Ex-Vegan Family: (6+ Years): "Healthy" Vegan & Vegetarian Dogma Depleted Health and Vitality

Watch on YouTube · 2020-03-10 · 78 min

0:00 You guys can introduce yourself, if you like to, and just start at the beginning, what year it was, how you got into veganism, then just what happened.

[video] 0:09 All right, so my name is Casey. This is my wife, Gina. Hello. So for myself, I started a vegan diet. Originally, I started being vegetarian, strict vegetarian, about 15 years ago. My motivation for that was I was having some health problems. I was having severe eczema. And also staph infection. I would get staph infection from time to time. But the eczema was the worst. I would just get itchy rations. I didn't know what was causing it. And because of the kind of ideas I'd heard growing up about meat being bad and so forth, I thought, well, that's the unhealthy part of my diet. It must be something about my lifestyle. So that's what I tried to cut out. And so I went strict vegetarian, just milk and vegetables and fruits, no eggs, no meat. I think that's what I did for close to a year at first, and then took it a step farther going vegan.

[video] 1:08 And I had some success with my health. The eczema kind of died down a bit, but it never really went away. So that was what got me into this. And then over the last 14, 15 years, I would say I spent all but a year of that as a vegetarian or vegan. Very limited meat in that time. And at least half of that time as a vegan, half of it as a vegetarian. Do you want to go ahead and start? Sure. So I went vegan in, I believe it was 2009, and I was 13 years old. And I went vegan right before, well, right after my trip to Japan, when I decided to cut out having fish. And I had kind of always been a picky eater. I never liked eating like the crap that they served at school. And I never liked eating the like fake foods. And so I kind of would always eat my own thing. And I just felt like this emotional attachment to eating meat as being like a

[video] 2:07 I loved animals, and I felt like I kind of bought into the whole idea that it was better to eat plants than eat animals, basically. And a little while in, I was kind of feeling like a lot of the vegan foods I was eating didn't serve me very well, so I ended up just eating raw foods, like just basically fruits and vegetables, mostly fruit. And I felt really good for a while. I felt like I had eliminated a lot of the nonsense and I felt really good for a while. But about six months in, I started to notice just like a very severe depression take on. And also I started to have brain fog and the beginnings of kind of joint pain and different issues like that. Even though I really believed that what I was doing was good and I had the focus in on it, there was something like I was always...

[video] 2:56 I didn't realize it until later, but I was always like really hungry, and I was feeling less mental focus, and I was losing weight, which I thought was a good thing at the time, but now I realize that isn't really. Then, so basically, I continued to be vegan and just eating like whole foods. I started having some cooked foods later, and I continued to be vegan until about 2013 or 2014, which is when I started introducing dairy. Because, well, basically, we started kind of meeting some people that were kind of vegetarian, kind of Hindu people, and hanging out with them, and then I started eating the food there, and I actually felt a little better, even though there was a lot of grains and spices and stuff like that. fulfilled with the dairy and everything. I think the grains made my problems worse. They did make my problems worse.

[video] 3:50 One thing I didn't mention though is that at age 17 I got cancer so I got a large tumor in my right leg and I wasn't really worried about it because I didn't like buy into the whole idea of cancer being something that you have to fight. I felt like I had gotten poison ivy and my body had then formed this hard lump But there was a lot of fear-mongering. I had already moved out of my parents' home, but they got contacted about it, and I ended up getting a surgery. But now that I look back at it, I don't feel like the excessive amounts of sugars and stuff like that was necessarily in the best interest, because it did continue to grow, even though I was eating the healthiest raw fruits and vegetables and all the superfoods and everything, and it was just getting bigger. I haven't had any issues since then. I got pregnant with my first son. And that was right after the cancer. Yeah, right after the cancer in 2014.

[video] 4:47 I'd done all of this fasting and everything, and so I was pretty depleted. So, I actually, for the first time in those four or five years, I just craved red meat about two months into my pregnancy. And then we started kind of doing like a Weston A. Price kind of diet. We would drive up to this farm and buy like lots of raw milk every week. by liver and a little bit of meat and a lot of eggs and I was just like eating so many eggs and I was gaining a lot of weight and I was feeling

[video] 5:17 But not a lot of weight. I mean, you were just rebuilding, like, a normal, healthy weight. Yeah, just kind of like what's happening to me right now. And it was my first pregnancy, and my son was very healthy. Like, he's five now, and he's extremely intelligent. Like, he's at, like, third grade level. He can read chapbooks. He's very smart. But, like, as soon as I had the baby, then I was like, all right, I'm going back to raw foods. And then we just started juicing. like ridiculous amounts of kale again and I was going downhill actually. I was getting more joint pain and I always told myself that it was detox and that it was something to get through. But I never really lasted too long more than a couple months doing that because it was just like with the nursing and the pregnancy I feel like my body just wanted the nutrition. And so I went back to being vegetarian. I was still having all of the same, the joint pain was getting worse. I had a lot of fatigue, brain fog and just aches and pains, just feeling of overall kind of like sadness, like not feeling like myself.

[video] 6:18 And that went on for a couple years. I would go back and forth between vegetarian and vegan. And then sometimes I got pregnant with my daughter again, and then we started having some meat again, because I was like, I gotta have some red meat. I would have like dreams about it, and I was like, okay, that's gotta mean something. But for some reason, I told myself that... I must have not been combining my foods right. I must have not been eating enough greens or beans or something. Maybe I was just not doing it right. Maybe next time if I have more of the higher protein foods or something, then I won't have that craving. Of course, that wasn't true. It's just kind of very interesting because I hadn't completely opened up to the idea of having animal foods except for milk I felt okay with, but I wasn't convinced that it was good for me because there's just a little bit of, you know, like lots of people say that dairy isn't very healthy.

[video] 7:16 Anyways, onto my, when we were having my fourth son, I... Your third, you mean? My third son, yes, you're right. Third child, second son. Yeah, my third child, not my third son.

[video] 7:30 We were traveling, and I didn't know I was pregnant at first, so I actually went into the pregnancy after fasting, because I thought that fasting, juice fasting and stuff like that was going to assist me, because I was really not feeling great. I had joint pain, just fatigue, and I was just like, there's got to be some way to do this. And I just like... You know, like, I felt really good when I did the raw foods the first time, but I never got back to that before. So I just kept going back to that, and it would kind of be a little better, but not really. Yes, what did you say? Well, you just reminded me, so I have the same experience. Like, when I first decided to be vegan, I started eating raw vegan foods, and I felt a lot of improvement after a few months. And I think, looking back, that was just from cutting out all of the... grains and other processed foods that I'd been eating before. But at the time, it seemed to validate eating vegan, and especially raw vegan.

[video] 8:29 So that was kind of always the ideal that we held, even though we weren't always maintaining it. Yeah, that's actually how we met, was on a forum about raw foods. Yeah, we met on the... It's kind of embarrassing, actually. We met on the 30 Bananas a Day forum. Everything happens for a reason, so it's all perfect. And yeah, so we... I had my baby and I was kind of eating, I was eating vegan at this point, and I was just like, at this point I was really frustrated with, I was kind of blaming it on like, oh, I had all these kids so close together, and that's why I'm not feeling well. And that pregnancy, we were mostly eating vegan, right? Yeah. My pregnancies went well. The first two pregnancies, we'd eaten meat during both of them, right, at some point. But then the third one is really... No, we ate meat. Remember when we were going to Tabitha's way, we were getting the free stuff? A little bit. A little bit, but not much. A little bit, yeah, when we first moved here, yeah. But I, yeah, my pregnancies were great experiences.

[video] 9:28 Like my, my birth process was all natural, easy, everything. But with my third son, even though it was two hours long and there wasn't, it was totally unassisted and it went no complications. Like there was, it was actually like the hardest one I ever had. And so like my son, then he was growing up, he was born at a decent weight. Like my first son was like 10 and a half pounds. My daughter was nine and a half and he was seven or eight and a half eight and a half pounds so he was born at a pretty healthy weight but then um you know like a couple months in he just seemed to be not gaining weight very well i was feeding him breast milk i was actually actually started going to the work work for the first time which wasn't ideal but i was feeding him breast milk somebody donated breast milk And we were giving him goat's milk too, but it still wasn't, because I just felt like I wasn't making good quality milk. And even though I was eating as much as I could, I was even having some dairy, but it didn't seem to be sufficient. I started off vegan, and I was like, this is not working.

[video] 10:26 I'm going to try adding some dairy. And just he was like really small, not developing as well. He couldn't sit up at six months. He couldn't walk at a year. It took him up until we started eating meat where he could really start walking, actually. And so that was concerning to me. But I always just felt like maybe it's detox. I don't know, something. I don't know. And so I just kind of just like ignoring my natural instinct and natural knowing on it because of some ideology that I picked up and kind of got set in there. And even with the donated milk from someone that probably consumed a normal diet and the goat's milk, he was just not progressing normally. And so I was a little bit stressed about that. And then I ended up getting pregnant again with my fourth son, who's actually very, very healthy. But during this pregnancy, I went back to the raw foods again. for the latter half of the pregnancy, and somehow he's doing fantastic.

[video] 11:26 I feel like I've grown a lot in a lot of ways, and I eliminated a lot of the toxic things that I was having. Yeah, and you were eating vegan up until his birth. Yeah. It was just right after that that we started eating meat again and everything. Yeah, so my son was good. And then he started growing really quickly, so I feel that he's getting a lot more nutrition through the breast milk than the previous children did. Yeah. Well, what I noticed at the end of my pregnancy is that my In a couple months, my teeth were falling apart, my bones were hurting, my brain, like I couldn't think, I couldn't remember anything. I felt like my body had like literally sucked out all of my vital organs to put into the baby or something. I literally was like, I couldn't think of things. I went to staff this training that I always have like magnificent experiences in, and I was so, I was having such a hard time for the first time ever. I was like, I couldn't think, I couldn't hold people up. I didn't have the strength in my arms anymore. I hadn't gained weight towards the end of my pregnancy at all. I was just at the same weight.

[video] 12:25 I started getting these very painful cavities in my teeth, even though I had just had all of these cavities worked on. Yeah. We were going to the dentist, and they said they took care of everything. She went in a few months later and said, oh, you have, like, a whole bunch more. I got, like, holes up here, and it was, like, just, like, excruciating pain everywhere, and I was, like... And I was having the same experience with my teeth as well. Yeah, and I was having, like, cravings for food again, and I was, like, I was going to this, like... So I was attempting to eat just fruit. Yeah, most of our history as veganists has always been in pursuit of health. So we would generally eat whole foods, a lot of fruit. We'd cook things from scratch. But then you were getting cravings. She was starting to get cravings, so she'd go to the store and buy vegan cheese. Yeah, the fake thing. And I knew it wasn't healthy for me, but I was like, you know what? I don't want to go back to having animal foods. I'm done with that. I just had that like.

13:15 What do you think about the vegan YouTubers such as Ellen Fisher, who claim to not eat any animal products, even though she's been through pregnancies? Some of them even say that they don't crave anything. Is that possible?

[video] 13:27 I don't know. I mean, I only know my experience. And my experience was that as soon as I got pregnant, I did crave it, even though I hadn't before that. And I don't know, maybe I didn't have as many reserves built up or whatever, but I know that my body definitely sent me clear signals when I was pregnant and nursing. Sometimes I listened, sometimes I didn't. It's easy for, I know in my experience, it was easy for myself to lie to myself. and say that, oh, yeah, just do it one time and then you'll be good or whatever. And I can say that my mental state shifted when I would eat vegan. And I would feel that that was the message I wanted to promote to people out of good intent. But I would do it even though maybe sometimes I was not eating. I might have cheese or milk or something. I would still be promoting to people that you should eat vegan. This is the best. This is what I do. It's all I need. Because that's what I felt. I really believed that. I believed in that moment that that is all I needed. And these other things weren't doing any good for me.

[video] 14:27 They were just my weakness. if that makes sense. And I think that's a trap a lot of people fall into. So maybe they're getting some extra nutrition from cheating on their diet, but they don't think that that's nutrition. They think it's just something bad. Right.

14:43 A lot of the vegans talk about taste. So maybe they cheat, but they believe that it's just for the taste. Good old cheese that I used to eat, even though they're actually craving the nutrients, of course, in the cheese.

[video] 14:55 Right, and that's just like a story that we tell ourselves that we've heard from somebody else, but really, like, that's just covering up the natural instinct, like the natural feeling about something. Yeah, because when she started getting vegan cheese, it's not like... It didn't do anything. It would never satisfy you. It just, like, made me sick. And then... And I was like, I don't want to have that again. Real milk or real dairy, then... Yeah, I finally decided after staffing that training, I went, I was like, I just called him, and I was like, you know what? I'm a powerful creator. I'm going to have some cheese tonight. Yeah. And then you went out to the store and got some the next day. And I was like, yes, finally. It felt really good because I felt like I finally let go of the blockage to my natural knowing. And then it took me a little while more to get past the meat. So this was last year when I made that shift and I had my last son. Early November. Yeah. So in November, we started going up. There's a farm where we get some raw milk about an hour north of here. And they process their own meat and stuff like that.

[video] 15:52 So we went and got a tour of the farm and then we saw like the carcasses hanging up and then I was like, I started crying for a little while because I just like, but after that I was done. I was, it wasn't sad anymore. Like the whole story, I finally let it go if that makes sense. And, and then I was like just grateful for it. And I was like my natural knowing, um, I honor myself first and that's how I honor every living thing really. Um, And so the improvements that I felt, so in November we started eating some... Well, do you want me to go through my history a little bit first? Yeah, yeah, you can go first. I only said a little earlier, so let's come back to that. So for myself, like I said, my main issue physically was eczema. At some points it would break out from neck to toe. And at times it would get staph infected and that would become a major issue. I actually ended up in the hospital at one point. They wanted to amputate both of my legs because of how bad staph infection was. And I left. I figured out a way to cure the staph on my own.

[video] 16:53 Fortunately, somehow survived that mess. But all of my experiments with diet were kind of motivated by trying to get rid of that and other health issues as well. But that was the main one. And I found a lot of success, like I said, when we would do just raw foods because I think I was not eating any grains. I think grains was a big part of it. Knowing what I do now, looking back, I think grains are probably the worst thing for my skin. When we would just eat fruits, it would not go completely away, but it would become very small, just a minor annoyance.

[video] 17:36 There were times when I tried all different diets. Before I met her, I tried Pescatarian, I tried macrobiotics. That was the worst. Now, looking back, it makes sense because I was eating tons of grains and seed oils and that was when I had the worst experiences of my life. I did macrobiotics when I was 12. It didn't work very well.

[video] 18:01 But I got it kind of manageable with just eating lots of whole foods and limited amounts of grain and so forth. I think the most success I had eating vegetarian or vegan was with eating raw fruitarian, but that was very difficult to maintain and I would lose a lot of weight. I was, what, 25 pounds lighter than I am now. And so we would do that for periods, but they'd usually be less than a year, right? I feel like it was never longer than six months, and we would not be, like, we would always end up eating something else during it. I would say, like, six to eight months, yeah. It's, like, I would be so hungry all the time, like, just eating only fruit. And then, like, even one time we got, like, a case of avocados and, like, ate all the avocados in one week, and I was still hungry. It didn't do anything. It doesn't work. Yeah, and I was just telling myself that maybe, like, it's some parasite or

[video] 19:00 I don't know, but I didn't feel satisfied and it was definitely like constantly thinking about food after a couple months doing it. Yeah, it's kind of amazing how many excuses I tried to look for in that time. Like, it must be some kind of parasite, so we tried to do all these anti-parasitic herbs that just made us worse, or something wrong, this is wrong.

[video] 19:27 It's like the last thing we wanted to think about was the diet that we thought was good must be the problem. But that was actually a big part of what opened my eyes. So I've been dealing with this itchy skin rash for the better part of 15 years. And then last fall, she started to get a skin rash as well that was itchy. A little different, but similar. And she'd never had that before. And she's a lot younger. And I've been having this. So I'm like, well, what's... we're eating the same foods. That's really the only thing that we could attribute to it. So I believe now it's probably all the plant toxins. Yeah. So when we stopped having, like, I stopped having all the vegetables and everything from the raw food diet. And then I started getting, like, hives everywhere. And then I've still been getting them, but it's been getting progressively better over time. So I feel like it's probably the oxalate dumping or something like that. But it's definitely something that is improving.

[video] 20:26 Yeah, so when we first went, we first decided to start eating meat. It didn't actually go very well because we hadn't had it in so long. And then we went and got like some bacon and I don't remember what else. Sausage or something. Sausage or something, some eggs. And we ate all this food and just like our bodies didn't really know how to handle it. So it just like got sick. And then said, okay, that was a bad idea. Went back to being vegan for about a week. And then But even though we got sick, there was a feeling, a shift in the body. It was just a feeling of contentedness, a lifting of brain fog that you experienced a lot of. Just generally feeling better. And then that started to get a little, I just noticed in that week, it started getting a little worse. So we decided to try it again.

[video] 21:16 And so we did a little more cautiously and then did fine and just felt great. Yeah, I think subconsciously I was wanting to do that. I didn't want to eat the fruit anymore. I was like, I don't want to eat another apple ever again. That's how I felt in the moment anyways. So subconsciously I was wanting to encourage him and let's do something else. Yeah, and we would eat some... I would realize that when we would eat some animal foods, I wouldn't really want all the fruit and other stuff. So it was just, I wouldn't eat anymore. I'd be satiated for the day. And that was something I wasn't used to because when we were eating just vegan foods, I was eating all the time, all the time just to stay full. So if I was eating grains or something, I would eat several bowls full and I would still not feel satisfied, but my stomach would feel full. And I always thought, like, maybe I just eat a lot or something. But since I've started having just all or mostly animal foods, I don't eat that much, and I feel great. Like, I have energy. I could eat one time a day and be fine.

[video] 22:16 I do that sometimes. Whereas, like, I had tried to do that before because, like, it takes time to prepare food. I want to do other stuff in my life. Right. It never worked out because I would always get so hungry and want to eat two or three times. And there's been just continual healing since we started eating meat. It was actually only about a week after we started eating meat on a daily basis that we started eating it raw. And I think that we haven't had only raw meat, but we did only raw meat for a couple of months. Yeah, we'll probably go back to it. No, we do kind of both. But there's been a lot of healing and like she said, she's continued to have some rashes and so forth, as have I.

[video] 22:58 Lesser and lesser and lesser. And now mine's like completely gone, I think. You had a rash all over your face. That's pretty much gone. Oh yeah, my eyes. My eyes were getting dry and bumpy. First started this one and then this one was starting to get it too. And then it just started to go away. Now it's all gone. Yeah. And like even though I had the, I believed in what I was doing, I had the mental, like I was doing a lot of things in my life outside of what I was eating that were great. But my health was still not improving. So it wasn't enough for my mind. my spirit to be in a good space when my food was not was out of alignment and one thing i know is that when i'm out of integrity in one area of my life everything else is affected too and when i'm not honoring my natural knowing on something that affects every area of my life okay besides the parasite cleanses did you use anything else did you take any supplements any of that stuff We did a little supplements here and there, but not very much. Like sometimes it would take a vitamin or a B12, but never with regularity.

[video] 23:58 Not the whole time, but like I did take B12 a couple of times. Like we got like two bottles ever. And we shared them, I think. And then I got a prenatal during one or two of my pregnancies, which now looking back, it's silly. But at the time, I didn't know better, I guess. Yeah, but definitely not like every day. I did a lot of herbs. We did a lot of herbal teas. In the beginning? A lot of herbs. Yeah, like after we first met and she was going through the cancer stuff, we were trying to use like different herbal formulas from like Dr. Morse. And that was... that was a disaster as well oh yeah like there's like this like one for your stomach to clean it out it's like so bitter and like really disgusting um i don't i don't remember what all i took but i know we've taken a lot of different herbs over the years and that's something that we like even when we were still vegetarian we just gave them all away we're like yeah they always made me feel worse when i would have them so we never took them very regularly and just ended up giving a lot of stuff away did you believe that you should naturally get everything you need from plants

[video] 24:58 Yeah, I thought that ideally I should get everything should come from the diet, right? And yeah, there's some stories about soils not good enough. That's why the food is not good or so forth. But we were getting like, we were always buying organic fruits and like the best quality we could find. Which is often not that great in the wintertime in Utah. Yeah, and eating like a lot. We're eating a lot. Yeah, I mean, I... I had been craving fats. I always start to crave fats when eating vegan because we didn't really do vegetable oils and stuff like that, or at least we would attempt to avoid them as much as possible. Not too much. We would have it. Sometimes we'd go out to eat because we're starving or something. I just had this kind of knowing that fats was something that was good for me, but there's not really a good plant source of fats. I don't feel like nuts and seeds are a great thing to have. I don't feel that I knew that. I didn't accept that until quite recently, obviously.

[video] 25:57 When I grew up, even though my family ate meat, we had fairly little of it. And there's all this media saying, you know, meat's bad, fat's bad. And so that's just what I assumed was truth until I actually started eating a lot of meat and a lot, especially a lot of fat, and seeing that it's having no harmful effect on me. I feel like one of the biggest things I've noticed since November, like positive health, Change has been my mind. I feel like my brain is growing. I can literally feel it growing, if that makes sense. I feel like my pregnancy had totally been the opposite of my last pregnancy. Thank goodness my baby is super healthy. He's doing amazing. He's kind of like my first son where he's growing very quickly and very smart. But for me, I just felt completely incompetent. I literally felt like I was starting to get dementia or something. I couldn't remember stuff.

[video] 26:54 I was very mentally weird, and I didn't feel like myself. I felt so empty. And then just a couple months in now, I'm feeling pretty much back to normal.

27:04 There was a study about vegan brain shrinking so it could literally be true that it's actually growing It's repairing itself now with the cholesterol b12 and so on

[video] 27:14 I probably just ran out of my reserves of cholesterol and had to go into my brain or something. Who knows? But another thing I've noticed is not only my skin has been a lot healthier, it was so dry. I was having all these rashes and really bad histamine reactions or oxalate or whatever. I was getting big, giant mosquito bumps all over my body. Now it's just a couple little bumps. It's... then my energy I'm able to exercise get up early just do everything that I want to do in my life and I feel like I'm getting stronger I'm gaining muscle yeah sensitivity I feel like my teeth are healing they're getting better I'd I can actually really sensitive they're not all the way healed but I had some pretty big holes so I expect it might take some time those are some of the main things I've noticed also my son who was not gaining weight He was like 16 or 17 pounds. He was very underweight, and his teeth weren't coming out. He was behind in a lot of ways.

[video] 28:13 We started giving him meat, and then he got the strength to stand up, start talking. He gained like four pounds in the past couple months, and now he's at a normal weight. And intelligence and everything. And he's happy now. Before, he was... Like, we were feeling depressed. He was also obviously depressed. He just, like... He would throw himself back. Throw himself on the ground and whatnot. And now he's happy to be alive. Like, it's really obvious in a child. He wakes up smiling. Like, he used to be, like, miserable. Like, I was so stressed out about it because I didn't know what it was. But now he wakes up. He's happy all the time. He barely ever, like, even feels anything, has any issues, right? Like, only if he... want some food or something, but he just has this desire to learn. He's speaking more. I feel like he's at a normal place for his age now, whereas before he was like, I was like, maybe he's not going to make it or something. I was like, actually. And that was another factor for us too.

[video] 29:13 When we started eating meats, of course, we shared it with the kids and and they just love them. We'd ask them, ìWhat do you want? Do you want more fruit? Do you want some meat?î They'd want the meat, so that's what we stuck with.

[video] 29:27 Children aren't going to fall for all this dogma. They're just going to go with what satisfies them. They don't have the whole aversion to eating foods that were hard for me at first. I like liver a lot, so eating the raw liver was super easy.

[video] 29:45 The muscle meat and the fat took me a little while to get used to, but kids really like it. My daughter prefers it.

29:54 Where do you think this aversion comes from? Is there some kind of brainwashing or manipulating out there, maybe from the media, schools, or what is it?

[video] 30:03 Yeah, I think it's a combination. I mean, it's just what I grew up with at school, watching TV, all the commercials, everything's kind of based around this premise that... If you eat a lot of meat, you're going to be fat. Eating fat will make you fat. Like all the germs and bacteria in raw foods. Oh, there's so much phobia, right? People tell you you have to cook everything to death because otherwise you'll get sick. I always believed that animal foods were not safe to eat raw, just because that's what I'd always been told, even though I used to love sushi. I think I ate a steak tartare one time when I was younger or something. We traveled a lot to France and stuff, so I had eaten different kinds of things. Where my family is from, they pretty much just eat meat. At least traditionally, they're cowboys and they just eat meat in Uruguay. I grew up eating a lot of that, but since my parents had moved to the United States, we kind of assimilated the ideas here.

[video] 31:02 I was a little bit worried about raw meat at first because I felt like it would make me sick, like it might be contaminated or something, but then I realized that at least with the beef and the fish and stuff, it doesn't seem to be true. But there's still a couple things that I'm not ready to eat. I tell myself that I'm not ready to eat raw yet because I'm like pork, for example, I haven't eaten it raw yet, even though we have a pretty good source here. So I think there's just like, it's just those beliefs that we have that in order to break it down, sometimes it takes personal experience and then seeing that, oh, it's fine. When we first started eating raw meat, though, we did get sick for a little while. All the kids started growing up every day, but then we were fine once we adjusted to it. Oh, the kids did. Yeah, the kids were growing up. I didn't get sick. I was a little bit sick. The only time I got sick was when we first had the... It was cooked meat, but it was after we hadn't had it in forever. I think I just ate too much, and my system didn't know how to handle it. Beliefs are powerful, right? They can affect how we taste things, how we smell things, how we think about things, and...

[video] 32:02 how we react to things even. Like if you really think that something's gonna make you sick, it's probably gonna create some kind of a negative reaction. And I feel like in this day and age, in this culture, it takes being brave and taking a risk to find that out for yourself. But it's great. I think that at least for beef and lamb and fish, it seems to be working really well. It's crazy now. I'll go to the store sometimes to buy meat, and there's now the plant-based meat mixed in in the meat section. No vegetarian is going to go look in the meat section to find some vegan meat, right? So they're putting it there just to try to get to people that maybe have this idea that, oh, maybe it's a little healthier. I'll give it a try. But

[video] 32:48 It's really weird to me because I saw, it's like all the stores started doing it at the same time, like totally different chains. And they all started doing the same kind of marketing of these Beyond Meat and other meat substitutes before they never did it. And now all of a sudden they all start at the same time doing it. Those are not, like I never felt good eating things. It does seem like there's some kind of... some kind of agenda going on to me a little bit.

33:15 I once saw a woman who was around 70 years old looking for ice cream and she was choosing the soy ice cream and she said that it's healthier. So even the older generations are now brainwashed to believe that. It's pretty crazy.

[video] 33:32 Yeah, even people that eat meat believe that and will go for having less meat and having meat alternatives or dairy alternatives.

[video] 33:42 For me, what it took was just to look back and see what the indigenous people used to eat. What could I naturally eat living here without having to fly something or make something alive? Yeah, you might get a little bit of fruit here and there, but in the wintertime, there's no fruit here. So that's why right now we've pretty much just been eating meat, milk, eggs, but You know, once the fruit is in season, then that's when I intend to, like, eat some, but not in the kind of quantities we were, which is just ridiculous. Yeah, like six watermelons. We were buying, like, we were buying fruit by the case. Like, from a wholesaler, we would go and get, like, eight, ten cases of fruit at a time. Of melons and apples, and then, like, a lot of the time it just wasn't even good because it wasn't ripe. And it's from all over the world, right? It's like, this is from Mexico and this is from wherever. It's totally not sustainable. And most of it's not even... like in season except out of the summer even if it's from somewhere else.

[video] 34:43 And then the other thing that I realized in doing all this research was It's not that I ever did the vegan diet for the animals, but that was a nice extra bonus point, basically. I got into it for health, but a lot of people do it because they think they're saving all these animals. We bought a full cow, all the meat from one cow, and I went there when it was slaughtered. We bought it directly from the farmer and everything. And that's like enough meat for us, our whole family, four kids and us to eat for, I don't know, three, four months, maybe a little less. I don't know how long exactly, but it's a lot. And, you know, I'm sure that all of this agriculture is, for one thing, it's destroying the natural habitat for a lot of animals. And then they're putting all these pesticides and everything else to protect it. And then when they harvest, they're killing more animals.

[video] 35:39 So it's, I can live off of one animal for months, feed the whole family or... I don't know. It's just kind of weird how disconnected people are. They think that they're saving animals by their food choices, and they're really not. And just as far as what we were able to get this cow and we got all of the organs, including the brain and everything. Well, we just got the head, we had to open up the brain and everything. But it was just a really beautiful experience to use all of the animal. Yeah, and have a personal connection with that animal. At least you saw a picture of it, but I was there for the slaughter. I went and I saw it and whatever. So it's... I thought it would be a lot more difficult. And then when I actually did that, I just realized it's really nice to have a personal connection to the food that I'm eating now. I value it.

36:26 Would you say that it's easier for the ethical vegans to quit veganism or more so for the ones who focus on health? Because, of course, for the ones who are involved in the ethics, it's really hard for them to snap out of it, right? Whereas the ones who notice their health is going down, it may be easier. What do you think?

[video] 36:45 Yeah, well, my experience was for health. Even with that, it was hard. Because the two get jumbled up together. They do. You do one, and then the other thing starts to grow. All the books I'd read and videos I'd watched and so forth for years had just reiterated that animal foods are bad, and this is what's good. You're just not doing it right if you're having some problems. Yeah, I personally feel like...

[video] 37:17 It can kind of be a hazy line between the two, the ethical and the health, because if you're doing it, it's still like a belief system that you have. And it just really depends on how much you believe in it, I guess. I really chose to take it in and make it kind of a part of my belief system, so it was really difficult for me to let it go until I decided to. But all it takes is a choice, and it just takes seeing, okay, this is working, this is not working. It's really simple. It's just getting out of the way. And for me, just some of the experiences that I've had in this past year, trainings I've done and stuff, have allowed me to see that there's not a right or a wrong way to do things. I just look at things as how they're working for me and my natural instinct and go from there. That's all it comes down to, right? It's getting outside of the wrong and right judgments. Yeah, or the labels or the dogmas. Yeah, but I think...

[video] 38:13 Because if one is able to look objectively at the ethics behind it, like if I don't want to cause suffering to animals, well, you'll cause less suffering by eating animals than not eating animals, I believe, based on the research I've done. And just seeing it, right? And less suffering to people, too. Like I've lived in rural areas surrounded by farms, and I... Like, I know, like, the farmers are going to go, and if there's something eating their crops, they're going to shoot it, or they're going to kill it somehow. They're going to set traps. Well, like, most of the forest in this country has been cut down, and now we just have a bunch of, like, potato fields and corn and soy and wheat. And just driving through, the mountainous areas are still forested, but the flat areas have been cleared for grain production. Yeah, and then people try to say most of the food we grow is fed to animals, but it's actually the waste products that humans don't want to eat anyways that are fed to animals. There's so much skewed statistics.

[video] 39:13 I feel like if the people that were in it for ethical reasons actually took an honest look at at the impact of their choices, and it would be easy for them, but easier said than done. Yeah, it's just choosing to just listen to your heart, listen to my heart, and if anyone chooses to really go inside and find out what the natural truth is, it's there. Like, we all know what the, like, I used to think, like, what's the healthiest food? Like, I've been trying all these years to find out what the healthiest food is, but, like, we all know what it is. It's innate within us. Like, no one can take that away from us. Like, people can try with all of this, like, ideologies and just whatever stuff I learned in school and from my parents and whatever, but the inner knowing is still there. It's just a matter of whether we choose to listen to it or not. Yeah. When we first started eating meat again, we had a friend that was vegan. She actually went vegan, like, years after I did.

[video] 40:12 And when we met, she wasn't vegan yet, but she got so upset at me because I wasn't vegan anymore. He posted on Facebook, it was like, no longer vegan, gone raw primal or something. She's had a lot of problems with that. Meanwhile, she's posting about her health problems. She's having a lot of fatigue. I don't remember what else. She was having a lot of different health problems. I wrote, this is kind of why I shifted, because I was having problems like this. I was having a lot of fatigue. Towards the end, we were sleeping like More than 12 hours every night. So more than 50% of my life was just sleep because I was tired all the time. Then when I was awake, I'd be tired. Just like lay around a lot of the time. Yeah, and then when we were awake, we'd just be lazy. Like I wouldn't want to get up and go do things. And now I'm able to just go and... Have a normal life. Yeah, have a normal life. Yeah, so that's been a big thing is just motivation.

[video] 41:12 So I find that for me, it was just a matter of coming to that point as we did in November and saying like, Let's just give it a try and see what the results are. We can always change back. Yeah, I had this idea. So, well, first of all, we heard about, there's like two people on YouTube that we had watched. There was Asra Khanloo and then I think the Strong Sisters. They had made some videos about eating like a raw carnivore diet, right? And so I was like, huh, I've never done that before. It's like the one thing I haven't done. She kind of was joking, like, that's the one extreme we've never tried. Maybe it's worth a shot. Well, I really did want to try it because I was really fed up with not having any results. And then I was like, oh, wow, they bought a whole cow. I haven't done that before. And then now I've done it. And at first I was watching these things just because I thought it was absurd. Right. And then I kept watching and like, okay, maybe it's actually worth a shot. Yeah. Right, like I remember you said that, well there was that one video about the, was it Derek Nance or something?

[video] 42:10 Yeah, Derek Nance was the first video I'd seen of anybody eating raw meat. I just came home one day and he was watching videos with the kids and they were like, oh yeah, and then my daughter wanted to try it or something. Yeah, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. And I was just watching it for entertainment. But then, yeah, you brought it up and it's like, yeah, well, we've never tried that. And I had to admit that to myself. Like, I don't have the experience to know if it works. So why am I judging it? And what I'm doing clearly isn't working. So what the heck? Let's give it a shot. Right. I just I feel like I had been. I had really gotten into veganism when I was younger, and I had a good friend that was too, which kind of reinforced it. I kind of knew that there was this judgment there, but I told myself that I was like, especially later when we were together, I told myself I was not judgmental, but I would still feel like that.

[video] 43:03 I wouldn't want my kids to eat meat, or I would say, you know what, most people eat meat, but we're not going to do that, because that's not a nice thing to do. And there's that kind of like, I don't know, it's like a right-wrong, like I've feel like you've said it's kind of like a religion yeah it is and even like even when you try to not be a part of that religion it's still like if all i naturally want to eat is fruit and that's just naturally what i want to eat then great but like there doesn't have to be a belief system or a like a right-wrong about it. It's not right to eat one thing and wrong to eat another thing. Some things might affect me in one way and others might in another way. The difference for me now is I can sit down with a plate of beef or whatever and somebody, a friend next to me, can be eating pasta or something and it's fine. That's your choice. As a vegan, if I was sitting down eating a vegan food and they were eating meat, even if I was trying to be

[video] 44:03 outwardly non-judgmental not say anything about it it would bother me and i wouldn't want to be that person when they're eating right so all right there's like a separation kind of thing that occurs it's like i'm different from other people or um but yeah i don't know like i've noticed that it's becoming even more popular now a lot of people that i know are going whole food plant-based or whatever um and i don't know i feel like there's just a it's for me a big part of it was the spiritual side of it so like We studied Hinduism together for a while, and they're vegetarian primarily. They're not vegan, right? But there's this idea of nonviolence. Like karma and all that. Right. And so I kind of like had it misinterpreted that for a long time, I guess, which is kind of what held me away from eating meat, even when we would eat it and I would feel better. I would then just feel like, It's important for me to do the least harm possible.

[video] 45:02 So this is the way it has to look. And I didn't really realize what that meant. But that's kind of strange, too, because historically, right, they weren't vegetarian. And I think on your channel, you've actually indicated like some of the older vegetarians. harsh scriptures where it promotes eating meat, but modern-day Hindus are predominantly vegetarian. But they're definitely not vegan. I mean, like, I really like the stories about Krishna and stuff like that, and he just, like, drinks milk all day. Like, he's not vegan. He eats butter. He's, like, stealing butter from people and, like, raw milk and yogurt. Yeah. And, like, there's, like, so many cows. And so it's definitely not. But he also ate meat. Yeah, and then in the later stories, like, yeah, they're hunters, they're kings and warriors, and they hunt.

45:44 When as a vegan you see somebody eating meat, would you say that deep down it's some kind of jealousy also? That you actually maybe want to eat meat, but you're not allowed to, or you don't allow yourself to eat it? Maybe subconsciously, is it something like that?

[video] 45:59 Might be. I think for myself, no. I just, I really convinced myself it was gross. That's what I, I thought it was disgusting, like, That's not food. That's not something you should put in your body. Even if I didn't say that, though, it would still be like, huh? I was surrounded by all these people that are amazing people, that are very powerful people, and they eat meat. And I was like, huh? How are they so powerful and loving if they're eating meat? It doesn't make sense. Yeah, because at least what they say in... In Hinduism, which we studied for a while, it's like if you eat meat, it makes you angry. You take on the negative emotions the animal had when they were slaughtered. But then I didn't find that to be true, because I was just surrounded by people that were like, wow, this is a powerful person, and they eat meat. It's been completely the opposite, because as a vegan, I have so much anxiety and impatience and anger and frustration, and now I'm just very clear and level and more patient.

[video] 47:00 It's like a combination of being both more patient and more motivated. So I get up and I do more, but I don't feel as emotionally unstable. I don't get upset anymore. I'm just feeling at peace all the time.

47:15 Right. So this is why vegans, of course, also don't like to see others eating meat because... they're just generally anxious and so on. Yeah.

[video] 47:24 Well, uh, if I really am honest with myself, like I would be like eating my, I just like, even though right now I probably, I don't eat the same foods that most people eat anyways. Like I'm eating like meat or whatever. But, um, there was, when I was vegan, there was just kind of like a, just this separation occurring inside of me, kind of like a wall that came up, that even if I was pretending it wasn't there, now that I look back on it, it's there, and I'm able to be a lot more accepting and open of whatever anyone chooses, by having let go of the belief system of this is right and this is wrong, or this is worse and this is better, because now I know that we're all learning on our own. whatever works for us, and there's not anything that's wrong. It's not bad to eat meat, right? It's not hurting me or anybody else. It's not bad to eat tofu. It's just stupid.

48:18 Right. Judgmental, yeah. I get what you mean. It's just a whole different mindset when you're mentally sane, so to speak.

[video] 48:26 It might sound judgmental when I say stupid, but I mean that in like it's stupid because it's not going to promote your health. And also the cool thing is that because I'm not so hungry all the time, I'm not thinking about food most of my day. I just eat when I eat and then it's not a dominant aspect of my life, which it did used to be. And I thought that was normal because I grew up on a mostly plant-based diet all my life and then was vegan vegetarian at a young age. So I thought it was normal for me to be hungry all the time and to be thinking about food. Even though I did a lot of fasting and stuff, food was a big thing in my life. And now I'm able to focus on my passions and on whatever it is that I choose to do to put my energy towards instead of food. Yeah, and I told my... People would tell me, like, oh, you just have a high metabolism. That's why you have to eat a lot. Because I would eat 5,000, 6,000 calories a day at times. And you'd not gain any weight. And not gain any weight at all. And I didn't gain any weight.

[video] 49:25 But during this last pregnancy, I was 145 pounds. One month later, I was 145 pounds. One month later, and I was like, maybe I'm letting go of some detox or something. And I told myself it was fine, but towards the end of it, I was really surprised that I didn't gain weight because I felt like I was eating as much as I could. And now I've gotten back to my healthy, normal weight in just a couple months, and it's all good. Yeah. Yeah, so when we started eating meat, like, I was down to 135 pounds, 5'11", and within one month, I was up to 170. And then I stayed right around 170 ever since then. So my body just kind of naturally returned to its ideal weight, and it's just stayed there. Me too. And it doesn't matter how much meat or fat I eat. Like, we eat a pretty high fat percentage. Yeah, but there's just, like, there's a weird... just kind of societal thing about it being better to be like really skinny or something.

[video] 50:25 So I always just felt like, oh, it must be healthy. Like most people are just like unhealthy or whatever. I feel like I used to, I really liked like older paintings and stuff like that. And they would kind of venerate the female figure as being like a little, like, like a normal size basically but in the modern day there's more of a focus on the very skinny which I do feel like it is kind of like malnourishment and just not being fed proper foods it's like if you go to a place that's been less touched by modern society people are just like a little bit more normal looking you know and more rounded and healthy and they have a reserve and they have muscle and Yeah, it's surprising to me how many, like there's a lot of really skinny vegans and I don't understand how they can consider themselves healthy. And it's becoming more apparent now.

[video] 51:20 I think now that there's been more vegans on YouTube for a number of years, there's more and more of that happening. It's like, how can you think this is good? Yeah. Because when we first started, it was kind of new-ish. When I first started, it was kind of new, like the whole raw food thing. There wasn't that many, like most people had just started doing it, right? But now it's been 10 years and like people have developed health problems or gone downhill in many different ways. Whereas at the time, it just seemed, I don't know, it's just a very new thing, which is kind of interesting.

51:53 A lot of people comment on the Pyramid series that the vegans just don't eat enough, even though a lot of them, just like you ate 4,000, 5,000 calories a day, but they don't understand that the food is not digestible, that you've got to convert the sugar to fat in the liver and all of the stuff which not everybody can do. So it doesn't matter how much you eat, you may still even lose weight.

[video] 52:15 Yeah. Right, but still be bloated or full all the time, and it's like, how much can you possibly put in, like, eat in a day? It's, even with the more denser foods, like grains and beans, like, those for me always cause issues, but even eating those foods, like, it's difficult to get full, not just with the fruits and stuff, but, like, even if you're pouring vegetable oil on there, so it seems to me like it's just not getting used by the body. Mm-hmm. probably for most people, or at least somewhere down the line, it'll start to get harder and harder. That was my experience at least. I didn't realize it. And I didn't realize about like, I used to think that like greens were really healthy and I would eat like, we would do a lot of juicing and kale and spinach and all that stuff. And now I'm like, okay, no, it's definitely not something that I would naturally eat. Yeah, and I think that's why now there's still some, now that we're not eating vegan foods, I think there's actual detox going on, like when you get the oxalate dumping syndrome symptoms.

[video] 53:12 like the rash when it comes, but the difference is when it comes now, it comes and it goes, and then maybe some days later it'll come again, but it's... It's continuously getting better for the first time, rather than, like, detox symptoms are continuously getting worse. That's a good sign. Yeah, that was the thing with eating a vegan diet. I think the fruit was not too bad, but if we would eat, like, green juice especially, or a lot of green leafy vegetables, right? It was just like, oh, I'm detoxing, but I'm getting worse and worse and worse. Yeah, because I didn't use the juice until I met him a couple, two or three years into, no, maybe my third year of veganism. I didn't really do juicing very much. I didn't either. But then we started doing that together, and I just got, like, I remember I got so sick the first time. Like, he made, like, a really intense, like, cilantro juice, like, straight cilantro, and I got so sick from that. But then I just like, for some reason, I thought it was a good thing. I don't know.

[video] 54:12 But now, like, Even when we were doing raw foods this past year, we decided to stop juicing because we tried having juice of different greens and stuff, and it was very clearly not working. Yeah, I remember we had a friend visiting one day. I don't think he's vegan, but he's mostly vegan. He's vegetarian.

[video] 54:38 So I had some wheatgrass at the time that I was juicing, so I made a whole bunch of wheatgrass juice. I gave him a big cup of it, and he was throwing up in the toilet for like an hour. And my belief at the time was, well, that's because of how toxic his body is. He's getting out some toxins he has stored, and this is a really healthy thing for him. We used to see this swami, like this Indian guy, and he said that greens are cow food, not human food. Now that makes sense to me.

55:07 Did you have any other vegan friends, any contacts? How did they react to you guys quitting? Or did you see anybody else quit in the time when you were vegan?

[video] 55:17 So we didn't have a lot. I had a friend when I was younger, but she stopped talking to me because I had children. So there's a whole anti-population kind of thing, like people are bad.

[video] 55:33 The one friend that you mentioned, and then I know a couple other people that are vegan or have just recently went vegan, but they're friends where it doesn't matter. They're not that much into it yet.

[video] 55:50 well yeah or it's just it's not the focus of our it has never been the it's not what brought us together as friends so it doesn't really matter like I've got lots of friends and I don't really care what they eat you know but I have noticed that in and just like one thing that has been an observation is that I have noticed that some of the people that have been vegan for a longer term tend to have a little bit of a slower brain function, if that makes sense, to be a little bit more skinny. I noticed that in myself. So that's why now I'm able to maybe notice it in other people. Because I noticed that I was getting really, really skinny. And I couldn't, like, when people would talk to me, like, it just felt weird. Like, I didn't really feel it. Just like my brain was, the gears were going really slow or something. Yeah, it's funny now, like, I know what you mean. Because I can do that same thing where I'll meet somebody and I can just tell, like, either you're a vegan or you're eating mostly vegan foods. Because...

[video] 56:47 you're skinny your responses are slow your brain's not functioning right like I've been there too so yeah and then there's people that are not even that not particularly healthy that maybe a lot of like processed foods or whatever but they're doing lots better yeah and in some ways I don't know what that is it's not better or worse but I just noticed certain aspects of myself that I had as a vegan that now I no longer have that I can then see and others but I also notice another thing I notice is that there's a like a very enthusiastic about it and like wanting to preach it kind of thing and like wow this is so great um that I've noticed in people that are vegan but like they want to talk about it a lot too yeah anything else you would like to add any special experience during the time anything you learned you were talking about vegans on youtube having children earlier and and you know it made me think of

[video] 57:43 There's at least certain people I know, like Aga in America is one of them, and they have children and they're vegan, but their children look like our malnourished son looked. And since we started feeding him properly, now he's not looking that way anymore. So I see that as a problem that they're just blind to. Like, yeah, OK, you can have a kid and he'll survive, but it's not going to be very healthy. A couple other benefits that I noticed One is my strength. I haven't really bothered trying to do any exercise. It's just not been something I focus on. But the other day, I was at an event and everyone was encouraged to just do some push-ups, so I just went for it with everybody else. And in the past, push-ups, I might be able to do one or two. I never did much exercise and I was very weak in my arms. And I was able to just keep doing them, no problem.

[video] 58:41 I have a lot more strength now than I ever did before. And that's without exercise, just from changing diet. Another big thing for me is how fast time seems to go by. So when I was eating a vegan diet, it seemed like time was going very quickly. I'd think back to something that I would think was a week ago, and then I'd remember, no, that was actually a couple of months ago. And now it's the other way around, where time... I'm able to be so much more aware and present in my daily life that I remember more, and it seems like there's more time in each day, if that makes sense.

59:18 I have the same experience. I know exactly what you mean.

[video] 59:22 Okay. And in addition, not having to sleep as much is a part of that probably, but yeah. Yeah. So I kind of wanted to talk about how, like, because I have, since going vegan, I've gotten back to eating meat, like, several times, but then I always went back. For example, one time we were hanging out with some friends and there was a barbecue. We were homeless at the time. We ended up going to this rainbow gathering and we got this big thing of really crappy meat, like ground beef, and we ate it. We got really sick afterwards. We went to the camp and cooked it up over the fire and got really sick afterwards. There's different experiences like that that I would put things in a box in my head to make it look like... like meat was the thing that was causing a problem because that's what I heard, but it wasn't actually what was going on.

[video] 1:00:13 So the belief that I assimilated just kind of like a filter or a wall that kept me from just seeing things normally, which I feel like is part of the reason why I'm able to see things in a much more clear way since I've made this shift. But for me, it was a big step to go from being vegan to just... eating all meat and being comfortable with it and owning it. And I feel like that might be an experience that a lot of people have that have been very much into veganism or vegetarianism or whatever, making that shift, the whole process of it. I wanted to talk about that a little bit because at first I felt a little bit of sadness, like I told you about. I almost was grieving over the animal. And once I got that out of my system, I felt like it was gone. So what was that like for you? Because we went to this farm, like she said earlier, and saw the hanging carcasses on the way home where she was just crying.

[video] 1:01:13 I felt really lightheaded when I was in there because it's not something that I'd really been exposed to. I always told myself as a vegan that the reason I don't eat meat is because I wouldn't be comfortable doing it myself, like slaughtering the animal and so like if I were able to do that myself it would be fine but since I'm not doing it I'm having someone else do it then it's not like a natural thing so I always told myself that but then we went in and and we saw the the carcasses and I was like really like I don't want to have to do this but it feels right it feels like my heart's telling me to do this um but I was honestly like I just had this deep emotion like I've always I've always had a like that's one of my gifts in a sense it depends on how I choose to use it is um the power of the emotion and and the energy therein but like It took me a little while to process that, but once I did, it was a great freedom. It was just removing something that I'd assimilated that wasn't a part of me.

[video] 1:02:10 It's like taking off a hat or something that's making you uncomfortable and has weights on it. I don't know how to describe it, but it just felt like a weight had been lifted off me once I grieved for that animal, and I just finally let it go. And it felt really good. But in order to get to that point, I just put myself through so much suffering over time. I just really pushed it to an extreme because I wanted it to be true. It's just kind of like this fairytale idea that we can just eat fruits and not hurt anybody. And I don't know, just eat fruits and milk was my next idea. I'll put some milk in there because you don't have to kill the cow to get the milk out. But then, and I always believed that too, that like if we're going to have milk, then don't kill the cow because that's what they kind of teach in Hinduism nowadays. And like some people will protect the cows until they're older and let them die naturally. And the leather is from the cows that have died naturally.

[video] 1:03:09 Anyways, but I just, it took a major paradigm shift. It took me going through that and pushing through it. And I think for a lot of people that can be a little bit difficult. So I guess the things that not, well, obviously seeing somebody else has done it, is very useful, like hearing stories of different people that you've shared or just people on the internet or people that I've known. Hearing those stories is kind of empowering because it's like, okay, somebody else has done it. Somebody else can eat like a lamb heart or something. I don't know. So I can do it too. How did you make that an emotional shift? How did you let go of all that, as you said? Well, I had to allow myself to feel it that one day. And then...

[video] 1:03:55 because the emotion is not, like, it's not like, obviously there's some emotion if something dies, whether it's a plant or an animal, but I really realized that, like, Everything's conscious. The plants are conscious. The animals are conscious. And I get to follow my heart no matter what that means. I'm not going to put a restriction on what my heart is saying because it's an animal or a plant, just because I'm saying that this cow is more important than this mouse or whatever. My own judgments had gotten in my way. But for me, it took so much suffering to realize that it wasn't working, despite me doing everything else in my life great. having learned so much in this past year and having been exposed to very powerful people and experiences, I got out of this amazing experience. My son had just been born and I just totally like, I was like having like a panic attack because I was so hungry.

[video] 1:04:55 Like, and, and I, it, seems kind of silly now but at the time like I was just so convinced that what I was doing was natural and normal that's when you wanted the vegan she yeah I mean this is crazy but I was literally like because he was eating this way he was basically vegan And I felt like I just didn't want to do it deep inside. And I was literally considering leaving. But I was like, no, I'm not going to do that, because that's not what my heart is saying. But I was like, I just can't do this anymore. It's so strange. But I'm grateful I had that experience, because I went through all of that. Now I know. Now I know how to listen to my own natural knowing, and I feel like the body is very miraculous in how much it can heal and repair. I feel so much better in just a couple months. At first, I was a little bit like, shit, I fucked up my body. This is not good. My teeth are falling apart. My bones hurt. I can't get up. I have pain everywhere. My skin is horrible.

[video] 1:05:55 But I'm doing fine now. I feel... honestly better than I have like in a, in a long time. Um, my brain fog is going away, which that was a huge thing for me was that I just can't focus in my life. Um, was never able to accomplish what I wanted because I had so much brain fog and fatigue and I'm experiencing that that's going away. And that's, it's just like my natural knowing always knows what's best. And I feel like for anybody out there who has, who is experiencing issues, um, with what they're eating or just some kind of unhealthy relationship with food or they're vegan and something isn't working, ultimately it just takes facing it and being completely honest with what's going on. Like, this is not working, let's see what other options there are and at least see what it does.

[video] 1:06:53 It's made a huge difference for me, and it's not like food is that important, but when I'm trying to do this artificial thing and go against my nature, it does have an effect on everything else in my life, for sure.

[video] 1:07:06 Yeah, I think for me, I always view it a little differently, like ethically it was different. Because I view all life as equal, whether it's a plant or an animal. It's still life. We can't live without consuming some kind of life. So I think thinking about it that way made it a little easier for me to transition. It was just I told myself, this is not food for so long. Meat's not food. That's gross. It's like... It's like the vegans say, it's putrefying flesh. It's putrefying dead flesh as soon as you kill it. I watched a video the other day and a vegan had said that when you cut open a coconut, it smells like coconut. You cut open an animal, it smells like rotten, putrefying flesh. No, it doesn't. It smells like a fresh killed animal. It's totally different. It smells like a cow. But that's the message that I've convinced myself as well. It's rotting, decaying flesh.

[video] 1:08:01 It's crazy, like, you hear something over and over again, people saying it over and over again, and then you just start to kind of believe it, but just going and, like, having that experience with the, like, processing the cow and everything, and It's something completely different. I just feel like because I grew up in an environment that was very urban and very isolated from nature, that I never really was connected to my foods in that way. And so there's kind of like this idea out there that like, there's all these ideas out there about what's best for people to do, but it's not real. It's just, I don't know. And just since...

[video] 1:08:43 I think it's really cool that just by eating a whole animal, for example, I don't have to ship my food in from anywhere. I can support a local farmer that's doing an amazing job and doing something that works. isn't completely unsustainable and it's something that is very nourishing and healing. And we're not any longer supporting any of the whole system, really. We don't really buy very much at the store now. We buy some fish from time to time, but since we got the whole cow, We're not going to the store and supporting all this commercialism and shipping and stuff from all over the place. And then I don't ever feel like I've got to go and eat something that I know isn't a natural food for me, like rice and grains or fake meat. I don't feel that because I actually feel satisfied.

[video] 1:09:44 Yeah, even just eating for the last few weeks anyways, we've been eating pretty much only beef because we have a lot of it. And there's no desire for anything else. It's fine. It's enough. If I were to eat just watermelons, I would be wanting something else because it wouldn't be enough. Or if I was to eat any one vegan food really, it wouldn't be enough on its own. But I feel like just one animal food is enough. It's nice to have some variety, but it's also not necessary. I don't feel a need for it. I think one really cool thing is just how the human body is really resilient and flexible to all kinds of different environments. So we can be eating, like my son was joking about earlier, an all-bread diet. You can do that for a little while. The human body is very resilient. I was able to have...

[video] 1:10:37 My children, at least now, they're all extremely healthy and I've had a very easy birth process and everything.

[video] 1:10:46 But I feel like regardless of that, it does take a toll. Even though my body was able to do it and create a perfect, beautiful baby, it took a toll on my own body by being out of integrity and by forcing myself to do something that was clearly not natural. And ignoring your natural desires. That's ultimately what it comes down to. If I'm a vegan and I'm going to a grocery store to get some vegan cheese or vegan meat or just something that tastes like meat or anything like that, ultimately it's like, what am I doing? I'm kind of like lying to myself or like a rice milk or whatever it is anything that's trying to imitate another food a fake egg like these are things that even as a health conscious like vegan I feel like people get hungry and then end up going to those foods that are like processed because Usually we try to avoid them. I always found vegan meat absurd.

[video] 1:11:45 If you want to eat meat, just eat meat. But there were times that we did have it, and it was always like that. We'd be getting our normal foods or something, and then, oh, that sounds tasty. Sounds like meat. It's still vegan, so let's have that experience. But it always, it never felt good, like vegetable oils and all that stuff does not feel good. They're full of vegetable oil, like a lot of it.

1:12:06 There's a guy who's only been eating apples for three years because he claims that humans should only eat apples.

[video] 1:12:12 We were getting a bunch of apples because none of the other fruit was good. That's why I said I don't want to eat another apple. It's just like not an like if you do it, like anyone can do this. You can go in and try to eat only apples or only sweet potatoes or whatever and just really honestly ask, am I satisfied with this? Am I feeling healthy? Am I feeling good? And my answer was always no. I'm surprised you could live for three years on apples.

1:12:36 There's a guy who only ate coconuts also for even longer. He got severely sick, very mentally ill in the end.

[video] 1:12:46 Yeah, I think I've heard of that. Like, And I've always like, I've watched different people that are like raw food people on YouTube in the past, like, for example, like the Life Regenerator and Dr. Morris and like a bunch of people. But ultimately, like, we were making a decision, right? We're like, all right, what are we going to do next? This is not working. And then they're like saying, okay, sprout your nuts and seeds and make nut yogurt. And I'm like, no, if my body wants to have yogurt, why don't I just have yogurt? And then they're saying that it comes from the Essene Gospel of Peace or something, but it doesn't really. Yeah, like you were saying that you have to take nuts, but you can't eat nuts, so you have to culture them to make them adjustable. That's what people have done with grains and nuts and seeds. Maybe if there's not anything else available, fine, but... You can live on it, but it doesn't, it's not. How does that seem natural? Yeah, I don't know.

[video] 1:13:40 I've never, like we've done the fermented grains and fermented beans, but it didn't seem to be any better for me personally. It doesn't make sense that we should have to eat foods. Our natural diet would be foods that we have to put through some difficult process to make so we can even eat them. That's just what people have always done with all like the starchy foods, but they don't really do that anymore. Like the whole grains and stuff like that, I feel like that's actually probably the worst thing, to have just like a plain brown rice. It's not very digestible to humans, in my experience at least.

[video] 1:14:16 Yeah, and if I imagine myself like in the wilderness, I'm not going to be picking seeds off of some grass, like the grains, right? It would be too tedious. I might eat a fruit here and there. I might find a fruit tree and eat a bunch of fruit one day. But otherwise, there's lots of animals in nature, there's much less abundance of fruit, and there's a lot more competition for it as well.

[video] 1:14:44 Yeah. And then from the whole spiritual perspective of like, oh yeah, it's like, as humanity progresses more and more, they'll eat meat less. I think that, from my experience now, that's just a bunch of nonsense. I don't know, maybe it's possible for people to

[video] 1:15:03 no longer require to eat food and transcend. I don't know, I haven't experienced that personally. But I don't think the path to get there is to, I don't know, I just think the whole thing doesn't make sense to me anymore at all based on my own experience and I just feel like natural knowing all the time, no matter what, my natural knowing and diet and everything else is always going to be superior than listening to somebody else's opinion or somebody else's belief or whatever.

1:15:32 That's kind of the mindset of some vegans, is being better than nature or transcending and so on. Believing that you can not eat animal foods or not even eat food at all, stuff like that.

[video] 1:15:44 Yeah, I've heard that before. It's like, well, that's the future, but humanity is going this way now and we're not going to have to do any of that stuff anymore because I am going to the future. I actually considered that towards the end of our veganism, because what we were doing was not working, and we would do fasting sometimes and see some benefit from that. It was probably just from cutting out the plant toxins for a while. So we were actually looking on YouTube at people claiming to be breatharian, but I think it's just the biggest lie, the biggest joke.

1:16:18 Some people have died who tried to follow it.

[video] 1:16:21 Well, in any case, if you somehow are a translated spiritual being or whatever, I don't know, that's a different thing. That's not something I have experience with, and I don't necessarily think anybody else probably has either, but... Like, trying to force something is kind of silly, I feel. Like, trying to pretend that we're something that we're not. Yeah, I think people just lie. I don't believe it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I know that, like, that there's... And then there's people that say, like, they don't really need to eat food, but they eat it once in a while just because it's a nice experience. I think that's so when they're caught, they can say, oh, yeah, this is my once-a-week meal.

[video] 1:17:05 I don't know. I haven't experienced that. All I know is what I've experienced. But I know that, like, it's interesting, though, because I have eaten meat before, but I still didn't really feel all the way better with, like, the health issues that I'd had, which is why I told myself it wasn't it. But I wasn't eating all meat. Like, I wasn't eating mostly meat. I was eating mostly plants with some meat. Yeah, well, that's the thing too, right? Most people are eating a plant-based diet without even realizing it. And a lot of that's highly processed, like white flour and so forth. Or sugar is a very common thing in the standard diet, and I think those are big contributions. But I think as long as somebody will then just take out everybody else's opinion and just focus in on the actual results of what I'm doing, what I'm eating, whatever, then the truth becomes very apparent. It's only when we try to

[video] 1:18:00 taken everybody else's experience and like block out our own experience that we get really confused and it's just interesting how people are so confused about what to eat in general yeah it's the biggest dilemma it's like how can it be that hard like no other animals or creatures have an issue knowing what to eat right so i don't know yeah thanks a lot you both for sharing your journey yeah thank you for your time