. One of them was a raw vegan for six years. The doctors had diagnosed a gut condition and recommended adding eggs and meat, which seems interesting. There was one that was an athlete and said he had eaten raw eggs and wild salmon after a 35-day water fast and then went back to eating vegan and then said he'd eat animal products again. And he actually stepped down from the vegan clothing brand that he founded.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:54

That's pretty crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:55

Yeah. So, you know, people have different medical situations. I'm not going to make any comments on that. But the point is, like, there was... time just a few years ago really high visibility of a bunch of these videos coming out at the same time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:08

Which makes the general population think oh people are constantly quitting veganism

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:12

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:14

Because they go viral you know

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:16

Yeah yeah so like one of them you know got like 500 000 views in eight days but now the video is private so there was some backlash.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:23

I'm sure there was

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:25

Another one got like 750 000 views that person ended up doing a 30 day carnivore diet uh like a year later ended up with like 800 000 views so like for that person's views i guess it worked out um but now you're like how was vegan now i'm carnivore yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:40

I mean if that i don't want to like comment but that was probably like a health based a health focused plant-based person right

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:48

Like yeah yeah and then there was one um in july 2026 i guess it was somebody who was like vegan for 14 years um and posted a short saying like they were eating steak for the first time and it had 6 million views.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:02

Yeah, I mean, people just like that kind of shit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:03

No.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:05

You would not believe the amount of times people have, like, offered me money to eat various meat products once they heard I was a vegetarian since I was, like, a kid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:14

It's such a weird fascination from omnivores to, like, see a vegetarian or a vegan eat animals again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:20

Yeah. Plus, people just want to see controversy in general.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:23

Oh, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:23

People are like, this is one of those videos, I guess, where you pull it up and you go straight to the comments. You don't even care about the video. It's like, I'm here for the drama.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:30

Yo, exactly. I mean, and we kind of talked about that on our last episode about, like, social media veganism. Yeah. It's like, the more controversial it is, the more fucking viral it goes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:40

Yeah. And so, you know, there were, like, pretty big pile-ons and backlash for a lot of those videos. But people would, like, the comments are just insane. Like, a bunch of name-calling, a bunch of really pissed-off people. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:54

Which, like, I get it, right? I do. And, I mean, I guess, like, the part that's, like, so weird for me as a vegan and a content creator is I just can't personally imagine a scenario that would lead me to eating animal products again. Yeah. Like, I would have to be, I don't even know what it would, it would have to be some insane, like, I literally can't survive on a vegan diet somehow. Like, I'm going to die. Right? Yeah. But then, you know what I'd do? I'd just disappear into the ethers. Like you'd never hear from me again. I'm not going to make a big video about it to get a bunch of views.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:28

And then switch to like a carnivore influencer or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:30

And like discount an ethical belief system that I strongly believe in. I would never do that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:36

And I think that's what I was saying earlier. Like I think a situation like that is like you're still maybe an ethical vegan. You just can't practice anymore. Yeah. And maybe you shouldn't be out there calling yourself a vegan anymore. Yeah. But, you know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:46

I think I'd probably stop posting though. Yeah. Like I guess that's my thing is like as a vegan content creator, I would just. like if for some reason i couldn't keep it up yeah i don't know what that would be like i just don't see that ever happening right but like there's no way i'm gonna get views and clicks and likes over dissing veganism in any any fucking way like i would just disappear genuinely

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:10

Yeah i mean why would you i guess that's what i understand if you were ever an ethical vegan why would you want to go out like doing harm.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:18

To exactly like the movement you cared about But then I guess it's like what you said, like maybe somebody like literally changed their ethical beliefs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:25

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:27

But yeah, I mean, I think like I think the vast majority of people that are like just trying to get a bunch of clicks and likes off of it probably weren't ethical.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:34

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:35

Vegans is like the true fact. Not to say that you can't be an ethical vegan and eventually not be an ethical vegan, but like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:41

But you're probably not making a post about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:43

I wouldn't think so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:44

No.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:45

I just go back to engineering. You never hear from me again. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:50

Yeah. So, I mean, there's something called the black sheep effect in psychology that basically people judge members of their own group more extremely than outsiders.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:58

Oh, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:59

So that's why there's a lot of like vegans arguing with other vegans. Because like they're more likely to actually be more extreme. I think it's because you feel a little safer. Like you're like, it's like arguing with family or whatever. Yeah. Like you feel more comfortable sometimes arguing with family than you're arguing with strangers. I think it's a similar like effect.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:18

Yeah. I think like the problem that's overlooked when you're doing a lot of infighting, though, is that you're assuming outsiders aren't looking at those comments. But that's never true on social media.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:29

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:30

So like people see you infighting within a vegan space and they're maybe like thinking about veganism and they're like, oh, if they hate each other, they're definitely going to hate me and I'm not going to be welcomed. So I think, I don't know. I think if you're trying to represent a movement well, infighting is maybe a bad look as far as like when.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:49

Publicly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:49

Publicly when strangers are seeing it. I think it's fine like in a shared safe space. Right. You know where you're like maybe like arguing about. Yeah. Various like philosophical.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:59

Yeah. I mean there are obviously going to be disagreements. Yeah. It's probably just best not to hash those out publicly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:04

Yeah. I just think it makes it look like, I don't know, like a little toxic or like maybe you wouldn't be welcomed as a newcomer.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:11

Yeah. I guess some of these creators had, you know, some pretty negative outcomes. I guess one, like when they posted their I'm not vegan anymore thing, they got abused so bad that their mom had to set their Instagram account to private. Oh, wow. Yeah. Another one ended up with like death threats and got called names and one of them stopped posting about food altogether. So even if the video gets a lot of views, like it's probably going to be a pretty big mental.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:34

Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. But then, you know, the other thing is, is that even if you have this. So what I've seen, because there are like several content creators in the vegan space that will like stitch these videos.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:45

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:46

And it blows them up even more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:48

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:49

Which I have like. I've watched a lot of the stitches and I like the stitches, but I also feel like there's maybe a point where it does more harm than good because it's directing traffic back to these videos that maybe wouldn't have caught fire the way they did if they hadn't done it. Because these are like very big accounts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:07

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:08

So I almost wonder, like part of me feels like stitching these videos and giving them more public view is bad. You know what I mean? Like I almost think there's something to just ignoring it. Like just not engaging. because most of the comments they're getting, like most of the engagement is from vegans, which means that it's going to blow up and non-vegans are going to see it, right? So I don't know. For me, it's maybe, maybe just stop commenting. Maybe stop commenting, stop stitching this shit. Don't give them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:35

I mean, what are you adding at that point? If they're posting that, they're not going to change their mind.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:38

Exactly. You're just like giving them engagement.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:40

Yeah, yeah. Also, so there was one ex-vegan influencer who talked to Vice, who is like a news organization, if you're not familiar with them. But she said after she went public, Like she heard from people who had quietly been eating animal products for years while still calling themselves vegan because they were afraid to say so. So again, kind of like we talked about people just like mislabeling themselves, not understanding, or in that case, something just intentionally.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:01

Lying to people. Yeah, lying to people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:05

Like you said, I don't really understand the point of that. If you're going to go back to it, just go back to it and stop talking about it. I don't know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:10

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:10

It's weird.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:12

It is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:13

I think that being able to say, I used to be one of you, it strikes a certain chord with some people. So, like, when vegans see somebody who used to be a vegan or something like that, and they're like, okay, now I'm not a vegan anymore because of all these things, people might start thinking, like, oh, am I doing something wrong? Like, should I still be a vegan? Yeah. Things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:34

But I also feel like it gives credence to non-vegans that see it. Yeah. Right? Because it's like if you were considering veganism and then you see a video from someone who's like, oh, I was vegan for 14 years and it destroyed my health. Yeah. You're like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't try that, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:50

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:52

I think that's like another thing is it makes people wary of veganism in general when they see people that say they've been vegan for a decade and now they have health problems or whatever and they stop. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:01

And, I mean, I've used this in the other direction whenever people are like, oh, you'll miss meat or talking about veganism or whatever. I'm like, hey, look, I wasn't vegan for, like, the first few decades of my life. Yeah, yeah. Like, I know all the things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:13

I know what it tastes like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:14

I know everything you know, but now I'm vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:16

Yeah, now I know more. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:18

And there was actually a study back in 1975 with, like, an anti-alcohol thing. So, they had a former alcoholic and then they also had a lifelong teetotaler to somebody who never smokes, never drinks. Yeah. But they gave the same message to people about alcohol. And the person who was a former alcoholic actually had a better reception because he was able to say, like, hey, I've been there. Oh, yeah. And he was able to talk in the first person about, like, heavy drinking and all the negative consequences of that. So he's like, I used to be one of you talking to, like, alcoholics and stuff and just had a better reception.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:52

No, I totally see that because I also see like stuff on TikTok of like, oh, like I used to be like heavily indoctrinated into Christianity and now I am like an atheist, you know, and then they have all these talking points of like they were like fully in. They're fully aware of, like, the Bible and stuff and, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just a different vibe than, like, oh, I've always been an atheist.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:14

You know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:15

Yeah. And people are also, I guess, more likely to listen to people who speak against their own interest because you have a little bit of, like, okay, why would you be doing that if it wasn't totally true?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:23

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, it makes it feel more honest, I guess. Like, you came from here and now you're leaving. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:30

So there was also a study in 2014 that showed that, you know, vegetarians talking to meat eaters and the vegetarians who came across as more consistent and authentic made the meat eaters lean more into things that made them feel better about eating meat, like thinking that animals weren't smart or didn't have, you know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:49

Yeah, like they came up with more excuses to justify it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:51

Yeah, that's kind of what we were talking about. So that can make, like, an ex-vegan make meat eaters feel better. Right. Because they're like, oh, okay, well, this person was a vegan. They're not anymore. Why the hell would I be a vegan?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:02

Exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:03

I was right this whole time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:04

Yeah. It adds on, like, an excuse. Like, now you don't need the excuse of, like, oh, animals, like, don't feel pain or whatever. Now you can just say, well, like, look at all the vegans quitting. Like, clearly this is not, like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:15

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:16

And you see it all the time online. People say shit like that. Like, all vegans quit. And why would I go do that? All vegans quit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:22

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:22

I mean, I see that on threads a lot. That's why I don't go on threads anymore. But yeah, it's kind of like if you're couch potato, right? And, like, everyone's always telling you to exercise and run and whatever. And then, like, maybe, like, a runner comes out and they're like, oh, I'm in, like, horrible condition from running. And you're like, ah, I knew it all along.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:41

I never liked running anyways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:42

Good thing I never tried that. Yeah, exactly. So there was actually a study in 2022 that was kind of interesting. It looked at the subreddit anti-vegan on Reddit, which is, like, a community of people who are actively anti-vegan. Yeah, yeah. But.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:01

I wish all the trolls that keep trolling ours would just go live there. We don't want you in our subreddit. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:07

But yeah, ex-veganism in that study was one of the traits that linked users to the community. And a lot of the health discussions that came up were pretty heavily populated by ex-vegans talking about like the health implications of being a vegan or whatever issues they had or thought they had. Health is a weird one because, like, you think something is causing you an issue. It's not really the thing. You know, you see a lot of stuff online. It's like, oh, I started eating beans and now my toe hurts all day. Like, should I stop eating beans? You know, like, that's not what's happening.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:36

Yeah. I think there's also, like, something about, you know, doctors don't get a whole lot of nutritional training either. So, like... You go to the doctor and it's like, oh, like what's changed in your diet? And you're like, oh, I'm a vegan. And they're like, oh, that's like horrible for you. Like start eating meat again. And then you do that and then something suddenly clears up and you don't know what it is because they never actually diagnosed you properly in the first place. And now you blame it on veganism.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:59

Also, a lot of people never even bother asking their doctor. They'd rather ask the Internet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:03

Absolutely. Yeah. They go on Reddit and they're like and people are like, well, you just need to start eating meat again. And they're like, well, OK, I guess I have to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:10

Yeah. But one of the things that was interesting in that study is, like, there was not necessarily a clear relationship between ex-vegans and anti-vegans, which are different things. Ex-vegan is just, like, maybe you tried it and you're not anymore. Anti-vegan is, like, you're actively against the idea of veganism.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:26

Which I don't even understand what an—I don't know how you become an anti-vegan. Yeah. I've seen a lot, and I'm like, I don't understand why this is all you do online all day. Yeah. Like, you are literally just in vegan subreddits being a fucking douchebag, and I don't even know why you're doing that. Like, it's super fucking weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:45

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:47

Anti-vegans are, like, the group I don't understand the most in the world.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:51

Yeah. You know, I think carnivore really added fuel to that fire. There was, like, carnivore stories back in, like, 2019 where a carnivore podcast had an episode about former celebrity vegans now thriving on a carnivore diet. Yeah. It's like, okay, well, they were probably not vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:08

I know, but that doesn't help the carnivore media, right? Yeah. Like... Yeah, there is definitely more propensity to go viral if you say former vegan or ex-vegan instead of like former plant-based eater, ex-plant-based eater.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:22

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:23

It's like, yeah, well, obviously ex-vegan is going to be way more viral than the other one, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:28

Yeah, and I guess a lot of the carnivore podcasts have episodes that are like ex-vegan. If you search ex-vegan in Apple Podcasts, it's like a carnivore episode that comes up. Oh, sure. So they really lean into like do carnivore because there are ex-vegans. I've never listened to those, so I don't really understand their relationship. But, yeah. So what do we think that ex-vegans can tell us? Like, look at why people stopped and try to address those things. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:52

That's the main takeaway. Like, instead of getting mad, think about what we can learn from it, I think, is, like, the advice I would give to anyone listening. Yeah. Because it is annoying. It's obviously annoying. It annoys me, too. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:23:03

Instead of asking, like, were you really a vegan? Instead, we should ask, like, okay, what made it hard for you? Yeah, yeah. How can we make it easier for you?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:23:10

Would you go back? What would help you go back?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:23:12

Right. So, yeah, again, like, better or easier food was, like, the biggest one by far. Yeah. And those are the surveys. So, they're just unhappy with the food. That seems like such an easy problem to solve.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:23:25

Oh, absolutely. Right? Like, we can definitely solve that with better recipes, better support. I mean, I really like seeing people post about, like, here's how you can order vegan food from various fast food restaurants. That makes it easier.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:23:40

Yeah. And I think, you know, I don't know the numbers on this, but I'm guessing like the, well, I think in general, the younger generations don't cook as much. And then as you get into middle age and older, you cook more. But, you know, so I think we need options across the whole spectrum. You know, you have a lot of recipes. You do great with recipes. A lot of people like that. Even a lot of young people. But like younger guys for the most part. Yeah. Not cooking a whole lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24:01

Right. Or you have people at college.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:24:03

Oh, yeah. You can't cook. No kitchen.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24:05

You can't cook. You have like maybe like a shared kitchen space in your dorm and then like maybe the campus options super duper suck and you can't figure out what to eat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:24:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24:14

You know, like you're just eating bland tofu every day. I mean, that would be really hard.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:24:19

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, if we can address, you know, more convenient options or even just, like, how to find good options at the grocery store. Yeah. Something like that. Because there's a lot of stuff in the grocery store that are really good vegan options you probably don't even know are there. Mm-hmm. So, you know, some of that stuff. Also, like, motivation or dedication. A lot of that stuff is self-driven. It's hard to help too much with that. But I think, like, the community support, helps with motivation. I know whenever I'm, like, trying to stay dedicated to something, it helps to be in some sort of, usually online community. If you can find an in-person community, that's probably even better. But that helps you kind of, like, keep a forefront in your mind all the time. And, like, you're working towards the thing and you're learning stuff and you've got people to vent to and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:25:02

And then kind of like you said on the motivation and dedication part, the survey that we referenced earlier said that you were, like, twice as likely to stay if you were doing it for longer. like your motivation and dedication to the cause increases as you do it longer. So like if the food is becoming an op, like an issue with you, then you're less likely to stay longer. And then maybe you'll cite that as motivation issues. Right. Yeah. Whereas like if the food part was easy, maybe you'd be vegan or plant-based for long enough where you would develop those ethics and morals because you were like in, in it long enough to develop them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:25:36

Yeah. I think if you can like think about it as fake it till you make it for a year, once you're past a year, it's probably not even.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:25:41

You're probably good to go and you probably understand everything. Yeah. And then cost was another one that, that always gets cited, which if you think about it, like eating all a whole food plant based diet is one of the cheapest ways you can eat. But if you're relying heavily on meat and dairy alternatives, it can get expensive.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:25:57

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:25:57

Which is why I think, you know, having cheap, easy, delicious recipes is very helpful.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:03

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:05

Which is like the Eat Cheap and Vegan sub is really great on Reddit because they specifically focus on like cheap, but still tasty.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:12

Yeah. And now I think also, you know, when we think about the stuff that gets shared to people to try to get them to go vegan, it's all fairly short term stuff. Like Veganuary is a month. You tell them to watch Dominion or whatever, your favorite documentary. That's like a one-time thing they're thinking about. So it's like easy to get them motivated in the beginning. but then you know you get into a couple months down the road and you're like dealing with these family pushback and like your social situation yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:38

The support's gone

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:39

You know like i have to cook 15 times a week and so it's like all that stuff is like where it really starts to become a little bit of a drag and you have to try to figure out how to overcome each one of those things and make it a normal part of your life, and i think that is where you know people really need the support yeah rather than just say hey watch dominion and never talk to the person again yeah Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:56

That always annoys, I mean, you can do whatever you want on Reddit. But when people ask for, like, advice, it always just annoys me. The top voted answer is always, go watch Dominion. Yeah. And it's like, they're asking you for support, advice, help, like, something a little bit more useful than that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:27:12

Yeah, not to mention, like, if you think about it as, like, a funnel, they're already past that part of the funnel. Like, they're already in.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:19

They're already in the vegan subreddit asking you how to, like, do a thing. Right. Like, it's just not helpful.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:27:25

Yeah. So, I mean, we're already there. Like, they're in the maintenance and support phase, not the watch Dominion and get angry about things. Yeah. There's definitely some adjustments that can be made there in a lot of interactions. Absolutely. Yeah. So, like, for me, I think one of the things that's gotten easier the longer I've done it is just, like, knowing by default what the options are. Yeah. Like, if we don't want to cook or whatever. Like, I've learned over time, like, what the restaurants are. And not only, like, what the restaurants are, but, like, what things I like from those restaurants. Yeah. And that are vegan options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:57

And that takes months. It takes a long time. If not years to, like, figure that shit out. Like, you have... You go through some shitty food to figure that out, right? Yeah. But then now, like, when we don't want to cook, we're like, okay, we have, like, six places we can get food from. Right. Which one do you want? Right. Right? Or it's like we keep a... like a stash in the freezer of like Daiya pizzas frozen pizzas if we don't want to cook

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:20

Yeah and like even uh another thing that's gotten easier is like the snack selection and stuff like protein bars shakes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:27

Whatever yeah you have to figure out which which ones you like right

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:31

Yeah so that's a.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:31

Few months right

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:32

But now at this point i'm like oh i know it's just like it's just like before i was vegan i know all the stuff i like i know where to get it and it's fine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:38

You're on autopilot but it took you like a year or so to figure all that shit out right yeah same with like cooking like cooking for a while took it took me a while to figure out like what i even wanted to cook and how to use protein sources like well

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:50

You're also out here inventing new things nobody's ever done before. So that does make it take a little longer.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:55

Yeah that that is true like it's probably faster if you just find a food blog but yeah i mean it does take a while to figure out like what kind of foods do i like you know because like you might not like the foods everyone else likes Well,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:10

And I do think there's also, when it comes to cooking, is how to use new ingredients you haven't used. Like, TVP, like tofu. Like, do I press tofu? Do I soak TVP? Oh, yeah. Like, all that weird stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29:20

What do I do with all this shit? Yeah. Never used it before.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:22

Right. And that's mostly for the proteins. But, yeah, everything else is kind of the same.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29:26

Right. Yeah, like the butter you just switch to a vegan butter or, like, a cheese you switch to a vegan cheese.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29:31

That kind of stuff. But, yeah, like, the protein sources are totally different if you're trying to save money and just eat whole foods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:35

Yeah. So I think if we could think of it in terms of like, how do we make somebody's fifth year of veganism easier and not necessarily how do you make their first month of veganism easier? Yeah. I think that would really help people be able to stick to it a lot better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29:49

Yeah. And, like, just providing ongoing support after, you know, like, I just feel like motivation wanes and, like, a supportive community goes a long way.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:59

Yeah. Yeah, we've got a lot of people in the Discord that have been vegan for quite a while. So, I mean, they obviously still, you know, enjoy having a community for support and they still ask questions and talk about things. Like, it's not really something that ever goes away, like anything else in your life. Like, there are plenty of things I've done for my entire life, like computers and stuff. I still, like, join computer chats and, like, talk about computers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:19

You want to be with your people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:20

Right. So, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:21

Yeah, we also have a lot of newer vegans in there. And, like, I think it's a great place, especially if you can find a good mix of, like, new and experienced so that, you know, new people feel comfortable asking questions and, like, experienced people can, like, provide, you know, life experience they have.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:37

So, I think, you know, in closing, I think the ex-vegan thing comes up so much because it sounds like you're kind of getting the scoop, the inside scoop on, like, the vegan thing. It's like, oh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:47

The whistleblower.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:48

Yeah, the whistleblower. veganism is actually a sham people are leaving it's not but that's not really what's going on they just right they probably weren't vegan to begin with most of them and then you know, even once they leave they still eat less meat so it's you know yeah there's a lot going on there it's not that black and white also like the videos just tend to pop off because all the controversy and the engagement and all the like stitches a lot of them like the reaction the reaction videos get more way more views than the initial video a lot of the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31:14

I just think we need to stop like giving them air. Yeah. Like it's a little tiny ember and you guys are like throwing oxygen on it and being like burn the forest down. Yeah. It's like please just like block these people and move on with your life. I think they'd get a lot more traction if vegan stopped like giving them any attention to be honest.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31:33

Yeah. And it doesn't help when you have, like, the misinterpreted studies, like, the Faunalytics 84% thing. Yeah. Most of those weren't vegans. Also, like, they were, they were just based on the diet. So, it's not 84% of vegans stop being vegan. That's not even what the study said. Yeah. But that's definitely how people are going to represent it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31:50

It gets distilled into something that's, like, a little bit more, like, viral.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31:54

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31:55

Able to go viral.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31:56

Yeah. And, you know, with all the terminology blurring, it just makes it to where you can kind of tell any story you want. Yeah. Like, if there's, like, a lot of confusion between vegan and plant-based and, like, what it means to actually be vegan and stop being vegan, all that stuff, you can just kind of drive the narrative and say, yeah, all the vegans quit being vegan. Mm-hmm. But that's not really what's happening. Vegans that are vegan for more than a few years almost never quit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:21

Right. And if they do, there's probably, like, some of the other stuff that we talked about. Right. Like, this is not to say that ex-vegans can't possibly exist. It's just it's not the majority of people that you see claiming ex-veganism, right? Yeah. But I think aside from all of that, all the labeling, the most important part that we should all be looking at is the studies and figuring out like where we need to improve. Because if you can get somebody to already eat a plant-based diet, that's already hard enough to convince you to try a plant-based diet for a while. Yeah. If you're quitting that, we need to figure out what like how can we make this better? How can we make it easier? Like what support do you need? What resources do you need?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:59

And it seems like that's mostly a couple of things like, How to get food more conveniently, how to get better food, like food you enjoy, and then a lot of, like, how to deal with social situations, like going out to restaurants with people, and then, like, how to deal with your family, like pushback and awkwardness and stuff like that. So, those are a lot of things we try to talk about on the podcast in general, but also, I think, a lot of things that people actually need real-world support for to, like, keep doing the thing long term.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:25

Yeah, because I will say it's like a lot of work goes into getting someone to be like, ooh, I'll try plant-based eating. Right. And I like to think of it as like a tank because I'm an engineer. But like you have a tank, OK, and you're trying to fill the tank up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:40

Like a like a vat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:41

Not like a vat. No, like a vessel. OK. OK. You're trying to fill it up with water. OK. And you have an inlet pipe going in that's providing water at a specific volume of water. OK. But then you have an outlet pipe. Right. That's losing water at a high rate. And that is basically what is happening in the plant based eating space. It is like really hard to get people to go into the tank at all. Yeah. Right? But then you just have people like falling out the bottom because you're not closing it off.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:09

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:10

Like we need to be closing the leak, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:12

Your drain's way bigger than your faucet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:13

Yeah. We're leaking out people. Like we need to tighten that shit up. Like how can we make you enjoy the tank? Right. We want to fill the tank up with a bunch of vegans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:22

You need pretty lights and good music. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:25

Good food and good music, good vibes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:27

Good people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:28

Nice people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:28

Let all the assholes go down the drain.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:30

Helpful people that want to help and support and be nice. So, yeah, close the drain. That's the moral of the story. Close the ex-vegan pipeline.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:45

All right. Well, I think that's it for the main segment. Let's get into the bite-sized coaching. If you guys don't know, I'm a personal trainer. So, every week I try to do a brief little question and answer session to talk about something, you know, fitness or nutrition related that might be helpful to you. Um, but you get to ask me the question.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:35:02

Damn right I do. Okay, this week's question... is how many days a week should I lift weight?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:35:11

Yeah. So the right way to think about it is technically how many sets of an exercise you want to do per muscle group per week. So it depends on how much time you have also. So typically you would try to aim for like at least 10 per muscle group per week. But if you have less time, you might do less. If you have more time, you might do more. So how that ties into how many days per week is you're basically just splitting up the days so that your gym sessions don't run too long for getting all that stuff in one week. So if you wanted to do 10 sets for every muscle group in a week, then, you know, you've got like six, depending on how many muscle groups you're hitting, because that's also a choice. You have somewhere between like 50 to 80 sets of exercises you have to do in a week. So if you try to put those all in one day, that's probably going to take a couple hours. And also you'll be kind of like tired by the end of it. You're not doing good sets. So you might think like, okay, Maybe I want to split that up into two days. So then you try it for two days and you're like, oh, well, okay, I'm still like in there for an hour and a half. That's a little too long. I'm going to add a third day and you can make all your sessions a little shorter. So that's kind of how you would structure it. And a lot of these splits you'll see out there. So you'll see like three-day full body is the most common one for beginners. And that's because it's really easy to split up the volume you would need as a beginner across three days. Another really common one is like a four day split and that can be either full body or some people do like upper lower upper lower but that's just because you can take all your sets and you can spread them across four days now so maybe you can even add a couple more sets if you want to get a little more result, so i would say basically just do as many days a week as you need to split up, the number of sets that you're trying to do, i would say for a starting point i recommend a few days a week. If you feel like you have more time, maybe you can do three days a week. Um, you probably don't need to do more than three days a week unless you're pretty serious about it. Almost nobody really needs to do more than four days a week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:37:07

Okay. So the 10, the 10 plus sets a week per muscle group, is that just for like optimizing muscle growth? Or is that for like, what if I'm just trying to like get a little bit stronger? Do I really need like 10 sets per muscle group a week?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:37:21

So there's a concept of minimum effective volume. That basically means how little can I do and still get a little bit of growth. Okay. Which I think is somewhere around four sets per muscle group per week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:37:33

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:37:33

But 10 sets is a lot more in the range of like, I'm really making the most of my time. It's still not maximal because there's actually not been quite an upper limit found on this yet. So there have been studies up to like 40 sets of muscle group per week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:37:46

But you're getting like diminishing results.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:37:47

Yeah. Above 10 probably. It's definitely diminishing results. Okay. And it takes a huge amount of time. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:37:52

But like 10 plus is like, I would say hardcore though, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:37:56

10 plus is, is, uh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:37:58

Like you're serious.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:00

Yeah. It's like you're serious, but you're not professional. It's probably like what most normal people should try to achieve. But if you're short on time or you're just like, I just want to be generally healthy or whatever, I try to get at least four per muscle group probably. Okay. And if you're just trying to maintain your muscle, like you don't necessarily want to get bigger. You just want to make sure you're not losing muscle. Yeah. You can actually probably get by with like two sets per muscle group.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:20

Okay. Yeah. I'm just thinking of like longevity purposes of like, oh, I just don't want to lose muscle as I age. Yeah. That would be like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:26

Probably two to three.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:27

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:28

And then that you'd probably, you could probably get by for pretty much ever with like two days a week, full body workout, something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:33

Cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:34

Yeah. The more you do, the more you get out of it, but also it takes more time. Yeah. So I would just like add an extra day whenever your gym sessions start feeling too long, basically. So for the Protein Deficient Vegan recipes, are you working on any new ones?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:45

I am.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:46

What do you got?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:47

I am working on a breakfast sausage.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:38:51

Oh, yeah. No, I've tried the prototype of this. It's really good. The blueberry sausage. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:38:56

Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it has blueberries in it. But you can't really taste them. But it does add like a nice color.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:01

Yeah. To me, it tastes like those. I don't know why it tastes like this. But it tastes like those sausage sandwiches where they do like the little mini pancakes for the buns. Yeah. And you're like, so you're just eating like sausage between two pancakes. Because I think you've got like maple syrup and blueberries.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:14

Just like a tiny bit of maple syrup. But yeah, blueberries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:17

It's crazy because like I'll pick the sausage pieces up and it smells just like a stack of pancakes. It's really actually insane to me. And then you bite it and it tastes like all that stuff together.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:26

But it's good though, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:27

Oh, it's good. It's really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:28

But also mine is going to have fennel as optional because I fucking hate fennel. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:33

Fennel-less sausage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:34

Fennel-less sausage.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:35

We're trading our fennel for blueberries.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:37

Like if you like fennel, you should definitely add fennel. But like I hate fennel. There's something about fennel. Like, okay. And this is the same with cilantro. If something has fennel or cilantro, even if I'm like looking at it and I can't see it, you know, like maybe they just put like a tiny bit in, I will find it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:39:53

Oh, man. Cilantro.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39:56

Cilantro bloodhound yeah I'm like a truffle hunting pig but like a cilantro hunting human you do it with pepper too oh yeah like

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:40:04

One grain of black pepper and something and you're like it's so hot I need water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:40:08

Yeah there's like certain things I like cannot eat Not to say my food is flavorless, but, like, I can't do pepper. Yeah. I can't do cilantro. Oh, fucking hate cilantro. Oh, I hate it so much. I don't know. I mean, I guess people really like it. So, obviously, my taste buds are just corrupted.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:40:25

Well, I think I've seen the cilantro as one of those things where it's, like, some kind of gene.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:40:29

Genetic thing, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:40:30

Kind of like the people who can smell asparagus pee and people who can't.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:40:33

I can smell asparagus pee. Me too. It makes me not eat asparagus, actually. along with like my brother had um he had one of these like uh i don't know what it's called it's like to expand your top like uh tooth situation okay they put like this thing and it has like this key and it like pushes your teeth out like to expand it anyways it's like a whole contraption on the top the roof of your mouth yeah but when i was like living at home right he was eating asparagus once and it got stuck up there at the roof of his mouth in this contraption and like he like i think it was a cookout so he like ran into the yard and was like trying to yak it up and that was my last impression of asparagus it's like the last time i ate asparagus because it was like so disturbing and he was just trying to like dig this piece out he got like it was like really gross that's crazy yeah but he lived so and he's good

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:41:28

That's good yeah no that's good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:41:30

It had a happy ending. My brother's alive. He's great. I don't know if he still eats asparagus.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:41:35

So are you making asparagus sausage next? No. Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:41:40

Anyway, yeah. Blueberry sausage to come.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:41:44

Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Yeah, so I think that's it. If you guys want to hang out with us, you can come check out the Deficient Vegans Discord. We have that down in the show notes. You can also reach out in social media or go to our websites. We have all that down there as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:42:00

The book club is wrapping up by Monday, actually, so it'll be the final day when you hear this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:42:06

For The Impactful Vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:42:07

Yeah, but you can go back. We have the questions pinned in the discussion chats, so in case you're behind, you can always catch up, and somebody will, like, you know, discuss things with you you'd like to discuss. We also have another book club, a spooky special edition book club starting in October for Tender Is the Flesh.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:42:25

Tender Is the Flesh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:42:28

So if you want to do that, you should join that, too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:42:30

Yeah. I saw, I think, a Threads post or something yesterday. It was, like, somebody reading it. I don't remember what this was. But they were like, what the fuck was this?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:42:41

Well great i haven't started it yet but that um seems like something i'm gonna like then also completely unrelated but if you listen to the four new taylor swift songs i want to know what your thoughts are and your rating your rankings because i need to know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:42:59

She's got to know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:43:00

Have to know

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:43:02

Also if you had any inside information about the next album release or you want to go down conspiracy rabbit holes with her she'd be happy to do that too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:43:08

I'm sure Yeah. Plus, there's going to be a new music video by the time you hear this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:43:13

Oh, that's exciting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:43:14

For patient zero.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:43:17

All right. Well, appreciate you listening. If you're listening on Apple Podcast or Spotify, if you could follow and leave us a review, that helps us out a lot. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can also leave us a comment. So if you have any questions you want answered on the show, or if you just want to talk to us and ask us stuff, we can reply in the comments. That works, too. We love hearing from you guys. All right. Well, I think that's it. You want to say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:43:38

Bye, guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:43:39

Bye, everybody.