I've been on the bandwagon for 5 months, so my smugness is growing by the day at this point.
Doesn’t have to be an absolutist thing. If you’re eating less meat than 2019 nil or 2018 nil, you should feel good about yourself. After my wife went pescatarian a few months ago, I’ve been drowning in meat. All kinds. I try to absolve her of any guilt, so that she doesn’t buy as much for me, but it’s only recently been getting better. Being forced into eating the meat before it spoils has been terrible, but at least sometimes I’ve weightlifted. :/ I would be OK with a sharp reduction in meat production. Eventually. Might sniffle into my pillow for a bit, but it’s for mama earth. Worth it.
I've lost 15lbs since the last week of December, when my religious conversion happened, which puts me at 174. It's the lightest I've been in at least 6 years, but I don't own a scale so I don't track that closely. Eating vegan hasn't affected my lifting at all. I would say if anything I feel better, since I'm taking a lot of stress off my knees and heart. I'm old now, so I'm not going to compare myself to what I was like when I was 23 and lifting 5 days/week, but for my current situation (2 little kids, 37 yrs old), I'm feeling like a million bucks. (FWIW my wife always yells at me when I say I've lost 15 lbs in 4+ months by just going vegan. She's like, "IT'S NOT THE VEGANISM, YOU DON'T GO TO THE COFFEE SHOP TO EAT A 600 CAL MUFFIN FOR BREAKFAST EVERY DAY LIKE YOU USED TO, MORON!!!!" But then I'm like, "yOu DoN't GO to ThE cOfFEe ShOp...," and the argument continues.)