I suspect that you will find former vegetarians/vegans over-represented here, because people who question the dominant paradigm (agribusiness) could lead to veg or to paleo. I suspect that you will not find many former paleo who have devolved to veg, though!

12 year veggie here. Got sicker and sicker and fatter and fatter. After 3 years of healthy paleo, feel great and maintain 75 pound weight loss effortlessly. Can't imagine ever going back.

Also, I had lunch with vegs turned paleo yesterday. They are dedicated paleos, but with lingering guilt about eating animals. It seems like a shame. If you are born a cat, you have to kill for optimum health, if you are born a cow you don't. If you are born a human, you do. It's not cruel or evil.

Now being turned off by the filth and stench of commercial livestock operations, that I can understand.

I was a vegetarian for around 12 years, five of those as a strict vegan. I was, by the end, suicidal, frizzy, dry, crazy in my brain and dreaming every night about eating fish. I've been omnivorous for the past nearly 10 years. I started by eating the winged and finned folks and in the last five years (pre-conception, pregnancy and now) I have been enthusiastically on board the meat train. Since discovering paleo this past year I feel better than I ever have, ever.

I was vegetarian for 2 years and vegan for half a year. It does seem to be a mini-trend for veg*ns to go paleo, possibly because most are somewhat health conscious and also might pick paleo to heal from crap caused by not eating meat.

I wasn't a vegetarian, but I didn't buy meat for ten years (just ate it at restaurants). People who saw my fridge and lunches said things like "rabbit food". In those days, I had strong cravings for leafy greens. I would grab a bundle of dandelion greens at the grocery store and be unable to wait for the checkout line, finishing half the bundle as I walked through the aisles.

Then I started really eating meat, mostly pastured. My cravings for greens disappeared. Now dandelions taste like unpalatable weeds, even my beloved lettuce is fairly unappetizing. I suspect I was deficient in certain vitamins, and that now that I eat meat and the deficiency is gone, the craving for greens is gone.

My wife and I began vegetarianism back around 1990, which morphed into veganism, and finally Macrobiotics. Since processed food and sugar is shunned, our diet consisted mostly of brown rice, non-starchy vegetables, and sea vegetables. There was a little bit of soy, mostly as miso soup. We did that for about five years. During that time I lost a lot of weight and we both felt good. I attribute that to not eating all the junk that many vegetarians do eat, and that may also explain the short term success of people like Ornish and Fuhrman. But I believe that eventually the lack of animal fat and protein catches up with you. When the wife and daughter of Macrobiotic guru, Michio Kushi, died of cancer it started us re-thinking.

I was raised vegetarian for 17 years, but never low-fat anything: I ate whole raw fats, dairy, eggs, butter, ghee, etc. Lots of veggies and fruits. No junk food. I was really healthy actually - only got a cold 1-2x a year... However, I also had to have braces "for cosmetic purposes" and had my wisdom teeth removed = malformed facial structure. What a bunch of fish and bacon could have done for me in my formative years, or to realize my gluten sensitivity, I can only imagine.

It wasn't until I started eating a lot of soy that things went down hill, and then I went vegan and raw vegan and just destroyed myself (hypothyroid, anemia, hypoglycemia, panic attacks, hair falling out, bottoming out body temperatures, like I'm talking 93-94 degrees) but even being fit and slim during my teenage years, I always had a tiny wheat-bloat belly.

It's been almost 2 years since I started eating meat again. Rebuilding, rebuilding. Note to self: have healthy kids.

I bought into the lipid hypothesis lock, stock and barrel (of s#!+). The day after seeing my dad in the hospital after his heart surgery I was a vegetarian. A month after that I was a vegan. The whole 8 years I had nagging doubts that we could have evolved to be vegan, but I saw such an abundance of "scientific evidence" to support it that I continued on.

I think there is a sort of dietary tinkerer mindset that will draw people to the fringes. Even though veganism and paleo are diametrically opposed, it's the same type of person who is drawn to both. There are then those who are drawn to the fringes of the fringes, such as raw vegans/fruitarians and zero-carbers.

I had been a vegetarian for the last 2 and a half years, prompted by viewing the chicken transportation truck that drove daily past my old apartment on its way to some Brooklyn slaughterhouse. Then 2 and a half years later I realized that I had been tired and hungry for the last 2 and a half years. I started eating meat again after my friend directed me to paleonu.com, where everything I read made an overwhelming amount of sense to me.

great topic. I was never full-fledged veg or vegan, but i did eat a lot of what they eat. One poster is indeed correct in saying that although the practices of groks and vegheads are totally different, a lot of the mentality possibly required to get into these worlds is very similar. Also, i think as we get older, the vegheads reduce in number. Simply because it is so terribly unhealthy and it takes its toll on the body. I am currently "working on" an almost-vegan veg friend. She loves animals. I tell her that i too love animals, i have a dog, i work at a pasture-based farm every other week, etc. I tell her that eating meat and loving it/thriving on it is indeed a very high form of respect for those animals! Of course, i regale her with the health-promoting properties of the grok lifestyle, too. In fact, she just had surgery to remove one of her thyroid glands. Suspected cancer. Unbelievable. -ben

I was a carniwheativore. I ate alot of meat,cause it felt good, tried to eat alot of wheat and few veggies. Boy was I ignorant and... Fat I went out of my way to eat more Wheat to be healthy!!

Now eliminating wheat and sugar, I've dropped 105lbs and never been healthier

I was a vegetarian for most of my life, and I ate mostly "healthy" foods, not junk. Transitioning to paleo from veg is easier than cw because I was already used to planning my own meals, making my own condiments and cooking all my own food.

I was vegan for about 7 years untill it made me sick. Then I started eating chicken. Its taken me 4 years since that moment to eat red meat again. The change in me is visable apparently (brighter, happier, more colour to my skin, better hair, more muscle etc)

Yes, I too was kind of a vegetarian. I only ate fish and chicken for 10 years, and that not very often. Did that mean I ate a lot of fruits and veggies? Nope. It meant I ate a lot of bread products.

I have had problems off and on with mild depression since I was a teenager (about a year before I went semi-veg), and when I began learning more about it, I discovered that there is a strong link between not getting enough protein and having low moods. It's the amino-acids (that become seratonin and the like), and amino-acids are proteins.

I was actually given a "prescription" from a naturopath that I needed to increase the amount of protein in my diet. And as I continued to do that, and continued to learn more, I realized that for my mental health, I had to eat beef & pork & other meats. And now, of course, I've learned that the pasta & other grains were a big part of the problem!

I have wondered if vegetarians experience higher rates of depression than the general population...

2 years low-fat vegetarian in my early twenties, then basic 'health conscious' eating (low fat, healthywholegrains, etc) until I found all of this :)

One more reformed vegetarian here.

I now call myself a born again carnivore.

I was vegan for 5 years then I started eating road kill, that led to collecting shellfish, then fishing, then hunting small game, then big game, then I moved to a permaculture farm and experienced good animal husbandry and excepted dairy

This is only my opinion, so take it for what it's worth. I tried to be a vegitarian for about six months when I was in my 20's due to all the veggie propaganda about how eating meat isn't as healthy and makes one a lower life form if you eat animals.

The more weight I gained, the more wheat and tubers I consumed. All the government data and the vegetarian scene encouraged me to try harder. I actually had a vegan friend tell me that all I was lacking was will power. I became hungry all the time, consuming more at once to not be hungry. I was led to believe that since it was healthy grain, veggies, fruit and tubers, I could eat more and still lose weight being a vegetarian.

Then my doctor, who didn't know I was a vegitarian, told me after seeing my weight gain that I needed to follow a low fat, high vegetable diet rich in grains and fiber. The look on his face when I said I'd been a vegetarian for almost 6 months was priceless.

One day, near the end of my vegetarianism, I was looking at satellite photos of the world. I noticed that the destruction of animal habitats and wildlife demise came from the advance of agricultural development more than urban sprawl or timbering. I started researching it for about a week.

The area of land needed to grow food for cities is much larger in area than the city itself. This causes animal wildlife to fall. Not to mention the amount of other problems modern agriculture brings such as pesticides on the food and contaminated groundwater and most don't know that the use of oil to make fertilizer has been the norm since the 1960's.

I started reading about the things I noticed and found that livestock is raised on healthier soil than agricultural land after a year of use and nutrition wise, meat can be raised on land that is hard to grow veggies on due to rough terraine or semi-forestation.

Once I thought about it, there's probably a lot more cows, chickens, pigs and other animals on earth than there would be due to raising livestock than if the world became vegetarian. Yeah, we eat them, but I bet there are more because we raise theme for food than if left to a totally agrarian based diet, livestock would probably be killed for eating the agricultural plants since their natural habitat would be gone.

I mean, it's kind of ironic to think that most vegetarians are animal rights activists and they buy food from farmers that kill wild animals like birds, rabbits and deer to keep them from eating the produce. I guess its ok to shoot, poison or take away an animals wild land for vegetable production but shoot a deer for food or clothing and the vegans will riot.

I apologize for the rant but I am still kind of sore over the vegetarian/vegan propaganda that ruined my weight and health in just 6 months of time. I'm sure some people lose weight on a vegan diet but I also think it is more through malnutrition than being nurtitionally balanced without supplements. Let me just say, it is a vegetarians right to choose the food they eat although a plant is a living thing also and if some say that plants talk to them or that plants respond to music or communicate with each other then wouldn't it be just as wrong to eat them as most vegetarians say it is to eat an cow? We compete for air with cows, plants give it to us!

It was in the light of personal experience with vegetarianism that I began to search for other ways to be healthier.

It was an unrelated search on google for the word CAVEMAN that took me to a paleo diet site a couple of years ago and it made a lot of sense so I tried it. I lost about 140 pounds through paleo dieting and mild exercise in about 18 months. That included a short term relaps to things like pasta when I got married and a non-paleo eater moved in. At the time, I was just trying to fit in with her and didn't want to push my diet on her just to make the grocery bill and shopping easier. After explaining it to her in more detail, she was willing to try it to for a month. We have been happy campers ever since while sticking to the paleo-diet.

Again, sorry for this post being so long. I have issues when it comes to being a former veg head.

I was a vegetarian for about five years. I tried being a vegan for about four months, and my cycles actually got messed up, and since I had always run that train on time, I went back to cheese and eggs.

I stopped being a vegetarian on a long-distance hike in 1999 when I decided some tuna sounded good. I ate fish (mostly sushi) for about a year, and then finally just went back to eating meat.

I gained a ton of weight during my vegetarian years. The diet just did not agree with me at all.

Yes, I was there too. Lost way too much weight and made myself sick.

vegan for 20 years...

I was vegetarian for 7 years.

I was a vegetarian for about seven years, and vegan for about four or five of those. I had bought into a lot of the veg and animal rights propaganda. For most of that time, I felt pretty good and didn't gain weight, but felt hungry a lot - probably due to my incredibly high carbohydrate intake and fairly low fat intake. I was eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease and got very sick, which prompted the move to full-blown meat eater.

I tried the vegetarian thing in college - probably like everyone does I think. It didn't last very long because I just don't really LIKE that many vegetables - especially onions, peppers and beans. (Try being vegetarian w/o eating THOSE!) I just always FELT better when I had some meat periodically - preferably steak - so I guess I was always kinda heading this this direction. I just had to wrap my head around giving up bread which took a while. I really don't miss it as much as I thought I would - more from a convenience aspect than anything since grabbing a sandwich can be s-o-o easy sometimes.

When my son was about three of four years old, one of his buddies was shocked to find out that meat cam from animals. So, his buddy refused to eat any more meat. His parents still ate meat, but catered to their son's new found vegetarianism. When he ate at our place, we did not try to feed him meat.

My son told us that his buddy was vegetarian, but we were "meatarians". I liked that.

I was vegetarian for 3 months after reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. I experienced mood swings and lethargy. The seconds I went back to eating meat I felt better again. I have to thank that book for opening my eyes on factory farming.

I was vegetarian from 14-19, vegan from 19-24 and in the interim years before going paleo (ages 24-30) I was essentially a junk food vegetarian who ate bacon, tuna, and fast food burgers every once in a blue moon. (My years of veganism had left me bitter and wanting to rebel against the disordered eating and psychological obsessions with purity inherent in veganism, but also with a strong revulsion towards animal products and without any alternative frameworks to look to--all the years in the echo chamber led me to believe there was only veganism or SAD omnivory so I was practically living on snack cakes, pasta, tofu and other gross stuff.) Problems I suffered from included amenorrhea, developing a multi-nodular thyroid adenoma, severe depression, reactive hypoglycemia, irritable bowel/chronic diarrhea, arthritis, anemia, hair loss, non-stop respiratory and sinus infections, seasonal allergies, lethargy, memory problems and brain fog and probably some other stuff I am forgetting. When I was 21 the doctor told me I had the immune system of "a very sick middle aged person" and I felt like one, too. When I was 26 another doctor told me that my liver enzyme levels were "higher than an alcoholic with advanced hepatitis c" and was amazed that I wasn't jaundiced. I spent most of my time in bed.

After rejecting it for years, stumbling upon and proceeding to read every single post (in particular the ex-vegan interviews) on http://letthemeatmeat.com/, followed quickly by The Vegetarian Myth, gave me the courage to try paleo and I've never looked back. With the exception of some lingering hormonal imbalance problems, gut damage and the thyroid adenoma, every health problem I thought I would have in ever-worsening forms for the rest of my miserable life cleared up within a couple of months eating paleo. I feel better than I have since childhood and am reasonably sure that I will only keep feeling better as I age, which is so previously unexpected and rad.

i was vegetarian, since the second outbreack of cowmadness in gritain, which than swapped to grmany. im happy that i was vegetarian in this time. it was a ownderful time to get clear on own believe and in this panic situation . shortly after there came this mouth and claw disiease where they burnt again a lot animals. i tried to become vegan somehow i coudnt do it for long time. for short time i felt well. when i started dumpster diving i was the first when i snackend meat.. maybe not the first. i was someday between raw vegan, frutiarian wannabe, freegan, and vegetarian, and breatharian wannabe. and ayurvedic, and tibetean .. thna i tried macrobiotic. i looked in tibetean diet system which is very nice.

realy i started meat when i was two weeks in the wilderness of norway mountain in telemark than when i feel well on a paleo week. its was two weeks paleo intense. after that in hounr of the native americans who suffer from fast food in reservations i ate hamburg and a lot shit. it was fun. i got vegan again than vegetarian. than raw foodist. til i got dental roble. what wasnt only from vegan lifestyle. i wasnt realy vegan. it was from the stress and not being settled. i was derooted. i needed a home. ..fishing in norway brought me closer to paleo also the time in finnland.

whatever. now iam between raw vegan. fruit eater and paleo. i like to keep my animal intake small. i like fish more than big meat. for me eating meat should stay sacred. it s there are still psirits and ghosts a live who have a message to tell us. so if we eat to fast. they will talk to us and say calm down listen for a moment. i died time ago. be cautous on life.

I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 8 years and then a strict vegan for 3 (for moral reasons) before I found low carbing via Atkins in the late '90s. I went back to being a lacto-ovo vegetarian (being a vegan on Atkins is impossible) and realized that my health was more important than my respect for animals' well-being so I started eating meat again for the first time in many years on a trip to Brazil (how could I turn down the magnificent churrascarias?!). Now I only (~95% of the time) eat meat that was raised locally, naturally, in a sustainable manner, in the way nature intended.

I truly believe that an over-consumption of soy exacerbated the PCOS and hypothyroid conditions I learned I had right around the time I discovered low carbing. Soy was my go-to food and now I regret it terribly.