Can vegans be fat?

Opinion piece 

When I started my weight loss journey in 2020 I thought that becoming vegetarian would guarantee weight loss. It worked for a while where I lost almost 40 pounds. All of a sudden when I was angry about something,  it threw my dieting off. I stayed vegetarian but I decreased the ultra processed foods. 

I actually refused to eat meat for about 4 months in the summer of 2022. I was surprised no weight came off. It was primarily because I still was eating processed foods ( veggie meats, breads, etc.)

Around the winter of 2022 I made it a rule of thumb "If I don't recognize the ingredients,  I'm not buying it". This forced me to make many things from scratch. My entire grocery shopping experience changed drastically. Here is a video of a typical shopping experience. https://youtu.be/7_5e3-2d9eQ. This is where the 40 lbs came off. I started with the Dr. Sebi diet. That is extremely difficult to stick to. I dropped 20 lbs in about 2-3 weeks. It reminds me of when in "My 600 lb life" they drop 30-40 pounds in less than a month because the diet is so restrictive.

There is a stereotype that vegans & vegetarians are not fat. This isn't true. Especially if you consider the processed foo6, refined sugars etc that the American diet consists of. It's terribly easy to gain weight even if no meat is eaten.

There is also a stereotype that vegans & vegetarian people are more healthy than meat eaters. I have found this not to be true.  When I was working in a nursing home, I've met people who were vegan and had

• Cancer

• Strokes

• High blood pressure 

• Obesity

One thing I can say, when I've seen raw food vegans, they usually don't have those diseases. Many vegan processed foods contain poisonous ingredients.  Who is actually going to go aisle by aisle reading all those ingredient lists and looking up definitions? Not many people.