PROTEINPOWER

In the ongoing convo around the best eating routine for health goals, one of the OG macronutrients—and where we get it—is undergoing a rethink. Listen up: Experts are loudly) singing protein’s praises.

- COURTNEY RUBIN

When Carrie Forrest's

STEAK

with Gorgonzola sauce was set down on the white tablecloth late in the spring of 2014, she began looking around the restaurant nervously. She wasn’t famous, or at least not exactly: She had a vegan blog with an app successful enough that she'd just flown from her home in Pismo Beach, California, to present at a food blogging conference in Miami, before flying up to New York.

Forrest—who has a master’s degree in nutrition—ate plenty of beans and soy for protein, yet she was exhausted. In fact, she’d been low-energy for months, maybe ever since she'd switched to being vegan in 2010, inspired by Alicia Silverstone, a love of animals, and a hope that maybe she would feel better and lose the stubborn five pounds that kept coming back. Giving up meat was easy; it was yogurt that had been hard, but lately she'd started looking longingly at eggs in farmers’ markets. In New York, though, something clicked.

“I was just like: This isn’t working,” Forrest, now 47, says of being vegan. I felt ashamed. But I also felt like: This is my health and I have to make a change.” She doesn’t remember much about the steak except that it was delicious and also that she couldn’t finish it. The next morning, she woke up and went right back to it, eating the leftovers cold, directly out of the fridge.

Almost immediately, she began searching for the words for her audience, and after revising more than half a dozen times, on June 14, 2014, she hit publish on Why I Am No Longer Vegan,” which included an apology if the headline caused disappointment, confusion, or anger.” She held her breath.