 Hey guys welcome back to another video. Today I'm chilling outside because the lighting in our house is really messed up right now and I'm kind of sitting to the side because I'm probably going to be showing a lot of photos during this video but today I wanted to talk about how veganism and eating a vegan diet has totally transformed my health. The only reason that I say vegan diet or put it in the title is because it's kind of like a hot topic especially right now with all the stuff going on in the vegan community but I wanted to just shed some positivity and share my story. I went vegan when I was 26 years old so I've been vegan for a little bit over six years now. I am now 32 years old. A lot of you probably don't know this but I actually went vegan for ethical reasons and I think a lot of people assume that I went vegan for health because that's what I focus my channel on mainly just because veganism has had such a massive impact on my health but I actually went vegan solely for the animals. I had to go to a slaughterhouse when I was 26 years old for my old job and seeing what went on there will forever haunt me till the day that I die like makes me emotional thinking about it so I'm not going to talk about that right now. I'll post some links to videos down in the description box if you want to check out more of my story on specifically weight loss or specifically how I went vegan and why I went vegan but today I really just wanted to touch on how eating this way has drastically improved my health. Not only just my physical health but my mental health, my love towards myself and just everything along those lines. So to start I'll just kind of give you guys a brief background on before I was vegan and what I was kind of going through. Basically my whole life I was an overweight child. I was an overweight teenager. I was an overweight person. I struggled with my weight my entire life. I did a lot of restrictive diets, fat diets. I tried every single diet in the entire world. This led to a lot of other issues in my life. I had depression. I was an alcoholic. I smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day for a really long time. I had no love or self-respect for myself. I just hated who I was. I hated my life. I wanted to die like literally. I mean that sounds really dramatic but I just hated everything and because of this I suffered through my life for a really long time and I think the biggest thing and the first thing that I want to mention that helped me improve my health dramatically was learning to have compassion. I never had compassion for anything and to be able to like have this emotional connection with these animals and see from their point of view like what is happening to them that this is not necessary. They don't need to be killed. I don't need to eat this way and to have that kind of compassion for something else and have that love for another being it gave me so much compassion for myself like tremendous compassion because I would be a total hypocrite if I cared so much about animals not to eat them not to hurt them not to eat their byproducts or see them tortured or anything like that but didn't extend that to myself. If I didn't stop torturing myself if I didn't stop all these self-destructive behaviors and I'm not going to say that it was easy to quit smoking or to quit drinking. I used to even take like Adderall and prescription drugs. It was really bad. I really hated myself and I'm probably gonna get like emotional during this video but I'm trying not to cry but that was the biggest thing that veganism helped me with self-love like loving myself and not torturing myself to fit into the specific mold that society has said that I need to be and that was probably the biggest thing that helped me transform my life through finding self-love and through finding compassion and like equality and all these things and really like having a purpose in my life it gave me so much purpose to take care of myself and to spread this message and to start my youtube channel and to help other people and being able to do that helped me in so many ways. So that's just kind of the background of you know how finding compassion led me to self-love which led me to stop doing all these destructive habits like drinking and smoking and taking prescription drugs. I got completely sober and then it was time to like tackle real health issues because I knew that I was at a healthy weight. I still had a lot of issues like I never really had acne or anything but I had really really bad psoriasis on my arms to the point where like they were so red they would bleed and I thought that that was normal. Another issue that I had that people always made fun of me my entire life for was on my legs. I'll try and find a photo of it to explain it but I was just called it hamburger skin. I had such bad circulation that my legs looked like hamburger meat like they just had all this all this you could see like all the veins in my legs it was really weird and whenever I would get slightly cold this would show up and when I was growing up and playing basketball and doing all the stuff where I would show off my legs in like shorts and whatever I would get made fun of so bad and it's something that I didn't even really realize went away was the psoriasis and this like circulation issue that I had but it went away when I started eating a whole foods plant-based diet. I'm just going to reference a whole foods plant-based diet in this video because I went through a lot of experimentation with different kinds of diets and stuff and what I found that works for me the best is just eating whole plant foods in abundance not counting calories not worrying about macros literally just eating whole plants like beans legumes vegetables fruits whole grains potatoes rice all that kind of stuff and that is what has led me to this point so along with the skin issues that I had I was always one of those people that would only go to the bathroom like once or twice a week and that I mean it's so weird to think that we assume that something is wrong with us when it's really we're just not getting the proper amounts of fiber in our diet to actually move things through our bowels every single day like clockwork I go to the bathroom every morning and it happens every single day I have no issues I have no constipation issues vegetables and fruits and nuts and beans and everything transports through our body the way that it's nature intended within 24 hours and everything is assimilated everything is digested and you feel great the next day I never feel bloated anymore I never feel constipated I never have issues going to the bathroom and that is just from eating an abundant whole foods plant based diet now the biggest thing that a vegan diet helped me with was getting to a healthy body weight and having a healthy body that I can move and I can run and I can lift weights and I can be active and super flexible and live the life that I want to live and my goal is not to live forever and I don't think that should be anyone's goal because none of us are getting out of here alive I want to just make it to the end being able to walk being able to you know take care of myself being able to chew my food not have a disease and I look at all the plant based doctors I've met so many of these doctors in person they're amazing people like Dr. Esselstyn Collin Campbell Dr. Greger I met all of them last year um Dr. Frank Sabatino like I've met so many vegan doctors that are 70 80 90 years old and they're still doing everything that you would assume that you could do until the day that you die and I think that that's really the goal because we focus so much on like looking young as long as possible or like being a certain physique and like I just want to be healthy and be able to take care of myself like that's my goal like I was saying the biggest thing that has changed in my life is definitely my weight before I was vegan like my entire life I remember when I was 12 I went on a diet and it's really sad to say this but at the beginning of sixth grade every year we would get weighed and they'd take our height and they would do like this little body analysis thing just as part of phys ed I think and I remember at the end at the beginning of that year I weighed 116 pounds and I was like four foot 11 or something and at the end of the year I was the only kid who still weighed the same exact weight and I was so happy about it and like looking back at that it's just so messed up because I was a child like I was growing and I was laying in bed at night like doing endless hours of calisthenics and throwing away my lunch and just eating carrot sticks and like I didn't even think of anything of it as anything at this point like I had just you know I grew up always thinking that I was chubby and being made fun of and I wanted to change and this carried on until the point that I went vegan and really got my life under control my weight went from all the way up to 190 pounds and it would just yo yo back and forth I remember the lowest weight that I actually got to like in my 20s was 170 pounds and now I weigh around 130 pounds so I was able to lose and keep off 60 pounds without even really trying and in the last six years like my weight has changed a lot um I have had it go up at points and come back down but it seems like whenever I just eat like 90 healthy all the time my weight stays at this weight and I couldn't like I really couldn't ask for anything more to be able to have that kind of freedom in my life to be happy and to be healthy and to be able to like do everything that I want to do and live my life and not have to ever diet or ever worry about food or worry about calories or worry about anything is honestly like that was my wish if I had a genie and a bottle who is like what's your one wish it would have been to be a healthy weight and not have to ever worry about food again and for anyone who is struggling with that or has struggled with that I would highly recommend watching forks over knives so that you can learn how to eat a proper vegan diet watch dominion watch earthlings watch conspiracy just so that you can see like the ethical connection and I mean once you see what's happening in this world I don't understand how you can go back like I just don't get it but honestly having my eyes opened at that slaughterhouse six years ago has been the best thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life and like I really just hope for other people that they can overcome you know not just like their health problems but also like the societal standard of eating the way that a lot of people eat and realizing we don't need to eat that way there's much better way to eat I always say that it'd be really funny if I could just transport back into my old body or if like somebody who is really unhealthy or um struggling with a lot of stuff or overweight or whatever could just kind of transport into someone who's really healthy to see what it feels like to see how life can be because when we go through a health transformation you know it takes years and it takes a long time and it's just like such subtle changes over time that it's very easy to forget where we came from and when I look back at these photos of myself and I see who I used to be and I just like see this girl dying inside to just find her way and to be able to live a normal healthy life like I just feel for her so much and I'm just so grateful for this online community for all the people who have helped me along my way every single person out there promoting a vegan diet showing themselves thriving on a vegan diet like the world needs more of this and it's easy to pinpoint like one or two people who have failed and made a viral video out of it but there's so many more of us out here thriving and overcoming health problems and issues that we've had our entire lives and not having to contribute to any of the harsh slaughter and inhumane farming practices and all these things that these animals go through so it's a beautiful thing and I just wanted to share my story with you guys because I can honestly say a hundred million percent I will never be someone who makes a video that says why I'm not vegan anymore because I'm an ethical vegan I will be vegan for the rest of my life and I just wanted you guys to know that so if you made it this far like I said I'll post all the links to documentaries and videos that I recommend and my other health stories and my like weight loss transformation all those other videos that I have and yeah thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you on the next video