In my early 20's, when I was still trying to land my first "office job" out of college, I was working construction. The work was physically demanding, and no matter how much I ate, I always felt hungry and sore. Tons of tofu, tempeh, beans, it didn't matter. My buddy brought over a ton of venison which I put in the freezer. I had enough for two months of meals. I started eating it every day, and within 48 hours I noticed a huge difference. My weight went up to 195 (i'm 6'2, and it had dropped to 175) which was a much healthier weight, and most importantly, my depression (which i really didn't know i had, went away)and i just felt better, more motivated, happier, you name it.
I'm sure many, many vegetarians live great, happy lives on their diet. I'm not one of them. Years of farting all the time from soy (beano didn't do it for me), never gaining muscle, not being able to socialize with my male buddies since 90% of the vegetarians i encountered were females..... the list goes on.
I assure you, it confused me to. But its a reality that people on restrictive diets forget: in our society, meals are a very fundamental element of socializing. My restrictive diet made it so that when I'd hang out with buddies, when they would pick a restaurant, I could rarely get proper nutrition from the meals. This would cause me not to eat almost anything at these places. They would notice, feel bad, and then feel guilty. I would always have to hunt around for a place to grab anything to fill me up before we continued our day.
