Hello dear bodybuilders community
After couple months of consideration I've decided to join this community. I considered this for a couple of months because for these months I wasn't sure if I will change my diet to vegan. Also I wasn't sure if I'll dare to start bodybuilding on vegan diet (It sounded a bit extreme). But here I am
When I started writing this post, I didn't really thought it's going to be sooooo long (I'm writing this sentence after I have finished writing the post), but I had so many thoughts in my mind that I had to put them on computer screen I am very happy and proud to be vegan so it's nice to express myself in vegan community for the first time. I hope you won't get tired of reading and if you will - just don't read it A little bit about me:
I'm 23 years old (recently it was my birthday. happy B-day to me!) and for the past 3 years I've been working, studying and living in Denmark. Well I love my country (Lithuania) and I'm proud to be Lithuanian, but I had to go abroad in order to get a better education and to build up my life
In the far future I'm planning to come back to Lithuania, but like I said - that's for the future Right now I'm learning Danish, working and recently I've started bodybuilding.It's been 8 weeks since I started going to the gym. It seems that everything goes alright, but I still got some unanswered questions and problems that I'd like to solve. Maybe you guys will help me to go past these obstacles
But I'll go back to this later on. I explained my situation in this post:viewtopic.php?f=46&t=35899&p=319542#p319542
I had some problems with my health in childhood and I still got asthma so vegan lifestyle seemed like a good idea to see if it's going to help to increase my health. It seems that it really helped - I haven't been sick throughout the year (I was a bit cold last winter, but then I wasn't vegan
). Also I'm feeling better and stronger than ever before - I even don't have problems with my skin any more, YAY! The reasons why I became vegan are mostly environmentally related. Also I see vegan lifestyle as healthier compared to traditional diet. Mostly it was my girlfriend that motivated me to change my diet. She went vegetarian around 1,5 year ago and I followed her progress with curiosity. Even after she stopped eating meat she seemed okay (I thought that she will ruin her health)! I also even made a big online research to prove her that she's wrong and that she can't survive on vegetarian diet. To my surprise I couldn't find any solid proofs that vegetarian lifestyle is unhealthy (except B-12 and other few shortages). This online research actually changed my point of view and I believe that it was the first step towards vegan diet. I still kept consumed animal products, but in the back of my head something kept telling me that this is wrong. I shouldn't consume animal products, why do I even consume if there is no need?
Month after month my consumption of meat was decreasing (mostly because I didn't buy meat). After some months my girlfriend offered me to quit eating meat and that was pretty much enough for me to quit it. So it took me around one year to quit meat. So I'm vegetarian for around 4-7 months (It's hard to tell when was the last time I ate meat).
Soon after I went to vegetarian diet, I and my girlfriend watched some inspiring documentaries about changes that people encounters after changing to raw or vegan lifestyles. The first movie that we watched is called "Fat, Sick & Nearly dead". Straight after this movie we went on 10 day smoothie’s diet (to cleanse toxins from our bodies, etc.). This movie proved me even more that it's possible to live without dairy product too. Weeks later we watched "Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days" and that was the last step for me to quit dairy products and eggs. So transformation from vegetarian to vegan took me around 2 months
I was doing some weight lifting back when I was 15-18 , but it never lasted for more than 3 months in a row. I simply didn't have enough of information how to build up a proper nutritional program and I didn't have consistency on my training programs. But now (after years without sport) I got motivated to start lifting weights once again. I want to prove people around me that you don’t need to consume animal products to stay healthy. Not only you can be healthy, but also you can grow muscles. At least 3 people told me that I look skinny (after I told them that I’m vegan). Before I went vegan, I had the same weight so it was ridiculous to hear such statements. Before I started to go to the gym, I was 80kg (~176lbs) and 1.85m (6.1). I didn’t have any overweight so I believe that I had normal body weight (I know some people of the same height that weights 70kg. One of the people criticizing my vegan diet is my father. He’s probably the main reason why I want to build muscle, just to prove him wrong
Actually I didn’t even tell my father that I started lifting weight and he’s supposed to see me only on Christmas so I still got some time to make some changes in my body. I’ve gained 7 kilograms (~15pound) in 8 weeks (that’s the weight in the morning after toilet and such ;] ). So that was my story
looking forward to see the results till Christmas! Also I’m glad to be here and I truly believe that this community can help me to reach better results. I hope to inspire some people and to offer my help in any possible ways too. Thank you so much for your time! I hope you didn't got bored reading it!Your new member,
Aurijus
