Ex-Vegan (1.5 Years): Veganism Destroyed My Pancreas & Fueled My Eating Disorder

Watch on YouTube · 2018-09-27 · 20 min

[video] 0:00 Hi, I'm Vasi. I was a vegan for a year and a half and I got into veganism because I struggled with a really bad eating disorder while I was a teenager and I would restrict my food constantly. I would go from diet to diet. I would find ways to eat less and it was catching up to me. I had no energy. I felt horrible. I tried to do whatever I can to feel better. I was taking so many supplements and it lasted for about a year until I just could not keep going with the pace I was at when I had anorexia. And I went on YouTube and I found these YouTubers and they were talking about how they promised that you would stay skinny if you

[video] 0:58 I ate vegan if you ate raw vegan. When I started being vegan, I was a raw vegan. I would eat lots of fruit every day, but eventually, after about a month, it got way too expensive for me because I was going to the grocery store every week.

[video] 1:21 you know, that just kept adding up and I just found ways to be vegan for cheaper. You know, like I would buy, um, I would go to Costco, which is like, you know, a bulk store, you buy lots of stuff there and it saves you money. So I would buy grains, I would buy beans, I would buy lots of oatmeal, lots of fruits and veggies and, I couldn't really afford fruits and veggies, so I wasn't necessarily eating a very healthy vegan diet. It wasn't very balanced. It was definitely very calorically dense, but it wasn't very nutritionally dense. And I started having lots of problems. And ever since veganism has been on the rise, we also have many stores here which are like general nutrition and other supplement stores. They're just popping up. out of nowhere. I got into the whole supplementation thing.

[video] 2:18 I was taking all the supplements I needed because I was vegan. I took B12, I took magnesium, zinc, iron, and nothing helped. Nothing made me feel better. I was happy that I got to eat a lot again and stay pretty slim, but over time, my body started clinging onto that weight. I started gaining a lot of weight as a vegan and you know I might not really look like you know that bad anymore but I quit veganism and I started noticing that I started to lose weight and it was just so backwards for me because I would constantly think you know if you're vegan you're gonna be skinny you know like lower calories blah blah blah but I've noticed like I have extreme mental clarity now I

[video] 3:12 I don't eat very much, but I eat very nutritionally dense food. I feel amazing. I can go out to eat with my friends now and I can enjoy my parents' meals. I just feel amazing that I'm not in veganism anymore. It was so hard to break it because veganism honestly felt like a religion to me.

[video] 3:41 I would binge out and then I would feel horrible. I would feel like I just had betrayed all of my vegan friends and all these YouTubers and stuff and that I was polluting this planet and I was being a horrible person. When I step away from that, I realize it doesn't make me a horrible person. How I act daily and what I do every single day makes me a better or a worse person.

4:12 Would you say that you did veganism wrong then because you ate mostly calories and didn't focus so much on the nutrients? Or would you say that veganism is generally wrong?

[video] 4:22 I don't think I did anything wrong because I've tried everything. I tried balancing my plate with veggies, potatoes, grains and beans. And then I would add some avocado on that. So it's like you're getting all the food you need. And I tried to eat lots of fruit throughout the day. I tried to take my supplements. I did everything right. And I was still having issues really, really bad.

4:47 Yeah, okay. What other issues? Digestion maybe? Mental issues? Tooth? Teeth?

[video] 4:54 Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely teeth. So... When I was eating lots of fruits, I started to feel that my teeth were weak. My teeth never rotted or became yellow, but they were very weak. It hurt to close my jaw. I felt like my teeth were decaying even though they looked very healthy.

[video] 5:19 As for my mental state, I started getting really stressed out. I started to lash out on people. have bipolar disorder because my dad has it and it's just genetic throughout the family. But when I was a vegan, it was way worse because I was always angry. I wasn't happy. I didn't sleep well. I had depression issues. I didn't do very well in school. I wouldn't talk to my friends. I deleted my social media. Just everything went downhill mental health wise. I wasn't thinking clear either.

[video] 5:56 I did fail a few classes in school and had to redo them but You know that's done and over with and it's fine now, but I I also ended up binging last year mid-july on my dad's birthday and we couldn't celebrate my dad's birthday because I had developed pancreatitis and I was stuck in the hospital for three days and And I don't know how it didn't just like click in my mind that it was maybe because of my diet and the excess amount of carbohydrates I was eating. And I was just so focused on the whole entire thing of, you know, carbs don't make you fat, this and that, like you're eating very healthy. That could just be your body cleansing itself or going into shock, you know, just just a bunch of BS that they load into your mind.

[video] 6:50 so I just, I don't know, I would fall off the wagon, go back to being vegan and fall off the wagon again. And, you know, I kind of started noticing it after I had pancreatitis that maybe this diet wasn't for me. Like maybe I needed to start introducing eggs into my diet or, uh, stop eating so much fruit, just anything. Like I was like praying for, you know, a better result. And, uh, I ended up developing hypoglycemia because I was vegan and no matter how much sugar I ate that day and I would constantly be snacking on something sugar, I would not feel good. I would always feel really lightheaded and like I needed to take a nap and dizzy and it also falls back into my mental health. I didn't feel good. I constantly had headaches, migraines, you know, they hurt really bad.

[video] 7:49 And, you know, that's how veganism really affected my health, along with along with bloating and digestion issues and my digestion slowing. And, you know, there's this like common saying, I know that like people like high carb Hannah, and, you know, happy, healthy vegan, they all say it, they're like, You go to bed like Buddha and you wake up like Gandhi. I'm like, dude, I'm going to bed looking like Buddha and I'm waking up like Buddha. What's going on here? I don't know. I just always had a flabby belly as a vegan. Now that I'm not, it's much easier to keep a flat stomach and to have better digestion, definitely.

8:35 Do you want to talk more about how veganism is a religion? Any more thoughts about that?

[video] 8:43 Yeah, definitely. So I discovered it throughout YouTube. And then I noticed that there's a lot of vegan YouTubers out there a lot, like so many that you cannot ever finish watching all of their videos. Either all of them like spew the same thing, or all of them have something different to say, you know, like, The starch solution, the raw vegan, the Chinese diet, whatever. There's so many of those freaking diets that you can't really name them all. All of them try to get people to be vegan, but then people are leaving because they don't feel good. When you leave your religion, you're going to have a lot of backlash. A lot of people are not going to like you.

[video] 9:34 They're going to call you a deceiver or that you didn't do it right and that they want you to come back. It really does feel like a religion to me.

9:49 Did you also believe that killing animals was wrong? Were you into the morals and all of that?

[video] 9:53 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thought that killing animals was wrong, and I would tell my friends that if they hung out with me, they couldn't get themselves a burger because it made me uncomfortable. I would constantly go to my parents' fridge, and I would just throw away the red meat they had in there. And thinking at it now, like, I feel so, like, guilty and sad about it, you know, like,

[video] 10:20 That animal, it's dead. You want to cherish the meat. You want to enjoy it and not throw it away. An animal is not trash. When I was a vegan, I loved animals, but I also threw them in the trash because I wasn't happy with meat.

10:45 What do you believe is the future of veganism? What's going to happen with this whole movement or what do you see it as?

[video] 10:54 I definitely see a lot of people leaving or just, I don't know, some people are going to keep preaching it, keep trying to get people to come back and then some people are going to Leave veganism. They're going to go to another diet. I feel like then paleo might get more popular than veganism because overall like I've noticed that a lot of people do veganism because it's cool and because a lot of people talk about it and it's on the rise but not a lot of people are realizing that you know, it can be very detrimental to your health and Meanwhile, I do think that it can work for some people. I don't think it's for everybody. I

11:37 Would you say that somebody is pushing it or what is it about?

11:43 Is it a business?

[video] 11:44 I feel like it definitely is pushed. It definitely is a business. You know, we have stores here like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's. We have natural grocers. We have a gateway market. We have all these, you know, organic stores and they just have like aisles and aisles and they just say like vegan this, vegan that. And, um,

[video] 12:07 You know, I think we can all agree that natural food is the best food and, you know, not this like processed vegan garbage.

[video] 12:16 Like, for example, you know, we we're vegan because we don't want to eat meat. But then we eat fake meat that's full of chemicals that can, you know, cause cancer, can cause brain fog, can cause weight gain, anything really. So it really is more of a business than anything. anything else. See, I wish veganism was realistic, because I myself, I love animals. I'm eco-friendly, I'm a minimalist, and I love the idea of it, but it's not sustainable. That's the thing.

12:56 Did you know that there's over 50 nutrients you can get from plants? If you would look that up, would you understand that veganism can't work for anybody?

[video] 13:06 Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like, I stumbled across your channel maybe two weeks ago and I'm like, who is this Svetigay guy? Like, just all this. And I heard Vegan Gains talking about you, like, I don't know, a long time ago. And, dude, that dude's psycho. He needs help. But I think your channel is really unique, you know? You're...

[video] 13:31 Maybe making some profit off of YouTube, but you're helping people share their stories. You know, it's not just you filming to the public It's you giving people an opportunity to speak and you know, I really do appreciate your channel a lot and

13:46 I don't get any money from YouTube itself, though. They hate me.

[video] 13:52 Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people like that, you know, like conspiracy theorists or like people who are against any kind of movement, you know. YouTube just like cancels them out. But, you know, it's a really good hobby for you. It really does help spread the message and it's really important.

14:10 Yeah. Were you also part of a community, or did you have any vegan friends? If so, do you still have any contact?

[video] 14:20 I did not have any vegan friends. I'm from Des Moines, here in Iowa. If any of you don't know, it's close to Chicago, kind of close, six hours. But it's not popular here, even though we have these vegan stores. People here in Iowa, we like our butter, we like our butter cow, we like meat. We have an official Iowa pork board. I didn't have any vegan friends here at all. I maybe had one, but I noticed that even though she wasn't vegan, she had a huge alcohol problem. You know, I noticed that a lot in vegans, you know, a lot of them talk about struggling with drugs or struggling with alcoholism or, you know, they smoke cigarettes to release stress or anything. And that actually brings me into a topic.

[video] 15:15 Because I was so stressed out as a vegan, I opted for smoking cigarettes because it was a way to calm myself down without eating something that's actually very good for me. It was a habit, it was disgusting, and not only did smoking make my skin look really bad, but so did veganism. High amounts of sugar, it made me break out on my shoulders. I was embarrassed to wear anything like this, like a spaghetti strap. I would always wear long sleeves or t-shirts. My skin looked really dull, too. It looked kind of yellowy.

[video] 15:57 I don't know. I was trying so hard to be fully raw Christina and I ended up looking like the Grinch dude.

16:06 When exactly did you quit veganism then?

[video] 16:10 When did I quit it?

[video] 16:13 March of 2017 is when I quit after my first year. In my first year I did not cheat at all.

[video] 16:23 Everything was fine. I guess I quit it because I went out to eat with some friends and I was starving and I was just craving a doughnut so bad, like a doughnut, a piece of cake and like eggs and just like any typical, you know, like teenagers meal. You know, like I I really did miss out a lot on my teenage hood because I was so obsessed with my diet and it was almost orthorexic. You know, I didn't really allow myself to go out to eat. because of salt and how, you know, there's not very many options. And literally, as a vegan, all you can get are the salads, the fries, the maybe like the black bean burger, just substitute cheese, I don't know, like, it's, it's very minimal on options that you have.

17:17 Yeah. Anything else you would like to add any experience, anything you learned, something you would maybe like to say to vegans who are watching?

[video] 17:26 Yeah, I forgot to say this at the beginning, but I have recovered from an eating disorder and I've noticed that every vegan I've watched, they have at least my anorexia story or my recovery from bulimia story. Almost every vegan has one on their channel. Almost everybody, some people don't have an eating disorder, but some people do. And they extend it by being vegan because they can eat less calories and blah, blah, blah and still stay skinny. And I really do feel like it's kind of hidden as an eating disorder. But I don't know. I say take care of yourself first. If something is making you feel horrible, then maybe it isn't the right diet. Supplementation will never beat...

[video] 18:26 any type of animal food that you're missing out on. I've always been somebody to preach everything in moderation, and I think everybody can really agree with that. You don't need an excess of anything in your life.

18:43 Yeah. Is there anything else, or would that pretty much be it? You can think about it if you like.

[video] 18:52 Yeah, I could definitely think about it, but... I don't know. It was just an extremely difficult time, but I'm glad I did get to experience it and I'm glad that I won't experience it and end up being vegan for like five years like some people who spoke on your channel. It was a good experience. Do I regret it all the way? Kind of, kind of not. I mean, veganism introduced me to minimalism. You know, it's very important to me to be thankful with what you have. It introduced me to being eco-friendly. You know, I use recyclable stuff all the time. You know, I've cut down on waste extremely. So even though it was a good learning experience, not all of it was good. And I really don't recommend it to anybody as a full-time diet.

[video] 19:44 You can go ahead and have a vegan meal here and there, but don't make it a daily thing because you will miss out on a lot of stuff. And you will miss out on life.

20:00 Okay, thank you.

[video] 20:04 And yeah, as for your channel, congrats. I'm glad you do what you do and You know, a lot of people do like you. So even though some people might discourage you, you're a great guy and I hope everything is well for you.

20:19 Thanks. Yeah, you too.