In all my blog posts that I have written over the years I have never talked about health or a healthy lifestyle. This will be a first and you as a technology person might be wondering what has living a Vegan Lifestyle have anything to do with software. After all the blog title is “Donald on Software”.

For years I would go through these decade birthdays and just remark how turning thirty was just like turning twenty except I had all the extra knowledge called life. Going from thirty to forty, same thing but things took a turn when I moved into my fifties. I have had doctors notice that my blood pressure was a bit elevated. I took longer to recover from physical activates. Felt aches I never noticed before and I promised my wife that I would live a long, long time and that wasn’t feeling all that convincing. I didn’t have the same get up and go that I had known before.

A Bit About My Family

My wife and step daughter have been vegetarian/vegans for many years. I was open to other types of food like plant based meals and would eat them on occasion when we were at a vegan restaurant or that was what was being cooked at home. However, I travel a lot so most of my food would be from a restaurant where I could eat anything I wanted. This went on for several years, I was taking a mild blood pressure pill every day. This was keeping my blood pressure under control but there were other things that it appeared to be affecting as well in a negative way.

The Turning Point for Me

During Thanksgiving weekend in November 2014, Mary (my wife) and I watched a documentary on Netflix called “Forks over Knives”, and at the end of that I vowed never to eat meat again and start moving towards a Vegan lifestyle.
The documentary is about two doctors one that came from the medical field and one from the science side of things and their adventure to unravelling the truth about how the food that we eat is related to health. One of the biggest studies that has ever been done is called “The China Study” and is a 20 year study that examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products (including dairy) and chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer and bowel cancer.

Not only reducing these numbers but now that the toxic animal products were out of our system, our bodies would start to repair some of this damage that we have always been told could never be repairable naturally.

Getting over the big Lie

Yes there is a very large lie that we have all believed to be the truth because we assumed that it came from the medical field and sanctioned by the government to be the truth. That being the daily nutritional guide. This is the guide that told use to eat large amounts of meat and dairy products to give us energy and strong bones but this did not come from any medical study this came from the agriculture and dairy industries to sell more products.

Most of that animal protein that we take in our body rejects, there is very small amounts that it actually uses. Now common sense would tell me if my body is rejecting all this animal based protein it is working extra hard and something is going to break down in the form of disease and other difficulties especially as we get older. Oh wait, they now make a pill for that so we can continue to live the way we always have. So now we are not only supporting an industry that never had that big of a market before but now we are spending billions of dollars every year to pharmaceutical companies as well in order to correct the mistakes we made with the things we eat. One thing that I did learn in physics is that one action creates another and opposite reaction so this is not solving anything either just keep making it worse and now health care costs are through the roof with bodies that normally know how to heal themselves.

Now for the Good News

I know I got you all depressed and disappointed as I just dissed your favorite food and called it bad and toxic but there is a happy ending here. I felt like you are right now for about five minutes and then decided to say “NO to Meat”. If you get a chance I would encourage you to look up that documentary “Forks over Knives” as one other thing that disturbed me was the way they were harvesting these animals and called it ethical or within the approved guidelines. These animals were under stress and that stress goes into the meat and you wonder why everyone seems so stressed, I know there is a relationship here.

Anyway, the good news is my latest checkup with my doctor. I am currently on no medication what so ever and my blood pressure numbers are very normal and very impressive for a guy my age. I did a stress test and was able to reach my ideal heart rate easily and effortlessly and I feel great. If I had any plaque buildup it is certainly repairing itself as I feel great. Still can’t seem to lose the 15 pounds I have been working on for the last couple of years but I know I will accomplish that soon enough. I am done with meat and all animal proteins as in milk, eggs, honey and I am going to live a long, long time and feel great. Won’t you join me?