Ex-Vegan (6 Months): Extreme Hyperactivity & Lethargy. - That's What Plants Did to Me
Watch on YouTube · 2019-07-21 · 9 min
0:00 Introduce yourself and start at the very beginning how you got into veganism and then what happened? Why did you quit in the end?
[video] 0:08 Yeah, so the first thing that came across my radar with veganism was the raw veganism basically The term vegan was never on my on my mind. I actually didn't hear about it. It wasn't very trendy at that time. Mm-hmm Before that point, the last time I heard the word vegan was when I was like a kid and there was like some girl who called herself vegan. But other than that, it was really not popular. But the thing that was popular, kind of, was this thing, the raw food diet. And I knew some people that like went to Burning Man and stuff like that. And, you know, they said a few things like it was amazing and your hair and your nails and your skin and, you know, kind of things like that. Right.
[video] 0:53 and uh... but that's not what what really got me into it for me and as a personal side note i was i was i was basically looking for something to get super excited about and uh... i met this girl who was you know full of she had a good attitude on life because she had been through some serious shit with her health and it made her changed and made her be a positive person. She realized it's not worth stressing about things you can't control and, and, but the, the thing about the story was like, you know, you can't, sometimes if, you know, you, you, you can't take your health for granted and, and, and therefore it's really important to take care of yourself all the time so that you don't get into position where you're, where you're seriously ill. And, uh, So I just asked myself that question.
[video] 1:48 I said, right, like how does someone become really in perfect health or great health or whatever? And like, how do you take control? And so unfortunately the first thing that sort of crossed my radar was this raw food thing. And I really drank the Kool-Aid on that.
2:06 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And what happened then you were raw vegan six months.
[video] 2:12 Yeah. I was about overall, it was like, I was a hundred percent, uh, six months. raw vegan basically and I just switched overnight and I think I was so excited about it that it kind of worked you know like for the time being and I just went instantly to juicing and eating apples and carrots and not much else and I don't I guess I was just yeah like I said excited mostly fruitarian I probably ate a lot of fruit, yeah.
2:45 Okay. Yeah. I remember eating a lot of carrots, too. What do you think about the people who believe that we are frugivores, that we should only eat fruit?
[video] 2:54 Yeah, I just think they're really energetically disbalanced, to use, like, terms they might use. Okay. It's not really connected to the earth very well, you know? Like, the closest thing they have to a root thing is, like, a carrot. Like a root vegetable.
3:10 Yeah.
[video] 3:11 Yeah, so... So, uh... Maybe they have good intentions. Maybe they're spiritually inclined people.
3:19 Um, but it's, it's just a little bit naive. Yeah. Did you feel any side effects from the raw vegan diet? Yeah. Any health problems?
[video] 3:29 Yeah. Well, I think that I just thought I was really, really excited, but I think what happened is I was running off a lot of adrenaline most of the time, which eventually led to a burnout. Mm-hmm. And the side effects were, yeah, basically led to adrenal burnout, I guess. And I noticed actually I slept a lot as well, too. I slept way too much.
3:58 Mm-hmm.
[video] 3:58 Yeah. Too late and I'd go to sleep too early. Not a lot of energy or how did it feel? Yeah, actually, to be honest, like, you know, probably mostly because I was so excited about it all and stuff. And I was on a kick in life and I dropped out of college and, you know, all sorts of stuff. This was back in 2009 and 10, by the way. So I think I was just way too excited. But I also started to realize that I was behaving a little bit like manic. I was way too excited. I was kind of high in a very unsustainable way. And I was a little bit off the charts. And so I had that kind of energy. Did you notice any weight loss? A ton of weight loss. I'm naturally quite lean. I've always been like that. But I got really much too lean.
[video] 4:57 Like when I did this, it was just...
[video] 5:02 ribs and is far far too lean my cheekbones were too my face wasn't quite right and that happened in the six months yeah yeah I think I started around the winter time mm-hmm or or spring and
5:21 yeah there's some pictures maybe you will yeah yeah you're technically eating yourself partly also in the time yeah that's what happens a lot of times yeah the fruitarians also they eat a lot of sugar but partly they eat their own body fat right when they give up eventually why did you give up in the end what made you stop yeah so i think um what happened was uh what i remember was actually going to acupuncture
[video] 5:50 And in my hometown there's like a, it's called Five Branches University. It's like a Chinese medicine school and you can go get like a $30 acupuncture. And I just did it because I'm curious about these kinds of things. So, and she, she noticed that I was really disbalanced. She asked about my diet and she's at that point, I think at that point I was starting to eat some more cooked vegetables, you know, But she said, like, you should eat some chicken soup. It has some yang energy in it. Okay. And I was like, hmm, okay. And it was kind of a cold day and the time of year, so I said, okay. And I had some chicken soup and I was like, you know, I felt good after the chicken soup. And then I had a chicken sandwich or something at home and it was just, ah, I just felt the fat coming in. Right.
[video] 6:46 Yeah, pretty basically since then I started to go more and more regular and then eventually I got more into healthy meats and eventually to raw meats.
7:02 You mentioned it was winter, did you also feel cold? Maybe more cold than usual?
[video] 7:06 Yeah, I did. I felt very cold. One of the main health problems I had was
[video] 7:13 circulation from, which is probably a low blood pressure. And in fact, I remember going to the doctor for a checkup and I had low blood pressure. But every time I'd stand up, I would get lightheaded. So if I would stand up for this interview, I would kind of have, my vision would kind of go for a second too. I'd feel like tingly in the head.
7:32 It was not good. How do you see the future of veganism? What do you think it's about? Is it just some trend?
[video] 7:39 Oh boy. Yeah, it's really trendy. I think it really plugs into the political agenda. You know, it really plugs into the guilt that's being pushed, you know, in so many different ways based on your... your you know your ethnicity your skin color you know it's very trendy to have you know guilt of different kinds if it's you know white guilt or guilt because you come from a country that colonized the rest of the world and you know spread technology or whatever um so yeah the future will probably continue this way and
[video] 8:19 It's gonna be a big corporate grab, just like everything else, you know, same story.
[video] 8:26 Just, yeah, kind of like with marijuana, like everyone thought weed was really cool, and it's just not far off until it's very corporate. So, that kind of thing.
8:37 Right. Anything else you would like to add, anything special, some memory from the time? Any lesson you learned, anything from it?
[video] 8:44 Yeah. Let's think about that.
[video] 8:51 yeah well anything you would like to say to vegans maybe if there's any watching especially raw vegans or fruitarians yeah yeah I would just say be aware of dogma and it's good to be excited about something in life it's it's good to try something new see how you feel but be aware of consequences and be realistic when it comes to what the human being is.
[video] 9:27 We don't believe the story that we're coming from plants, that that's our history as a species.
9:36 Okay. Yeah.
[video] 9:38 Thank you, man. Thank you.