There are no nutrients in animals that you can't get from whole plant foods in abundance. This is an example of a cronometer feed of food I ate in a given day and their nutritional value. Plants have fiber. Plants have water. Plants have vitamins and minerals.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1476046455981934&set=pcb.1476046619315251&type=1&theaterhttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1476046462648600&set=pcb.1476046619315251&type=1&theaterCan you show me one nutrient for which I am missing the RDA?
Animal foods contain lots of saturated fat and promote TOR growth enzyme activity.
Eating a plant based diet allows you to eat low fat and high carbs and as much as you want so you have lots of energy, and you don't initiate the 4 hour insulin resistance caused by eating fat 3 times a day. In many experiments, healthy students who were fed fat foods would temporarily gain lots of insulin resistance for several hours. Do that 3 times a day, and you have the beginnings of diabetes.
Furthermore, you remove all sources of dietary cholesterol if you remove meat and dairy from your diet and get all the cholesterol you need manufactured by your body.
Low carb diets can work short term, but because you always need calories to work your brain and your body, starving yourself cannot work long term. That's why high carb whole plant foods diet low in fat (unless it's whole raw almonds and nuts) is the method that works long term... and you can see how the low carb vs high carb gurus look if you're confused by their arguments.
Source about why nuts don't make people fat
So basically, eating whole plant foods to your heart's content while avoiding meat, dairy, oil and processed foods gives the best health and most sustainable weight loss.
How has caloric restriction worked for you so far? Try a whole foods plant based diet... Eat as many whole fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains as you want. Live in abundance, just of the right foods.
By the way, it's totally possible to get fat and sick on a vegan diet. I've been vegan for 2 years and when I started taking hormones 7 months ago, I started gaining weight and the weight wasn't distributing in a feminine pattern. This was probably due to hormonal change coupled with processed foods. But now that I am eating less processed foods (I got my junk food down to one moderate meal a week) I am losing the weight again and the fat is distributing in more of an hourglass shape i.e. my waist circumference is going down enough to get a nice curve.
That's why I am refering specifically to a whole plant foods based diet, not a vegan diet. Eating mock meat and cheese is almost as unhealthy as eating actual meat and cheese because of the high amounts of satured fats and trans fats in processed foods devoid of the complete natural nutrient packages from which they were created.
