Ex-Vegan (5 Years): Brainwashed Vegans: Confirming What You Believe Is Not Research

Watch on YouTube · 2018-12-14 · 22 min

[video] 0:00 Okay, so my name is Maddie and I'm from Australia. I got into veganism probably, I would say probably five years ago, in 2013. But I went vegetarian, pescatarian when I was 12. So I went to a camp and I saw an indigenous Australian man demonstrating a traditional way to cook fish. And at the time I knew a few vegetarians and I was like, well, if I can eat without meat, then why am I eating meat? So I went home and I was like to my mom, look, I don't want to eat meat if I don't have to. And she's like, okay, I'm kind of concerned nutrition-wise, so do a deal with me. And if I buy you sushi one time a week, then you eat fish, which is kind of ironic because fish was the thing that made me want to go vegetarian. Anyway, I agreed to it. And so I was pescatarian for probably two and a half years. And

[video] 0:57 Now, in my perspective, I didn't have a healthy diet at all. But in comparison to the people I knew, it was like a healthier diet. My parents went to the effort of home cooking stuff and things like that, not as much processed stuff as other people, but it was still pretty bad. So I got to a stage where I was like, you stopped buying me sushi like a month in. I don't really like fish. I'm just going to go full vegetarian. They're like, look, she's nearly 15. like she can make her own choices, we'll have to trust her with this, so I went vegetarian. And the next, my kind of introduction to veganism was when a family member was really struggling with dieting and just feeling so exhausted by trying to understand food and so sick of starving and binging and someone recommended she look into raw foods. So she went online and the first thing that she came up with was fruitarianism. So

[video] 1:55 For her, that was such a relief to feel like she could eat as much as she wanted and not worry about putting on weight. And for her, from then it stemmed into validation from an ethical standpoint, environmental and health, and so it was kind of like, it felt like the package to her, and to her it felt like this whole world had opened up of like, maybe I should question all the stuff that we're being told. Like a lot of people, it brought up a lot of frustration and anger.

[video] 2:27 So when I'd be eating food, she'd be like, that's a chicken period or that's got pus in your milk. From that place, I just felt attacked and I was like, I'm not even going there. These are my choices. I do what I want. And it wasn't until she kind of worked out that that wasn't going to make people change that I kind of wanted to look into it out of my own curiosity. And the first thing that struck me was the ethical standpoint. So I looked at the stuff that was happening in factory farming and I felt really disturbed and sad. And then I got into the health stuff and the environmental stuff. And I was like, look, I'm just, I want to do this. It's also really important to note at this time in my life, I was into a lot of high level sports, a lot of like stress at school.

[video] 3:19 A guy that I liked had trouble with that so I felt so stressed and out of control and I kind of came to this point where I was like desperate for control and I decided that I wanted to take up like modeling offers so I felt like I could get some kind of worth and validation. So veganism seemed like a great solution. Feeling like I was in control, it really fueled this idea of me being a good person. I was really obsessed with being a really good person and so obsessed with people pleasing and the idea of being good. And it was kind of like a relief. As long as I'm vegan, then I don't have to worry anything. I don't have to question anything anymore. That's it. That's just me being a good person kind of thing.

[video] 4:13 Basically, as soon as I went vegan, I went straight into restricting. I knew that eating plant-based was lowering calories, so I started to lose weight quickly. A standard day of eating for me was like half a cup of buckwheat soaked with some coconut sugar, some dates and some berries, a few pieces of dried fruit, and then a small cooked dinner at home. I started making dinner for all the family. obsessively low fat, like zero fat, zero sodium, throwing most of my food away at school, exercising hours a day, and I started to lose weight. So at this stage I was 15, and I also had menstruated, and my parents kind of started to get worried after a while. But I always convinced them and hid all of my habits and didn't talk to anyone about it. and it kind of got progressively worse.

[video] 5:12 And I just got skinnier and skinnier. I'm about 184 centimeters tall, so I'm very tall for a female. And I got down to probably like 47 kilos, I reckon.

[video] 5:25 I stopped getting into teams for sport because I was just becoming too weak, so anxious and depressed and overwhelmed by life.

[video] 5:38 And then I got to a point where I was like, I found out of someone who was promoting raw till four, which I'm sure you've probably heard of. So like lots of fruit and then like a big cooked carbohydrate meal. And to me, like I got to a point where I was like, okay, I'm getting really weak. And I like, I'm feeling like really close to losing it and like really binging out. So that seemed like an avenue where I could eat as much as I wanted and not put on weight. So I eventually convinced my parents to do that. I started eating a lot more food. I wasn't putting on that much more weight. I was really restricting any form of fat and my body was just running on carbohydrate and kind of using up all the nutrients I had and it got harder for me to concentrate and my digestion was not good, but I was still slim and that really mattered to me. I just wanted to be skinny.

[video] 6:40 And I was just like so absorbed in my own little world, always body checking, always taking photos of myself and just thinking about food all day, every day. It just like consumed my life. And that kind of continued. And I went to Cairns when I was probably the age of 18. At this stage, I still hadn't had my period at all. 18 years old, still underway and I got into raw veganism. So, I started eating all raw and I convinced myself why it was the right thing to do and why fruit is the optimal diet and I wanted to go on the tropics just to eat fruit. Looking back now, I'm like how can I convince myself that eating fruit is a natural diet

[video] 7:38 all of the fruit that's available is so modified by the hands of man that there's berries that are kind of barely sweet in the wild and a few other things, but to think we're frugivores by design just doesn't make sense. But I was so wrapped in the idealism of this, the fantasy of raw veganism and being pure and being really light and vibrant and

[video] 8:07 Yeah, so I did that for a while and I was probably raw on and off probably like at least a year and a half or maybe longer actually. And I still had really bad digestion issues. My anxiety was terrible. I couldn't think, well, I can't remember the last time like during that time that I would actually get up with energy. I would just have to drag myself out of bed and very paranoid and that kind of continued. Then I did a 57-day juice fast, which was actually the start of last year, the end of the year before. I went 57 days on juice. So, I was cleaning myself of all the mucoid plaque and got on that train.

[video] 9:01 Yeah, it's actually funny. I had a YouTube channel, which is still up. You can watch videos of me talking about my juice fast. It's quite funny.

9:08 Can I link it? Is it fine?

[video] 9:11 Yeah, that's fine.

9:12 Okay, nice.

[video] 9:14 So I did that, and then I got really underway. I got hit by a car and broke my arm in two places, so I came back to Adelaide to a cooler climate, and it was really hard to keep up with juice fasting. here with the fruits that we had in winter. I just started losing more weight, so I broke my fast. And at this stage, my mental health is kind of all over the place and I put that down to self-exploration and uncovering parts of myself that I just hid away, which is some point of it. I was addressing some of the pain that I had just shoved away, but I just... I was always thinking about food, so paranoid, and I was just always making about myself and not being disciplined enough. I didn't really have any desire to move my body or exercise. I just felt really tired.

10:15 Just to make it clear, the purpose of the juice fest was to basically detox? Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that there's something with vegans who, especially raw vegans, who starve themselves so much that they just go on a different level and start fasting and all of that? There's something mentally about it that it makes them want to starve. They don't realize it and they call it fasting. But it's really just that. What do you think drives people to it?

[video] 10:44 For me, it was kind of like this addiction of this idea of purity and that my body is just full of toxins and this will be the thing that makes me feel good finally. So many people talk about it like it's detox, like I'm feeling crap, I've just got to go further and juice more. I was just so convinced that it was the right thing to do and that fruit is the optimal food.

[video] 11:13 Yeah, I think I've become so addicted to this idea of being pure and just wasn't listening to what my body was communicating to me. Yeah, not great looking back on that. So, probably fast forward to the end of last year, I had an experience with psychedelic mushrooms and this is the first time and on my calm down I felt so like overwhelmed about what I just experienced and I felt for some reason I like binged and that was the first time that I binged to kind of like settle me down and I was so traumatized by that I was so scared of putting on weight and that kind of like stayed with me and I then started to like change

[video] 12:11 I don't know, changed something about my relationship with food where I began to binge and it was like my body was like finally actually eating enough and I just would have periods of just going mad and then it came more and more regular and I just felt so out of control and I was just like so identified with the concept of being like this skinny person that it just completely shook me and I was so distraught by the whole thing and watching myself put on weight and not being able to recognize myself.

[video] 12:46 Even though at that stage I hadn't actually put on that much weight because I was still basically binging on really high-carb foods, basically. So I wasn't putting on that much weight.

[video] 13:00 And then I...

[video] 13:04 which is kind of all over the place. I didn't know what to think. I was exhausted with food. I just felt so mentally unstable. And then I went to Hawaii and I went to a community that was a raw food community. And that was the first time that I had raw animal products. I got to a point where I was like, I don't know what to think anymore. Maybe it's not about me and me being at fault and maybe there being something wrong with me maybe i'm not giving my body what it needs still haven't menstruated i'm 19 years old at this stage the first thing i had was raw fish and my body just sung when i ate that and for the first time in such a long time i could remember actually being content and not being thinking about food after that

[video] 13:54 But I still was really grappling with the whole thing because I was just so identified with veganism and it being the right thing and being a good person and being ethical. And so I was kind of unsure about it. And then in that period when I was in Hawaii, we basically had an abundance of raw food and stuff that we could have basically as much as we wanted. cooked food was there as well. And in that period, I ended up binging every single day pretty much. I would have put on probably at least 25 kilos in three months, I reckon, which was, like, I was all over the place.

[video] 14:38 And I came back to Adelaide again, still felt so confused, questioning everything.

[video] 14:50 And then I started having a bit more animal products on and off. I eventually got my period this year when I was 20, which was a big relief, and only after I put on a significant amount of weight and had been eating animal products. And just like this year up until like just like literally a month ago, I've been struggling with binge eating and then thinking I should fast and doing this and that and this and that and feeling just so exhausted by the whole thing. And it was about a month ago that my sister mentioned to me that she'd found some YouTubers. I think she actually, you were the first one she mentioned about carnivore diet. And I was just like, what? Like, that's unsustainable. That's unethical. That's ridiculous. But I looked into it and I was like, huh, like there's actually some points there. And I...

[video] 15:48 I got to a point probably like a month ago where I had a few big binges and I was like, look, I don't know. I don't have anything to lose anymore. I want to give this a go. So probably two months ago, I experimented with having a lot more animal food, grass fed organic beef and some eggs and started feeling better. I was eating vegetables at the time. And I felt like for the first time I could actually be with my emotions and feel like a stable, functional human being that could actually show up for my life and be present with my experience and not feel extremely ungrounded, slept better, instantly felt stronger and digestion was better. And since then I've just been experimenting with

[video] 16:47 a lot more animal foods. The past few weeks I've been almost 100% animal products, trying to incorporate as much organ meats and raw foods as I can and I can't express the amount of relief that I have. I feel like I have my life back and I have my sanity back and clarity and I'm able to show up for the people in my life and it's just like completely blown open what I thought was true and what I felt secure and certain in and yeah, it's been just like an incredible journey and I feel like I haven't binged in probably like three weeks now which is so relieving and yeah. That's where I'm at right now.

17:40 Did you use any supplements in the whole time?

[video] 17:44 Yeah. I supplemented with B12. I used to take this kind of multi-blend vitamin thing, but always B12. I skipped over a few things, but within this, I also tried the past few years in particular, whole food, plant-based diets, high-fat vegan diets. and just like nothing was really working for me. I always felt really anxious after meals and really like felt like I had to eat everything and more and just never satisfied with what I had. So I did try lots of like lots of variations in the vegan diet.

18:31 How do you see the future of veganism?

[video] 18:38 I feel like it is really popular at the moment and I can understand why the concept is like, especially from the ethical standpoint, it's really like, oh, I don't have to harm the animals or the environment and it feels like, oh, that's such a lovely thing to do, it's the right thing to do. But I've seen how disconnected it is from life and it's like we all have blood on our hands, it's just whether how direct it is. When you've got a piece of raw meat on your plate, it's so much more obvious that you need to take life in order to survive, that there is sacrifice. But if you're eating some kind of processed meat package, like fake meat from wherever, using GMO products with sprays, it's like, oh, this is a better choice. It's more ethical, but there's so much death and loss that comes with that too. It's just not as direct.

[video] 19:37 I think it's going to remain popular for a while and a lot of people are going to kind of flood to it and there's going to be more options. But I think people are going to hit a wall and they're going to realize that they're depleting themselves and it's not sustainable long term and it might be different for everyone. It's also hard to tell because there might be some more agenda for this to be more of a common thing. So it's hard to predict where it's going, but I think it's definitely on the rise.

20:13 Anything else you would like to say to any vegans who are watching or anything important you forgot? Any experience, something you learned from it?

[video] 20:30 I think I want to say that I can totally understand... the allure and why it feels like the right thing to do. But to really do thorough research, because I know for me, as soon as I got into it, the only information that I would seek was the very stuff that just validated exactly what I wanted to hear. I'd look at the doctors who were promoting that and I would just brush everything off that might attest that that's actually true. To just really consider that and to consider the fact of our responsibility and kind of get more connected to our choices. The fact that we do have an impact on other life on earth and that's price that comes with existence.

[video] 21:21 We can really make choices that are more ethical and are more connected But we're never going to get to a place where we don't harm or affect any other being. Yeah.

21:38 Did you also have any vegan friends in this whole time who maybe eat veganism also or are still vegan?

[video] 21:45 Yeah, and that's made it hard for me. Still, I find it really uncomfortable to eat in front of people and talk about it because it's such a tight-knit community and that's what I've made so many friends over and There's so much passion for people there and it is really hard to go, oops, I'm not vegan anymore. I used to say, you're not actually a vegan if you go vegan and you're not anymore. You were never a vegan, you were just plant-based kind of thing.

22:17 Yeah. That's what all of them say. It's funny. They don't realize that all of them are going to quit also.

[video] 22:24 Yeah.

[video] 22:27 Yeah.

22:28 Okay, anything else?

[video] 22:31 I think that pretty much sums it up for now.

22:37 Okay, yeah, thank you.

[video] 22:40 Thank you.