An athlete must always be at the top of their physical and mental game. As such, it is only natural that quite a few professional athletes would take on the vegan lifestyle.
Becoming a vegan naturally comes with many benefits that would be appealing to someone in such an active line of work. While physical performance can be improved with the right steps taken, things such as enhanced concentration and even resting better can come from making this change.
To further establish the effectiveness of the vegan lifestyle in terms of improving the natural human condition, we have gathered seven stellar examples of famous vegan athletes.
1. Austin Aries
Not only is this pro wrestler a vegan, he is also the author of a book titled Food Fight. In Food Fight, Aries recalls his journey into the lifestyle of his choosing while also attempting to get the reader to take a closer look into the benefits of going vegan.
In regards to diet, the wrestler puts the variety of plant-based foods he consumes first. This allows him to get a wider range of vitamins and nutrients into his system to keep him healthy and happy in all aspects of life.
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2. Venus Williams
A world famous tennis player and winner of numerous grand slam single titles, Venus Williams is clearly doing something right in her life. One thing to instantly take into consideration is her dietary choices. As you may have guessed, Williams is one of the most famous vegan athletes. She adopted the lifestyle after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease known as Sjögren’s syndrome in 2011.
Doctors pointed out that taking on a vegan diet may relieve some symptoms such as crushing fatigue and painful joints with practice. Following this change, she noted that the diet also helped her on the court and improved the quality of her overall life.
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3. Fiona Oakes
Veganism definitely helps athletes on the court, track, or field. However, Fiona Oakes is a good example of how it can also help outside of sports due to her insanely active lifestyle. Oakes is a renown marathon runner with achievements such as top ten finishes at major world marathons, and multiple completes of the Marathon des Sables.
However, this extraordinary runner has also taken on the challenges of being a retained firefighter and running an animal sanctuary almost all on her own. As a firefighter, she had to always be on the spot when the world needed her, and the animal sanctuary consist of caring for more than 400 animals on a regular basis. Being one of the most famous vegan athletes clearly is not holding her back at all.
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4. Torre Washington
Professional bodybuilder and typically top-ranking competitor Torre Washington was a vegan well before he became a pro. He turned to veganism in 1998 and did not receive a pro card until 2009. The change came from his desire to be more committed to the Rastafarian philosophy of living off the land.
When he isn’t impressing in the world of bodybuilding, Washington is often advocating for veganism and the treatment of animals across the world. This earned him a Humane Hero Award by the Florida Human League in 2016.
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5. Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton is one of the highest paid athletes in the world and a Formula 1 racer. Beyond those stunning accomplishments, he is also a vegan. He adopted a vegan diet in 2017, stating two big reasons as the basis for this change. His first being the incredible environmental damage that cow production is doing to the world.
While the second was the overall cruelty of animal processing as a whole. All in all, those are two very respectable and smart motives to make such a change.
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6. Michaela Copenhaver
Rowing competitor Michaela Copenhaver has been a competitor since 2003 and has amassed an impressive amount of wins in the time since then. However, her trip down the path of veganism was something that just kind of happened.
She did consciously become vegan at first, but relied on dairy and eggs quite a bit for 1.5 years following that. It was only when she traveling and unable to properly store eggs or dairy products that she realized that she didn’t need them. She went without those foods for a week and just never went back to eating them after that.
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7. Hannah Teter
Repeat Olympic medal winner Hannah Teter was grown with the philosophy of respecting and loving the environment from a young age. This led her to living as a vegan following her gold medal win in 2010.
After her adoption of the lifestyle, Teter stated that she had never felt stronger in terms of physical, mental, and emotional health. She went on to say that the diet had revealed an entirely new world of potential for her as an athlete. That level of confidence and drive is incredibly difficult to find in most cases.
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