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A veteran U.S. marine has revealed how he adopted a plant-based diet following his military career an inspiring video shared by Million Dollar Vegan (MDV).
MDV is an advocacy organization which encourages and supports people to sign its 31-day pledge and give a plant-based diet a go. In the past, MDV has offered to make $1,000,000 dollar charity donations if Pope Francis and Donald Trump signed the pledge.
Those who take part will be offered recipes, health and nutrition advice, and a free Vegan Starter Kit featuring meal plans, tips on where to eat out, and answers to tricky questions.
‘Don’t kill anything that doesn’t try to kill you first’
Marc Holley, who served in the marines between 2008 and 2016 reveals that his motto was ‘don’t kill anything that doesn’t try to kill you first’. He lived by this motto throughout his deployment in Afghanistan.
In the video, he says: “I just wanted to take it a step further and see how that would manifest in the rest of my life and my choices. So I started trying to embody that in the rest of my lifestyle, other parts of my life.”
He says he realized that if he applied the motto to the way he eats, it ‘seemed logical’ not to kill or eat anything that didn’t want to kill him first.
Telling moments
He continues: “Probably one of the most telling moments was when I was in basic, and then when I was in Afghanistan, we got the meat that was shipped to us. Literally on the box was printed ‘grade D meat for prison or military use only’.
“And that made me think really hard about the quality of any kind of meat that I was getting. When you’re in the military, you’re government property, just like a prisoner. That’s not necessarily the direct correlation, but you are government property and there are a lot of things that are done by the lowest bidder.”
He says that contractors who undertake logistical tasks like transporting equipment will often be chosen on that basis of cost – and that applies to food as well.
Going plant-based
When Holley went plant-based a couple of years ago, he says it increased his energy levels, and he was able to sustain his energy for 14-hour working days.
He adds: “[After] less than a week, I noticed I was flushing a lot of things out, and nobody talks about that enough. Everybody thinks it’s normal to not poop for a day and a half, I’m like, ‘dude, I’m happy that I can take three poops before 10am.
“If I could tell anybody that’s watching this anything else, I would say that again, you don’t have to be anybody special to really commit to this kind of thing…My wife and I decided two years ago to do this until it stopped being easy. I don’t think it ever won’t be easy.”
