I tried 80/10/10 and realize this diet will just not work for me. A mainstay of the diet is bananas–as much as 10 to 12 at a meal–in order to get enough calories for the day. I’m just not a fan of bananas. The most I could eat was five.
The amount of fruit required to get 2000 calories is enormous. I was obsessing all day about eating. Because I had to eat anywhere from three to four times the volume I was used to. Sure I could get used to it, but I don’t want to get used to it. To me, it’s unreasonable to stuff so much food in my mouth.
After four days my gums were bleeding when I brushed my teeth. My gums hardly ever bleed. I gave up on the diet after five days.
I visited a forum of 80/10/10 fans and posted for a while. Seemed like a lot of good information was being shared. Then someone asked what people would do if they got cancer. I said I would eat a lot of greens, then fast until hunger, followed by greens and fruit and some wild game or grass-fed meat. Shame on me!
Someone asked me why meat. I replied: “Because a little bit won’t harm me and might actually provide additional nutritional elements. My species has been eating meat for millenia. And I don’t care to be a food fanatic or purist.”
I got thrashed by these wonderful, health-minded people. They just kinda ganged up on me. Serious meat phobia.
One woman objected to the implication that those who didn’t eat meat are fanatics. But that’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t want to be a fanatic. A fanatic is not someone who says, “I don’t eat meat.” That’s just a vegetarian or vegan. A fanatic is someone who says, “I don’t eat meat and neither should you. It’s wrong.” I guess according to that definition, most of the people on this forum are fanatics because they sure didn’t want me to choose my own diet. I was no longer welcome on their forum.
She also wrote “Joanne, just because people have been doing things for ‘millenia’ doesn’t make it right. They’ve been killing each other too.”
My comment was along biological lines. To this woman it was an ethical issue. Apples and oranges. My species has been consuming meat for millenia and is biologically adapted to it. It’s fine with me if you, for ethical reasons, choose not to eat meat. Why would I care? What does concern me is your belief that eating meat is unhealthy (a biological issue) because you find it morally objectionable (an ethical issue). But then again, I felt that way years ago when I was younger and full of self-righteous idealism. It felt good to have a moral platform. I had just come out of Christianity, so I still had the mindset that there’s only ONE way.
The final blow was by a young man who prides himself on his sportsmanship in bike riding. He wrote: “this site is for crew that dont buy or bite into animal torture. the notion that we must continue the bloodshed cos we have been doing so for so long is beyond comphrehension.”
Afternoon snack chomps down on Arthur's nose
Maybe beyond his comprehension. He should watch my cats with a rodent for a while to see how inhumane nature is. Is it bloodshed when my cats drag in a rabbit and tear it apart? Why is it the animal kingdom can all eat each other but I as a human can’t eat an animal? Again, apples and oranges.
I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve seen my own fanaticism and extremism, and I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of it in myself and I especially don’t want to immerse myself in such a culture. The most irritating people I come across in the diet arena are vegans. Self-righteous, morally superior, egotistical, hostile, militant, and absolutely closed-minded. They insist that because veganism works for them that it works for all and is a moral imperative, which just isn’t the case. They just can’t seem to leave others be.
But, like Christians, it’s only the annoying ones you notice. It’s the ones who mind their own business and live according to their own conscience that you never know about, so a blanket judgment is out of order. But I haven’t met a vegan yet who wasn’t also a condescending jerk. They’re hard to love.
Let’s all let others live according to their own conscience. If someone wants to be vegan, good for them. If someone wants to eat meat, good for them too. Everyone is finding their own path.
Additional reading:
Thoughts on Raw Vegan, 80/10/10 and Paleolithic Diets
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
There is a new documentary coming on HBO out about factory farming you might be interested.
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/deathfactoryfarm/index.html
I know what you mean. In the past six or so months, I have been tremendously healed and helped by following the McDougall program. Yes, this means I abstain from all animal products but I won’t call myself a vegan because I do not want to be identified with the likes of those you describe.
And if you come to my house for dinner, I’ll be happy to cook you a steak!
That photo of Arthur is so funny.
Factory farming is abhorent, and I try not to invest in it. Right now I’m looking to buy a side of pasture-raised beef. If some of you don’t know about factory farming, please watch the video. I won’t, because it’ll just upset me.
M’awaa, I’ll be over tonight! Sirloin, very rare and bloody if you can swing it. It took Arthur about 10 minutes to get that mouse off his nose. It was a valiant struggle.
Joanne – Interesting comments about vegans. Made me gulp. I’m a vegan 80/10/10′er, and frequently trying to “help” other people. I lost my non-vegan life partner to breast cancer, and I’ve felt some missionary zeal to help others avoid that fate. I’d never nagged her about her diet, and tried to lead by example. After she died, I saw Anderson’s DVDs “Healing Cancer From Inside Out” and “Eating”. I cried and cried, wishing I’d had that info when my partner was still alive. I bought five copies of each and gave them to her and my friends to spread the word, with limited success. I really want to help people but at the same time I have a big sense of not really being sure how to help. Diet has been a focus. The impact seems so huge personally and environmentally. But your comments are sobering and resonate with the frequent reaction I see.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and helping some of us tread more lightly.
Wishing you well(ness),
Kelley
I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. I understand somewhat. I lived next to a woman for 10 years. We were quite close, and I watched her die of cancer. She just gave up. I found homes for her five cats, since I was their godmother.
I cry whenever I hear of someone dying of cancer, because I think it’s mostly avoidable. And the medical industry reaps many benefits because cancer is so lucrative to them.
I hope you stick around and read about my forays into paleolithic nutrition.
Joanne – Thank you for your thoughtful response. I look forward to hearing more about paleothic nutrition. — Kelley
Hi,
I find vegan fanaticism extremely annoying in myself and others. I don’t find much use in any sort of limiting self definition, be it in regard to my diet, nationality, culture, sexual practices, heck I even wonder about my gender sometimes. However, I have enjoyed the fruits (sic) of the 80-10-10 diet on and off (feeling much better on than off) for about a year and a half. I also love bananas. For one week last year, I only ate bananas. Then I binged on macadamias and organic corn chips….sigh…
In order to succeed at such a radically different diet requires a great deal of discipline or adherence to a group-think meme. I recently opted out of a vegan group (not, however, due to my meat eating, but to the fact that the group leader professed a yen for machine-gunning the entirety of the Rothschilds, Rockefeller’s, Carnegie’s families) and now explore the 80-10-10 and its dietary kin on my lonesome. Why, because it has been helpful with chronic inflammation, energy, mood, etc..
Jonathan, I agree about the “limiting self definition.” Last year I was in a debate with someone and I said something to which he replied, “Oh, you’re one of those…” as if he could sum up me and my views in one philosophy. It’s an effective way of limiting communication and closing minds.
I don’t want to be considered a “paleo” eater now but someone who is interested in healthy nutrition. Raw foods are wonderful, but I’ve come to the point where I want to eat to live, not live to eat, and many radical diets require such intense commitment and promise social isolation as well as health benefits in return.
Many diets can reverse chronic inflammation, increase energy and stabilize moods, especially the low-carb diet. But most diets cannot provide the “stimulation” provided by a constant stream of sugar via fruits, so it would be hard to give that “high” up.
You haven’t adapted to anything in a millennium, your body is just able to get meager nourishment out of meat to survive until you get to the next fruit. Also, don’t be so smug – a cat HAS to eat a mouse. You do not, its a choice, so you choose to kill another animal unnecessarily. Its just freakin fact. If you want to so be it, just don’t be all like “they’re weird” because they recognize that one thing humnas really have adapted is brain power and they use it to not be so destructive. Apples AND oranges.
I didn’t say “millenium.” I said millenia, meaning our species (including ancestors) has been eating meat for, what? two million years? Those of us who chose not to eat meat oh so long ago still have our fur and live in the jungles eating leaves.
I quote from Fruit: Its Use and Misuse: “Absolute humanitarianism in the strict Buddhist sense of taking no life at all is impossible: all life on this planet is maintained at the cost, direct or indirect, of other forms of life.”
Perhaps you, for ethical reasons, do not desire killing animals. That doesn’t make it wrong; it just makes it wrong for you. To dictate whether or not I should eat animals places you in the realm of religious zealot, not health advocate.
As for brain power, I used my brain to go through all the vegan claims and then gave the paleo claims a hearing. Paleo wins out. Sorry.
Hi all, we constantly hear this battle between people with different diets about what is the right way to eat. I have my own opinions too but I do not pressure them onto other people as I feel it is neccessary for everyone to find out the best way of eating for themselves. I have gone between vegetarian to vegan to vegetarian and now trying to transition to a raw food diet, my husband on the other hand is a full on carnivore. But we do not fight about these things, I accept him and he accepts me..my belief though is that yes humans are not neccessarily hunter-gatherers but more gatherer-hunters and like any animal on the earth opportunists. I am not taking any attention away from the raw vegan lifestyle however a website that may interest you is natural eater by a nutritional anthropologist called Geoff Bond.
Cheers
Nic
Nic, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check out Bond’s site.
I came across your blog while looking into some primal eating/living information on other sites such as MDA. I appreciate the good information, refreshing perspective, and lack of fanaticism.
I’m a vegan of about 6 months, and I have gone from getting sucked into the “religion” and thinking I would be a vegan forever, to now realizing it’s flaws. I guess at the time I was looking to redefine myself, and I allowed myself to get sucked in. It’s funny, because I thought I was so open minded for becoming vegan, but I had really just made a switch and then became closed minded again. I also agree that labeling ourselves can be very limiting. Now I just like to consider myself a conscious eater/liver: someone who thinks about the impacts of their actions on themselves, others, and everything else on the planet.
At one point I was thinking about getting this book. I don’t have much interest in reading it anymore, as I’m pretty sure it’s something I wouldn’t want to follow. Although, I do love bananas
. I’ll probably be switching to a primal/paleo diet very soon. It makes sense to eat in whatever way the human body is most adapted to, and this seems much closer than other diets.
Oh, and here are a few things I don’t understand about some vegans. And of course. not every vegan fits these, so don’t complain
.
They don’t eat honey, yet they turn a blind eye to bringing bees in to pollinate crops
They won’t eat a steak from a local grass fed ranch where the animals practically live wild and the land isn’t suitable for other agriculture, yet they’ll eat an apple out of season that was grown in a destroyed animal habitat, picked by an exploited farm worker, and shipped half way around the world.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Jesse.
THANK GOD i found someeles who is stopping this crzy diet!
i have kept on trying and trying to eat this way and i feel worse and worse its horrible im so sick of fruit and i feel diet and run down and crzving protein ect.
what diet are you taking on now?
thank you so much for this post!
Hi, Kylie. Yep, I couldn’t take it for long either. Right now I’m eating meat every day and trying to have some sort of vegetable. Tonight I had cauliflower. Last night I had asparagus. I have a little fruit but not much. I’ve given up wheat. I’m shooting for a low-carb paleolithic diet.
Hey Buddy,
I hope you keep an open mind, and check out the link I posted. You are right, everyone is on their own path. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know what that path is, and even less of us truly walk our own path. I’m sorry to hear you have such a negative view of people who label themselves as vegans.
Buddy?
I was responding to the original post. But you are a buddy as well, why not right?
Hey, (i know it’s been a year since you wrote this, but i only came across it now, by googling the words “80/10/10 didn’t work for me”
! I am a vegan, and yet I felt relieved reading your words and so in tune with you! I too am so SICK of people feeling like they know it all! No they don’t! We are all different and that which works for one doesn’t necessarily work for all! I’m sick of ppl in that 811 community being like, oh if you’re having a hard time it’s because you’re detoxing! How long do you really detox for? till death? till you have to eat until u can’t breathe you’re so fckng full of bananas? lol, i’m sorry, but it just does not make sense to me. anything that’s too extreme and that is exclusive of other human beings, to me is not kindness. And between being right or being kind, which is most productive in this world? I choose the later. especially because right and wrong are such relative concepts. My grandma died of cancer last year and my mom has cancer now. I am a vegan. do I shove my diet in their face? NO!! if they want to change the way they eat, fine, if they don’t fine! All i tell my mom is: listen to your body. if it asks for meat, eat meat. if it asks for broccoli then eat that. my body doesnt ask for meat so i dont eat it. if it did and i didnt eat it, then how could i be of service to myself really? anyways, i just want to say thank you for your honesty and your open mindedness and for the fact that reading your blog gave me relief to know there’s sensible people out there 
.
Have a great day, all the best to you! Keep doing what Feels Right to You!
Cheers,
Chris.
Some fruit lovers even go so far as to consider that their teeth falling out is a form of detox. Crazy whacky.
I love to see a vegetarian/vegan with common sense. Thanks for posting, Chris.