EA - Getting over my fear that going vegan would make me weak and unhealthy by Drew Housman

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Getting over my fear that going vegan would make me weak and unhealthy, published by Drew Housman on July 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I recently read a Richard Hanania article titled "Eating Animals and the Virtues of Honesty." It talks about the moral atrocity that is factory farming and how that relates to Hanania's personal dietary choices. I commend him for calling out how bad most animal agriculture is.Hanania understands that there is no excuse to torture so many sentient beings just because we like how they taste. He concedes it could very well be one of the worst crimes in human history. Given all that, he wishes he could be vegan.Unfortunately, he must continue to eat animals. If he stops, he will ruin his body composition:I just grant to the vegan that he has won the argument, and he is morally superior from a utilitarian perspective, but I want to be thin and have broad shoulders.His argument, as I understand it, boils down to the idea that he needs to eat animals in order be fit, strong, and healthy. His position made me think of these great tweets:I am tempted to poke fun at Hanania, but I used to have the exact same worry! So I am going to do the ethical thing and talk about my personal experience as a jacked vegan.I know it's easy to google “vegan weightlifter” or "vegan athlete" or visit r/veganfitness to find examples vegans with shoulders so broad they'd make Hanania weep.My goal with this post is to normalize the idea that even late 30’s, tech working, regular guy vegans can be muscular and healthy. Sorry if this comes across as bragging, or if it's cringey. It just struck me while reading the Hanania piece that more people might go vegan if they felt they could do so without withering away. I want Hanania to know he can have his cake and eat it too! Were he to internalize that, how many people amongst his large audience could he influence to change their diets? How much suffering could he reduce?I don't think it would be easy, possible, or desirable for every vegan to have big muscles. Nor do I think that a fully vegan diet is the healthiest choice for everyone. All I'm saying is that if what's holding you back from going vegan is a deep rooted fear that doing so will cause you to have small shoulders, I think you should reconsider.Going vegan, maintaining my strengthWhen I first considered going vegan, I was also worried I'd become thin and weak. I'd read Stephan Guyenet's account of going vegan for 6 months. He struggled a lot, and it really gave me pause.Old friends who came to visit during that period did repeatedly ask me if I was sick, because of the amount of weight I had lost-- largely muscle. I had grown paler as well.Health and strength are priorities for me. I didn't want to become pale and frail. But after I got my first puppy I decided that I could no longer tolerate the idea of eating other sentient beings, so I stopped.I went vegetarian for a month, then vegan. I figured I could always start eating meat again if my body fell apart.The whole getting pale and weak thing just.didn’t happen to me. At all. I kept expecting to lose weight, or at least lose muscle, but I never did.I have actually gained some muscle and weight over my 4 years as a vegan, while keeping to roughly the same workout routine. Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe the loudest voices online are the ones who either had a bad experience going vegan or are convinced they will if they try. Maybe it's not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.Here's me just before going vegan:And here I am after years of eating vegan:At 36, I can currently bench and squat more than when I was an avid meat eater in my early twenties.But am I destroying my health?To dispel the notion that I am only superficially healthy, I'll share some bloodwork. This section ca...