I’ve had a passion for plants for much of my adult life. I don’t remember being terribly interested in them as a child but after dabbling in engineering and chemistry, I took a plant biology course at Berkeley and was captivated by their beauty and the balance of complexity and simplicity. What struck me most were the patterns plants created in their tissues and organs – the spacing of branches around a tree, the outward flow of tissue layers within the root. All programmed by genes with a specific purpose within the plant. I was so fascinated by this that I went on to complete a Ph.D. in developmental plant biology, studying patterns in root development.

I left the world of plants after finishing my Ph.D., first in sales and then in marketing and product management for a number of biotech/life science companies. My work took me to different areas of biology – forensics, molecular diagnostics, stem cell research, bioproduction, immunoassays, but no plant biology.

Eventually, I would be drawn back to plants through an interest in distance running and nutrition. In 2012 I read Scott Jurek’s autobiography, Eat and Run. While I was aware of Scott’s amazing ultrarunning accomplishments, I hadn’t realized how much his plant-based diet had helped fuel his running and recovery.

A little later that year I ran the Baltimore marathon for the second time. While I improved on my time from the year before, finishing in a respectable 3:19, it was slower than my goal. More relevant to my journey to a plant-based diet, I didn’t feel good during the race and it took me a long time to recover – my legs were sore for days, my stomach was off – in general I just felt awful. Reflecting on my training for the marathon, I realized how slow recovery had been for many of my training runs. I had been thinking quite a lot about Scott Jurek’s book and I talked to my wife about stopping my consumption of animal products. While we weren’t consuming meat at the level or frequency of the typical household, animal products, particularly dairy, were still a regular part of our diet.

Cutting out dairy had such an immediate and drastic impact. I hadn’t realized how bloated and uncomfortable I felt after a big bowl of yogurt in the morning until I stopped eating it. My breathing improved, my sleep improved. Without changing my workout routines, I lost weight and gained muscle definition. My running improved – I was able to run at the same effort but at a faster pace. My recovery time between hard runs decreased. Around the same time our son Tyler had been struggling with a series of bugs. Every time he tried to eat, he would get sick. Since eliminating dairy had had such a dramatic on me, we tried the same for Tyler. The effect was just as powerful.

I kept eating seafood for a while but after a trip abroad where I was fed huge amounts of seafood (I guess they didn’t know what else to feed me) I returned home and told Lindsey I didn’t want to eat fish for a while. A while turned into forever and I’ve been vegan ever since.

I thought I would have more cravings for foods that I used to love – sushi, crab, a burger – but I’ve not felt like eating any of them since going vegan. The hardest food to stop eating was definitely cheese – even though I felt so much better not eating dairy, I had strong cravings for all the stinky French cheeses I loved so much. Eventually, after about six weeks, those cravings passed and I can honestly say I’ve not craved any animal products in over two years.

What has been the impact of going vegan?

My fitness improved: I can run further and/or harder (depending on the workout).
My recovery has improved: I recover more quickly and feel far less sore after a hard run or race than I did before turning vegan.
My health improved: I lost body fat and gained muscle mass. Blood pressure and cholesterol dropped. The typical seasonal colds and flus disappeared; when a hint of a cold did arrive, it quickly disappeared – my immune system was now operating at a totally different level.
My sleep improved: I used to frequently get annoying night sweats, waking up completely soaked in sweat. Since becoming vegan those have stopped completely.
In general I have more energy throughout the day and my habitual need for multiple coffees disappeared.

These changes sparked an interest in why moving to a whole food plant-based diet could have such a drastic impact on my health and fitness. I began to read more articles on the health implications of eating animal products. We watched documentaries such as Forks over Knives and Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. I read The China Study and How Not to Die. I took the certificate in plant based nutrition from eCornell, which took me back to my roots as a scientist allowing me to dive into the literature, challenge my preconceptions and emerge with a much better understanding of nutrition. For me, the evidence was overwhelming: eating a whole food plant-based diet improves one’s health and reduces the chance of acquiring many common diseases. As I finished the course I was completely convinced that a plant-based diet was not only better for me but necessary for the health of my family.

Up until this point, my adoption of a plant-based diet was centered around my health and that of my family’s. That changed when I watched the documentary Cowspiracy. This film had a profound impact on me. Until I saw the figures – the number of animals bred for consumption, the amount of land, water and crops utilized for livestock, the massive impact to the land, water, air and global warming, the level of corruption and deception by big agricultural companies – my mind wasn’t able to process the scale on which livestock production was impacting our planet. I felt guilty for not having realized this before my late 40s, angry at Big Ag and governments for their blind focus on profits, and sad for the future of the environment. I might have been able to revert back to being an omnivore before this but now I wouldn’t be able to respect myself for knowing all of this and not acting.

By this time, our family had transitioned to a plant-based diet. The last remaining animal product, eggs from our friend’s farm, had disappeared. Our boys weren’t missing animal food and, as they learned more, they became proud of how their diet was helping the environment and the lives of animals. There were minor challenges to overcome at school and friends’ houses but these topics are better served in a separate post.

In the space of a few years, my diet had evolved from a change based on selfish sports performance improvements to a lifestyle centered around the health of my family, the health of the environment and the health and happiness of animals. I’m far from perfect and am still learning how I can reduce my impact on the environment and help my family lead a healthy life, but I hope that our patterns of change might impact a few people in our small corner of the world.

I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite biology textbooks, Principles of Development by Lewis Wolpert:

“Pattern formation is the process by which a spatial and temporal pattern of cell activities is organised within the embryo so that a well-ordered structure develops.”

I’m still far from becoming a well-ordered structure but hopefully my recent patterns of activities in space and time have placed me on the right path.

David Welch, 2017