I've been talking a lot about the ketogenic diet this week, in the videos especially. I'm not doing it to convert you into a keto diet - I'm talking about it because I think what you eat, whatever your chosen diet is, affects significantly who you are on a psychological level. First and foremost, if you can follow a certain dietary lifestyle without fail, it can build your discipline and self-respect as well as form a foundational stone to your identity. Secondly, by paying attention to the quality of what you put in your mouth, you signal your subconscious how highly you think about yourself. And if you're a proud vegan for animal rights or environmental reasons, it gives a clear message about your convictions and principles.
So it doesn't matter what kind of diet you follow - you can be an omnivore, a vegan, a vegetarian, you can go paleo or keto, eat only eggs or fruits, anything - as long as you remember one crucial thing:
No one, not your family members or friends or enemies or an authoritative figure or society or convention or tradition or science or studies, can dictate how and what you eat.
You have the liberty to choose for yourself. You're allowed to skip breakfast. You're allowed to drink a jug of water for dinner. You're allowed to neglect taking vitamins. No one can come and arrest you if you eat nothing but butter, or cut all fat from your diet, or eat omega-3 supplement capsules for breakfast and Starbucks Seattle Lattes for dinner.
The choice is yours and yours alone - because it's your body, and you know your body better than anyone else does or ever could - and because you alone face the consequences of your eating habits, both in the good and in the bad.
I know a person who seems to consider themselves the expert of optimal eating - someone who trusts scientific studies in everything. If you tell them how you eat or sleep or exercise, they will criticize you for something you do, be it too little sleep, too much sleep, too little exercise, too much exercise, too little fats, too much fat, et cetera. Only if you do things exactly as they do, even if it felt bad in your individual body, do they approve. (And even then they might criticize.)
So if you go vegan and make the mistake of telling a carnivore about it and face the question, "how do you get enough protein?", you can tell them, or you can bluntly retort you don't get enough protein, or you can leave the question unanswered.
Because it's your body, and your choice. Not theirs.
RK
