Mizo Amin Living the vegan (right) and non-vegan (left) lifestyles
Mizo Amin talks about going vegan for some time and how it has affected his body and performance as an athlete.
Doha, August 31, 2019: Mizo Amin is not your average baller. Before he was spotted by Al-Rayyan Sport Club’s and becoming, arguably, one of the top shooting guards in Asia, Mizo Amin was set to traveling around the world. The athlete loved spending his holidays in all kinds of places like Australia, Spain, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Germany, France, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordon, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and more. Naturally, all of this constant travelling has a direct impact on the player’s diet.
For just over a year, Mizo followed a strict vegan diet, and even though he has been warned about it from the non-vegan society, he started to shift his interest to vegan food, and slowly booted the meats and burritos. However, Mizo seemed to bounce away from the vegan lifestyle as he found out that, although healthy, being completely vegan was not in his best interest as an athlete and a person.
The shooting guard explained the results of his diet choice and how they affected his performance, saying that “at the beginning, I was feeling super healthy, super great! At the gym, on the streets, in the house, and just about everywhere. But as time went by, I started to notice my energy going down, especially after games. I took longer time to recover, and in the mornings I was hardly energized.”
Mizo tried to keep an open mind about it, but his family and friends always pointed out the big chance in Mizo’s diet and how it could be affecting his performance negatively. “Not everyone is cut out for this vegan lifestyle, Mizo!” Amin’s father, Hassan, told him one night after paying the athlete a visit at his home, only to find Amin passed out from low blood sugar after an exhausting training session.
Mizo said that his passing out hardly had anything to do with his new diet, and that it was mainly because he had been cutting out carbs for some time, which caused him to lose 13kgs in less than a month. But he admits to finding the vegan lifestyle too hard and too draining for someone who trains 4-5 hours a day. “I started to miss my meat-eating days,” Mizo commented. “It was suddenly hard to resist all these new burger places and I found myself resisting the transition slowly but surely.”
At the end, Mizo gave up his plant-based diet due to both, personal reasons and pressure from people around him who saw his body wither away like flowers in autumn. Without the support of the people he loved, and the clear changes in his physique, Amin decided it was time to go back to burgers and sausages, and not the vegan version of it.