Ex-Vegan (3 Years): My Low Moods Tipped Me Over The Edge

Watch on YouTube · 2019-03-14 · 31 min

0:00 Introduce yourself and start at the beginning, what year it was that you got into veganism and how you got into it and then how it unfolded.

[video] 0:10 My name is Hanna. I also make videos on YouTube, but I'm here just to share my vegan story with you. I went vegan in summer 2015 and

[video] 0:28 I stopped being vegan around summer 2019, so it was about three years. Now, I just kind of want to give a backstory to me, obviously, before going vegan. When I was younger, I was always really sporty. I did a lot of running and everything. I love, love, love running. But then I ended up moving to America in 2016.

[video] 0:59 And there I really just got into the gym and things like that. So that was also added. So when I got back from America, I did so good for about two years of just, you know, gym. I did, you know, I did like the protein shakes and everything. Though I wasn't, you know, I wasn't vegan or anything like that. But yeah, my performances, I was doing really well.

[video] 1:22 Then from there, so that was 2012. 2013, 2014, 2015, yeah, so come about Canada time, so I went to Canada in 2015, the summer, and that's when I found veganism, well, a week before, actually, I went to Canada, I tried pescatarian for about a week, just, yeah, it was just for Not that week exactly before, but just whatever. I get lost in the details.

[video] 2:00 So, yeah, I did that for just the week and, you know, I didn't really think anything of it. Like, it's fine, you know, just a week, whatever. Got to Canada, enjoyed all the food, like, everything. There was no limits then. But then the host in the Airbnb that we were staying at, they had a huge television and it had... Netflix. Yeah. You know what's coming now. So, yeah, I watched, first of all, Vegecated. So that gave me, like, the health scare with it, right? And then I watched Earthlings, and then that gave me the animal scare. A huge emotional, like, ooh, you know, my emotions were really all over the place during that. And then Cowspiracy also, which was this sort of environmental, you know, scare of it.

[video] 2:55 And obviously at the time, I didn't think to myself, oh, this is just pure fear, right? It's just pure fear. Hindsight, obviously, but during it, I just felt that, you know? I felt like that, you know, that's like put on your superhero, you know, kip and go save the world, you know? I...

[video] 3:16 I was just feeling so bad for everything that I was watching, you know, all this information was coming in about the animals, about the world, people, and I just was like, no, I don't want to eat any meat or eggs or whatever. I did it in that night. So, yeah, you know what, at the beginning I have to say, I really enjoyed it because I have a thing which is quite interesting. I developed this actually, I think, well, before veganism came, but I had a thing for just pancakes every morning. I just loved pancakes, just making them myself. So with veganism, I got to try all these different variations of them. So what I would often do whilst in Canada, so I lived there for five months, I literally just would get up every morning just to look forward to these pancakes, because they were huge.

[video] 4:08 They were huge stacks, because I was sitting watching Bananiac on YouTube, and Bite Size Vegan, and Banana Freely Enduring Bride and everything. They were like, sugar, sugar, sugar. And I was like, oh, it's fine. You know, it's fine. Just have more pancakes and put the fruit on the pancakes. It's amazing. But I actually did genuinely enjoy it, though, do you know what I mean? I really liked it, but I know myself, it was my own kind of laziness as well, so I just kind of lounged a lot, I didn't really try to find work in Canada much, you know, a lot of money saved, yada yada, but then an Australian couple moved in with us for a while, and they were really lovely, and the girl out of them

[video] 4:59 she would be into fruits and veggies and things like that love just she was always talking about her fruits and veggies and i just saw her and i thought like this is the essence of health right um and i still i still believe that about her um but i still was like wow i really i gotta try that i gotta try what she's having right so i would often have just these fruit smoothies and you know veggies and of course it was all being promoted on YouTube as well so plus plus plus and yeah but I have to say the smoothie thing I did it but honestly I didn't really enjoy it that much it was just a bit like I'm just drinking smoothies all the time and you know and it kind of swayed me too much away from proper food of like having that preparing of the meal at dinner time because I was getting so wrapped up in all the other things.

[video] 5:56 Not that I really cared at the time, obviously, you know? But yeah, it was different. It was a different experience. So anyway, I got home from Canada, and that's whenever I... So I went back to the gym, of course, right? Which is back into my fitness. But the performance just was not the same. But I was eating so many bananas, and... Um, I then, I also started having white rice and white pasta. I would honestly go to the store and buy this white rice because it was only about 30 pence thinking, ah, you know, like this is cheap and this is good for me. You know, I've really hit the, you know, lottery here or whatever, but I dunno, I, I really didn't enjoy that type of diet.

[video] 6:49 I really, really didn't, but I just felt like I was forcing myself just to get energy, especially with the gym and everything. But like I said, my performance was not as good as it used to be. So from there, well, I didn't have much time to even think about any of this, to be honest, because in 2016, I then went traveling. I was supposed to be going to teach English in Colombia right there. like I would have survived as a vegan there, but yeah, I went out there, and it turns out that that was cancelled, so something happened, and I ended up suddenly in Los Angeles for about four to five months through a friend that I met, so of course it was like a field day for vegans, right, with LA, complete field day. And so I was loving it.

[video] 7:47 I was getting, you know, the fake mayo, or vegan, sorry, because it is fake, like, so, I don't know, it's just the whole label thing, like, chicken is chicken, like, it's chicken. You can't say that it's, like, vegan chicken. It's chicken, you know what I mean? But I didn't think this at the time. I couldn't make that logical, like, connection. So, anyway, I was... enjoying it. Again, my breakfast stuff, still going on, still going strong. And of course, I was in LA, up in the mountains, just enjoying life, and that's when I stumbled upon ideas for YouTube and things like that. So, I actually have my YouTube channel is about astrology, so I actually stumbled upon astrology. I'm aware that, you know, who's ever watching, I don't want to stray away from the point, Yeah, I just really got into that.

[video] 8:45 But still, my diet was still predominantly the same. But then when I got home, when I got home from that trip, so this was September 2000 and... September 2000 and... Sorry, I'm a bit... Would have been September 2016. Yeah, 2016, sorry. Yeah, so when I got back home there, I just had so much rice and beans. The friend that I met, he's from Mexico, so he would make a lot of Mexican dishes, but just vegan versions for me. And so from simple rice and beans with brown rice, I was eating that all the time with hot sauce. And to be honest, I really enjoyed it. I loved it. But...

[video] 9:39 problem came where well at the time again you know it's always at the time you just you don't you know you just don't notice and then it's after um I just started losing weight so much weight like the with the juice the smoothies and like the rice the white rice and the white pasta I was actually gaining weight I forgot to say that yeah I was gaining fat um I couldn't understand it I was like going cycling and everything to try to burn off this fat. But again, like I said, I was just swept away before I could really think about it. I was traveling and whatnot. But as I say, 2017 came, and for about a year and a half, my typical diet was just banana and oats every morning, two slices of toast at about 11 a.m. each morning,

[video] 10:38 big tub of rice and beans at about 2, and then another huge tub of rice and beans at about 5, and then I would not eat anything else. But that was my consistent routine that I did. I was very disciplined in it, and like I said, I also liked it. Now, of course, there were other meals and things in between that I would have had, but that was mostly the structure of what I had, and like I said, I lost a lot of weight, but I guess going back to the point of, you know, my YouTube and things like that, I was trying to do all my studying and my research for this, right, but I came to about, let's say, from about January, February 2018, things just were not clicking for me in terms of what I was studying, right, I couldn't

[video] 11:31 it's just through my own materials, I, in hindsight, from what I know now to back then, yes, I understand that we can learn a lot in that year, but I can't help but think that my diet had something to do with that, that my diet was able to just make sense of information better, because it wasn't even what I was studying, but it was just conversations with people, and I remember having a conversation with my friend, I said, how are you so good at asking people questions? How do you know what questions to ask people? I find that really hard and really difficult, and now I feel like my communicative skills have substantially improved, you know, in comparison to back then. So, yeah, at the time, like I said, I didn't really think anything of it, but I feel as if come January 2018,

[video] 12:26 things just started to go downhill for me, and I think that my main, it was more of my mindset, my moods as well, oh my gosh, my moods, I remember every day, my routine would be like, I'm fine from the morning until about 1 or 2 p.m., and then I would just go really low and then come about eight or nine I was oh yeah you know but then that night I'd be so like oh yeah you know and then I wouldn't get as much sleep um so then I was getting less sleep and then that was making me more it was making me more tired so then it just came to a point where my energy levels were just going lower and lower and lower and I kept

[video] 13:23 like, I kept just trying to justify it to myself, saying, oh, you know, this is just me, this is just my routine, right, it's just my routine, like, I'm good from this time to that time, and then this time I go like this, and then I'm fine again, you know, I can't believe that, you know, that's how I viewed it, but I guess I did, and yeah, so I'd say by come summer, oh, actually, I want to just highlight that from maybe March 2018, I started to incorporate eggs back in, just every now and then, literally just every now and then, and I really enjoyed them. I do enjoy eggs. I've always loved boiled eggs, so yeah, I was getting into the boiled eggs just every now and then.

14:23 But then... One question, were you still calling yourself vegan at the time if somebody asked you?

[video] 14:31 Well, I would kind of just say, well, I'm vegan, but I eat eggs sometimes. Okay. What's that saying? There's another one that they made up. I can't remember what it was called. I forget, but anyway. Yeah, I would have just said that.

[video] 14:50 But, you know, I...

[video] 14:54 I come about summer, yeah, summer of 2018. I just was out and suddenly this just ping and it said, go get a chicken burrito. Just go get it. I went and took it home and bit into it and I thought, yeah, this is pretty good, you know, it's pretty good. Though it wasn't enough to make me like, continue you know eating chicken it just kind of sent me this like the go-ahead that you actually really enjoyed that and also you didn't throw up or anything after because that's a fear that I think is brought in it's like oh well if you're vegan for so many years and then you eat meat you're gonna throw up or whatever at least I think I've heard that somewhere but maybe that was just my own mindset but I didn't you know nothing happened to me I was completely fine and but still it was just

[video] 15:53 my main thing, it was my moods, it was my moods, it was my mindset, I started to get really anxious about things, my overthinking was just rapid, and I mean overthinking in terms of negative thoughts, like certain thoughts coming to me that I was like, why are you here, you know, anyway.

[video] 16:16 So, I was speaking with my best friend at the time, and I met him, of course, I was saying that I lived in L.A., and he invited me then out to visit him in America again. So, I went out then, this was actually in Arkansas, went out to Arkansas, and basically in Arkansas, I was there from October until about December of just past, and that's when I was introduced back to eating meat and everything, because, you know, he was just making his usual Mexican dishes and things like that, but of course he was using the chicken and the beef, and he was making other, you know, other certain cuisines as well, but his egg and, I think it was just egg and rice burritos he would make, they were so good, but yeah, anyway, so that's how I got back into eating meat again, and

[video] 17:14 I, you know, again, it wasn't like, do you know what I mean? Because I mean, I have heard, of course, you know, from other interviews and things like that, that it's like being this like huge, you know, like fully alive and everything. And I would say yes, but I don't know if I noticed the, do you know what I mean? I just wasn't aware of the difference, but I think it's more so from, would have been building up over the past couple months that I'm really noticing the difference, if you know what I mean. Because now I eat so much bacon and sausage and eggs. We do potato bread here, because I'm from Northern Ireland, by the way, for any of you who don't know, I didn't really say that. But yeah, potato bread, soda bread.

[video] 18:04 What else, what else? Oh yeah, I have fish, potatoes, peas. but honestly like I'm just oh I'm also just drinking cream out of the tub and I love it so much but yeah I just feel really good I feel just so much more energetic and I feel so much more like I could just go and go work out again fine and I can do my day to day things without these weird moods and And, you know, also, I think another thing to mention is my skin when I was vegan. Oh, it got so dry. And when I was looking over past photos and things, I was thinking, I was convinced that my skin had always been like that. It was just the way my skin's always been. But when I saw all photos, I wasn't, there was not, none of that.

[video] 19:01 Like, yes, I went through, you know, normal spots as you would, but then it kind of was clearing up and I was like, oh, okay, but.

[video] 19:09 Yeah, the spots, yeah, it's quite bad. My skin was just really dry, and then my hair was getting really dry as well, and my fingernails, they're so strong now. They used to just break like that, but they're so strong and sturdy, and it just makes me so much more grateful, if you know what I mean. Right. just to have proper fingernails, and my hair as well would fall out a bit too. So, these were just kind of things that, again, I just didn't notice so much. Well, I noticed obviously, but I didn't link it to what I was eating. Well, this is the thing, I did think it was from what I was eating,

[video] 20:06 But I just didn't know what, and so the whole trying to do the elimination thing, I don't know. I can be quite impatient, so I did not have the patience to do that. But yeah, these are just some of the symptoms. I'm trying to think of anything else that I had or experienced.

20:24 One question. Oh, okay, now continue. I'll ask after.

[video] 20:28 Oh, sorry.

[video] 20:31 Yeah, the other thing I experienced was just the leaky gut thing. Again, I just thought it was normal to go to the restroom all the time.

20:43 Would you say that you did the vegan diet right, so to speak?

[video] 20:48 That's a good question.

20:51 Because that's the biggest argument for most vegans is that they didn't do it right. Did you use supplements, for example, also?

[video] 20:58 Okay. I'm gonna be honest, I got little B12 supplements, and I took for about two weeks, we'll go with that, right? About two weeks, but then I started feeling a wee bit sick on them, just a bit like, ooh, you know? So I was like, oh well, don't need them then, you know what I mean? I really just didn't think anything of it, I just thought, obviously these don't agree with me, so I'm just not gonna take them, obviously my own ignorance with veganism

[video] 21:33 But, I mean, apart from B12, with, I mean, would I say I did it right? Well, in the beginning, if I did more, like, yes, I had those breakfast foods, but it was a lot of fruit, and then I had smoothies, and then I had a lot of veggies, so that should be healthy. So that's right.

22:00 You know, they don't really have a definition for what is right. They just always say that nobody even knows what vegans mean by it. And also 99% of B12 comes from sewage sludge. So very likely that was your B12. So it's no wonder it makes you sick. Also, when you take the B12, the blood pressure rises always because it's toxic to the body. So the body tries to get rid of it. So a lot of people feel this increase of energy after they beat well, but that's only because it's toxic and you get a lot of adrenaline.

[video] 22:35 Wow, I didn't know that.

[video] 22:42 Yeah, I slept when you feel like that 99% of like sludge pretty much like what I was wondering is if you had any vegan friends or do you still have contact with them?

22:57 What do they think about you?

[video] 23:01 Well, I've got one vegan friend and he's completely fine with it. You know, he's like, he, I told them that I went back to eating bean and everything and it's like, okay, right. Cool. No worries. Like your choice. So, um, uh, I did tell my other, my other friend who says she's vegan, but she eats fish, which I don't, but anyway, I can't, I'm a hypocrite, because I did the same, like, vegan, but big thing, anyway, um, she, uh, I think, I think she was a wee bit taken aback when I told her, a little bit, because she's, you know, just the animals, you know, and things like that, and, um, But apart from that, just a little thing, it's all good.

23:55 How do you now see the future of veganism? Where do you think it's heading?

[video] 24:05 To be honest, I think it's going to fall. I understand this new world order, diet and things like that, but if you really look at the percentages of vegans, really, in comparison to non-vegans,

[video] 24:23 You're not gonna be able to go to like Columbia or go to South Africa or Go to China or whatever and try to change, you know what they eat like I Just I don't know. I think it's just a very Westernized It's just a very you know, come on like commercial like trendy thing that's in to remain I'm because of that Well, trans commonly go, they die. And I think that, you know, with people being vegan and things like that, because I'm not saying that it 100% doesn't work or anything like that. I mean, each to their own, each to their own, right? I mean, I've heard stories of people who've been vegan for over 20 years and they're thriving, right? But I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say is that, like, I just don't think...

[video] 25:23 I just don't think it'll really stand, because, well, it'll just come and go. There'll be some other fad diet or something else to come along in its place, but then again, then again, whenever you see the bigger picture, like you would describe, you know, the bigger picture, the new world order, everything like that, you kind of do think, oh geez, you know, with the whole sci-fi and artificial intelligence coming ahead for our future, yeah, all that stuff is, It's terrifying, but as to whether or not veganism will continue to rise and overpower the non-vegan side, I don't know.

26:07 What do you think about the lab-grown meat? Don't you think that they're pushing it?

[video] 26:13 See, to be honest, when I found out about the lab-grown mate, I thought this was a really cool thing, right? Thinking, oh, geez, it's lab-grown. It's going to help so much.

26:28 No nutrients, no bacteria, no nothing.

[video] 26:31 Oh, I know. Do you know what? It just boils down to education then, really. when it comes to nutrition for Canada, for Australia, for America, for the UK, Europe, whatever, everywhere, yes, but this plate thing, this pyramid of food or whatever, that thing, what is with that thing? Nobody questions this thing. Question it. And I think that's what it comes to. It's being in school and being like, what is this? What does this mean? Now, of course, the teachers will tell us what it means, But then it's also good for us to reassess those things later on in life, whenever you're not young and impressionable, but whenever you've grown and you can maybe try to make sense of it for yourself. But I think it just comes with research and discernment and looking into those things. But it's just that we're so distracted.

[video] 27:31 It's just that we're in that kind of cycle of, oh, well, this is the play that they have. Like, you don't need to worry then. You don't need to do anything. Just look at these guidelines, follow these guidelines. It's simple, easy, go, convenience, right? It's just all convenience. It's all just go, go, go, go. Like, we're just in a society, because it's just grown so fast and so rapidly, it's just constantly going. We're just running on this freaking treadmill just constantly. And everyone's just trying to keep up with this, you know? Everyone's just trying to at least, you know, well, survive, of course, you know, survive. But at what cost, you know? Like, we don't have time to think. We don't have time to sit and just, you know, think for ourselves, or do something that we like, or look into something that we enjoy, because... It's just constant information overload, you know what I mean?

[video] 28:29 But when it comes to veganism, then maybe there's a potential because of the young people now with having access to phones and more technology, I can see how there can be a sneaky little end of manipulation on the young. and maybe it's our responsibility as the older people to... flip it, what am I talking about? Like, I'm only 27. But, you know what I mean? Just the people who are a lot older too, for us to pass on that information, but still

[video] 29:11 It's trying to get people to wake up and see the information, to do the research, to look into it, to not just turn it away and say, you know, I don't care about your opinion because my opinion's right, because this is why I've been programmed and conditioned. You know? It can be tough. You know, I'm not... You know, I just get really passionate when I talk about this. But...

[video] 29:37 I... You know, if anything, I just hope people could just wake up and just learn to think for themselves, you know what I mean?

[video] 29:49 Just to see that there's so much more potential and opportunity.

29:56 Anything else you would like to add, something specific you would like to say to any vegans who are watching, maybe?

[video] 30:03 Okay, so to any vegans watching, if the diet that you're on is good for you and you're thriving in it, then that's great. Do your thing. But just be cautious of how you may look to others as well and what they're eating and just be accepting and try not to be overjudgmental because that's a thing that can come with it. Just whatever you're eating, whatever you're doing, if it's good for you, do it, but at the same time, if there's any, ever a time that you decide you don't want to be vegan anymore, that's okay too, okay, that is okay too, and please don't feel guilty for it, you do not, you're not here to burn, like, to have guilt placed on you for what you eat, like, please, that is such a big thing when it comes to guilt and shame and fear and stuff like that, like,

[video] 30:59 vegans just don't let the guilt stop you from feeding yourself please that's it well said thank you thank you