Health Impact 📈 of Going Straight Edge Vegan for 30 Days

The year was 2021, the month was January. I usually do a dry January or Q1, but this year I wanted to kick it up a notch. Having recently read The China Study and The Whole Foods Diet I was interested in the physical impact of going completely meat and dairy free (as well as alcohol free) for 30 complete days. Plus I wanted to be in optimal shape to ride The Electric Lawn Chair. To set the context on January 1 I was, for all intents and purposes, a fat holiday drunk.

Lets review the initial conditions on Day 0:

	Top Number BP	Bottom Number BP	Standing HR	Weight
Start	125	85	50	188.4

I am 6 foot and this is the top end of my weight (Christmas cookies and braised short rip which is a holiday standard in my house). My blood pressure is generally low and I was in medium cardio shape at this time (running 20 minutes 2-3x a week), these are also among the highest numbers I have ever recorded.

The top number in blood pressure, also known as Systolic refers to the pressure against the body during a heart beat. The lower number, also known as Diastolic refers to the pressure in between beats.

Also of note is my standing heart rate which tends to be on the low end of things in general.

Tracked Metrics

I was diligent in measuring all metrics at the same time each morning (roughly 7:30 AM, before eating or coffee, first thing out of bed.

– Weight
– Blood Pressure
– Standing Heart Rate
– Max Heart Rate (Intermittently)
– Min Heart Rate(Intermittently)
– HRV (Heart Rate Variability) (Intermittently)

Diet

A lot of rice, beans, carrots, celery, cashews + nuts & nut butter, whole grain bread, blueberries, tofu, mushrooms etc. I tried to hit 2000 calories per day but it was difficult. Usually I just ate spoonfuls of peanut butter to cover the delta.

Exercise

I tried to run a 5k every other day or so at pace, meaning 7-8 minutes / mile. I gave up on this about halfway through for reasons I will explain at the end in the cardio/fitness results. I did pushups and pull-ups as well, maybe 3-5 sets every 3-5 days.

The Results

Weight

For most of these metrics I plotted the total metric against the marginal change, meaning if my weight decreased between two days, the marginal value would be negative. Conversely, if I was gaining weight it would be positive. Think of it as the difference between a given day and the prior day. The results were astonishing:

I lost about 1/3 of a pound per day on average for 30 days, with a more significant decrease towards the tail end of the month which I believe is related to muscle mass loss. Some of those days I lost almost 3lbs in 24 hours.

Blood Pressure:

Unsurprisingly, a vegan diet improved both measures of blood pressure. What was especially a surprise, however, was the speed. All of the improvement occurred in the first 10 days of starting the diet, and plateaued thereafter. Essentially there was little change post 1/18 or so (FYI I started this challenge on 1/05 so a bit of a delay compared to the calendar month). Theres a bit of tail off at the end which I think was related to weight loss described above.

Heart Rate

Also unsurprising given the BP numbers, my heart rate fell consistently throughout the 30 days:

Tallying it up:

	Top Number BP	Bottom Number BP	Standing HR	Weight
Start	125	85	50	188.4
Finish	99	59	39	178.5
Delta	-26	-26	-11	-9.9

I ended the month weighing in at 178.5lbs with 99/59 BP and a standing heart rate of 39. All things considered this is an astonishing impact given most of what I changed was diet.

Having said this, at the tail end of week 3 I started to experience what is broadly categorized as physical decline:

– Mood: A mixture of grouchy and “too tired to deal with it”. There was no explosiveness to my highs. I started to feel very flat, little inspiration. No sadness or low lows, just flat. Initially I felt great, though.
– Muscle Mass: Clear decline in my muscle mass started to manifest in week 3. There was little change to my pushup & pull-up regimen during this experimental period, and yet I had falling physical strength & muscle mass (not scientific – based on how my arms and body looked). I also had no “explosiveness” here. I’m probably not describing this well, but everything felt like it took a great amount of effort if that makes sense.
– Cardio/Endurance/Energy Levels: While these were stable the first ~7 days, I had issues with stamina starting in week 2 that impacted my ability to run fast. While I do not have as clean of data in graph form for these measures, my average mile time (running 5k consistently) and HRV (heart rate variability) became materially worse. Interestingly enough my maximum heart rate to sustain a controlled mile time was higher in weeks 2 & 3. Some of that data here:

Parting Thoughts

By day 30, my general energy levels and “stoke” were low. I felt sleepy, disengaged and often had sudden pangs of hunger that had to be immediately addressed or I was going to fall asleep. Altogether my creativity and the quality of my work suffered too.

There are, of course, many confounding factors here that complicate a controlled test. Eating enough calories (clearly I was losing weight), maintaining same-same macro ratios etc, how I handle glucose, my eastern european-ness relative to diet etc.; ultimately I wanted to see what happened and you cant control for everything. Which is broadly why there is no obvious answer to what nutritional profile is optimal for all individuals.

I would highly recommend this diet for someone who has hypertension issues as a (seemingly) instant solve with higher impact than say statins would have. My data, at least, was clear in this regard. As for me I went back to eating controlled portions of meat with a tilt towards fish and away from beef (also with small portions). While eating meat at my regular weight I am pretty consistently @ 105/70 with a standing HR of ~40, so I am lucky enough to be low risk for general cardiovascular issues.

Interestingly enough, I never regained my interest in cheese. As of today (Feb 9, 2023), I’m still kinda over it.