Why I'm no longer vegan (after 6 YEARS)

I don't know how to start this video but if you told me six years ago that one day I'd be making this video I would not have believed you I thought I was gonna be vegan for the rest of my life but sometimes things don't go as planned so over the past year I've been getting comments and DMS of people kind of picking up on it asking me questions asking for an update so in the spirit of being transparent with you guys I figured I'd make this video about my journey being vegan from age 14 to 20. um I'm now 21 and these past six or seven years of my life have been so essential in molding the person that I am now it's literally been a third of my life and the third I've been the most conscious for if you've watched my videos before you probably know I haven't always had the best self-confidence I've dealt with restrictive eating issues just generally not liking myself and it's taking me a really long time to get to the place I am right now where I finally have a neutral relationship with food it doesn't control my life anymore I can eat casually and not think about it so if I can act as an older sister to any of you guys give you some of my guidance that I've learned I want to do that so here we are so I'm gonna go over why I went vegan how it affected me what I learned and why I eventually stopped last year I've got all my notes here because I'm afraid I'm gonna miss something so I was vegan for over six years I went vegan when I was 14 in May of 2016. I was a freshman in high school and I'd been looking into going vegan since seventh and 8th grade so I was like 12 13 when I started researching it I found veganism through what I eat in a days on YouTube I was a young child trying to figure out what I should eat to lose weight and the vegan videos like the prettiest so I was like okay let me click that also I've talked before about how in elementary school I basically like developed a phobia of eating in front of people because I was afraid they would judge the food I ate and like if I was eating something ugly then like I would be ugly so if I could eat fresh fruits and vegetables ooh I'm vegan my vegan meal suddenly I felt like I wouldn't be as self-conscious like in my head vegan foods were skinny Foods so if I was seen eating skinny Foods then suddenly I was like all my problems were solved like I don't know if that makes sense but that's just how my brain worked at the time I also did real research I watched all the documentaries read up on studies saw how eating plant-based could really help the environment used up less land less water obviously you're not hurting any animals I was sold it made sense to me but I was so young and the reason I looked into it was still not a great reason my goal was to lose weight when I really didn't need to lose weight something that was really damaging to me I don't know if many of you guys are familiar with the vegan community that was on YouTube in 2016 but it was so crazy like when people say veganism is a cult that YouTube Community legitimately was a cult and I was like watching all the videos and eating it up literally to be clear I don't think veganism is a fad diet but within veganism there are a lot of them I was following these crazy vegan people that were pushing high carb low fat raw till 4 80 10 10 legitimately like pushing their young viewers to count their calories make sure they weren't eating too many grams of fat every day their whole thing was like you can eat as many carbs as you want as long as you eat no fat you'll never gain weight so I was like okay okay I'm doing it the 80 10 10 diet meant that 80 of your calories came from carbs 10 came from fats 10 came from proteins and the only way you can track that is by downloading a calorie counting app so I was using my fitness pal like crazy trying to make sure I didn't break their rules and that lasted for like years during my childhood and core development years like I was going through puberty I was in Middle School and I was counting my calories and going crazy and I look back and I think it is so irresponsible that all of those YouTubers were pushing this crazy diet mentality on their young viewers you might have heard the name freely the banana girl um she's crazy and Mr and Mrs vegan they're crazy I was getting wow and both of them I think like disappeared off the face of the Earth like I have no idea what they're up to now so for the first year or two of being vegan I was super restrictive I was using my fitness pal if you don't know what that is good for you it's basically a calorie counting app and because I was listening to so much nonsense online I developed like a legitimate oil phobia I actually can talk about this too we both were like so anti-oil if our mom like even sprayed a little bit of cooking oil on a pan we would flip out and be like Mom we didn't want oil don't put oil and I would read every nutrition label and if it contained any amount of oil even if it was like the last ingredient like smallest amount I would not eat it I also wouldn't eat anything that contained sugar like what so I was basically rejecting like every food that existed and I was just being like way too high stressed and getting super mad anytime someone tried to make me food or offer me food but yeah also if you're curious how I felt when I first went vegan the first two or three months I felt amazing I had more energy than ever um I was going to my sports practices and like bouncing off the walls and that's just because I was eating really Fresh Foods for the first time in a long time I was drinking smoothies getting my Greens in and I think those Foods were just really nourishing to me and gave me a lot of energy but I pretty quickly lost the momentum of planning out my meals properly so I ended up not eating enough because you have to eat kind of a lot of vegan food to get enough calories and I was just like 14 15 years old I'm not able to plan out my meals properly I'm just a kid I ended up just like not eating enough calories and being super sluggish and so tired all the time I actually got acne for the first time in my life that's when my acne started which lasted like three or four years until I started curology LMAO love you curology and later that year I like fell into a really deep depressive episode also don't know if that was veganism or puberty thing but it was all happening at a weird time I was really confused didn't know what what was causing what so that was my experience with my first year of veganism then towards the end of high school I finally chilled out a bit I started eating processed foods again I relaxed about oil and sugar and honestly I was chilling having a good time being a chill normal vegan until College started and then I was sent to live in a dorm with no kitchen that I could cook in I had to eat in the cafeteria every night and the cafeteria just did not have adequate vegan options and once again I couldn't eat enough so I was extremely tired literally like sleepwalking through every day just because I wasn't fueling my body properly so that was a time where being vegan legitimately wasn't really accessible to me but I was still doing it because I still cared about the reasons why I started I was thinking about the environment the animals I just been doing it for so long why would I stop now a little challenge never stopped me also a huge thing that veganism did was it gave me an excuse to starve myself in public and in group settings the deep dark part of my brain loved having an excuse to say oh sorry I can't eat that oh sorry I'm I'm vegan I can't eat that so being able to use vegan is him as an excuse was a huge relief to me because I was like okay good I don't have to eat in public I don't have to eat in front of people but I knew deep down I wasn't nourishing myself properly and I didn't know how much longer I could go on like this then covet hit boom I got sent home it was a long year in quarantine gave me a lot of time to heal and self-reflect as I'm sure a lot of us did during that time and it was just a big year for internal growth for me I came to a lot of realizations as I shifted from a teenager to a young adult my priorities changed I cared more about how I felt rather than how I looked I realized the difference between my actual self and my physical body and my physical body and the way it looks doesn't really matter so yeah the neurons in my brain were kind of connecting I was starting to figure everything out and during that time in isolation my self-image skyrocketed it got better so when I finally went back in person for college almost all of my restrictive eating habits had left the building I was hanging out with my friends we were getting dinner together but during these really happy moments veganism was still forcing me to restrict myself and I was eating with friends and just in general in the past couple years I felt like I'd healed so much and I was just done with my era of restrictive eating and I wanted it to be over with I just wanted it out I wanted to move on with my life I wanted to be free but being vegan was the last thing that was kind of holding me back at least that's what it felt like when you're vegan you have to check every single nutrition label to make sure it doesn't contain milk eggs whatever you literally can't escape it if you're vegan you need to check every food to make sure you can eat it if you're going out with friends you can probably only eat french fries it's either fries or a dry salad or a little fruit cup unless you go through the trouble of picking a place that you can eat at and that's what I was limited to for the past six or seven years of my life I still had to check the nutrition labels I still had to reject food when I was with my friends and those behaviors mimic restrictive eating and like eating disorders and as much as veganism isn't always tied to disordered eating the behaviors follow the same pattern and being at the point that I was where I felt like I'd healed so much and grown so far past my old habits I just felt like I wanted to get rid of the last bad habit by being vegan I still had to overanalyze every food check every nutrition label and just follow those same patterns that were kind of triggering for me at that point where I was just like I don't want to do this anymore like it literally feels like I'm forcing myself to stay in this little box I feel like I'm growing out of and that's how I felt for basically the last full year of me being vegan I was having one of the most fun years of my life living it up with my college friends and I would see them eating food so casually and in such a fun way like casual bag of chips a little dessert making exciting foods like soy marinated eggs that's really what got me I saw my roommate making soy marinated eggs like every day and I was like oh that must be so good I wish I could just eat a little egg honestly like that looks so fun a little egg on Rice like that sounds so nice for the five years before that I wouldn't have ever thought that but I was reaching the point where I just wanted to mature and grow out of veganism and I was like honestly yeah that egg looks pretty good what can I say I just really felt like I was missing out on the social aspect of food and that is like one of the most important parts of food I didn't want eating to have to be this huge process where I had to check every ingredient blah blah blah so one day I finally decided this is it I'm gonna eat my first non-vegan food I went to the movies with my boyfriend we watched the French dispatch and I ate bunch of crunch and honestly didn't taste that good but I was having the time of my life I was free I went to the local farmers market got eggs from a little local Farm I loved eating egg and rice for breakfast it was just so much fun exploring the new foods being able to try new things eat new cultural Foods share meals with my friends finally I went home for the holidays and my mom got to cook me new foods I hadn't been eating for the past few years I was just so excited and really proud of myself because it was hard every time I ate a new food I was wondering if this was all worth it questioning my own values like did this make me a bad person but here's what I can say I typed this out because I didn't want to word anything wrong for the sake of my mental health I simply can't spend any more time hyper analyzing food in the way that veganism requires for my mental health I need to eat in a way that is casual non-analytic and free I've been vegan long enough to have a big impact I don't have to be vegan 24 7 for the rest of my life to be a good person to save the planet Etc I care about the environment but I also care about myself I find so much joy in cooking new meals trying out new ingredients I I found so much joy in eating Doritos for the first time in seven years I want to live a sustainable future I want to grow my own food in a huge Garden so I can have the smallest impact possible on our planet but for my own mental health especially right now while I'm in college I want to be able to eat food without restricting myself I want to eat food with my friends I've loved being vegan I love vegan food I know you can be vegan without using it to fuel disordered eating I know you can be vegan without feeling the burden that I felt but in order for me to heal I needed to step away from behaviors that were triggering me and pushing me further down a hole that I was trying to escape I battled this decision for so long because I've been truly passionate about the ethics of veganism since I first started researching it seven years ago but being vegan isn't the solution to every Global crisis there are ways to be sustainable without being vegan you can live off the land eat eggs from backyard chickens and use leather to create clothes and furniture that will last way longer than its faux counterparts It Isn't So black and white I understand that now I know where my priorities are I know it's sustainability health and Animal Welfare means to me but I've also learned what self-love Grace patience and boundaries mean for me too I need to keep myself well fed happy happy and at the very least functioning at a healthy level my health comes first also when in doubt it's always better to have a diverse diet with lots of variety I feel more relaxed and excited in my day to day my relationship with food has been neutralized I know most of my viewers are either my age or younger I want all of you to know you deserve better than to use food as a weapon or a punishment for yourself food is just food it doesn't have to be glamorous it should not rule your life you deserve to eat I don't think this transition is too big of a deal honestly because I know how important it is to me I just wanted to make this video to explain my journey and show you guys that what you eat doesn't have to be a big deal mic drop yeah I did that yeah basically it's been a long and winding road as Paul McCartney would say but I'm proud of where I am now I'm proud of getting here taking these steps do I regret being vegan at all absolutely not that was a step on my healing Journey honestly it was a way that I became really interested in food in the first place it was how I started cooking for myself it's how I started finding new ingredients it had its pros and cons I still eat primarily plant-based I've dabbled in eggs a little bit of dairy a little bit of fish even I don't have any label for my diet or what I eat now it really just depends like if I want to eat something or not it's basically just based on Vibes honestly at the end of the day I'm in college I am struggling so hard with my time I just need food to be something neutral that I can rely on I don't want it to be so stigmatized in my brain I don't want it to be something I have to jump through hoops to get I've been eating non-vegan for about a year now I haven't publicly said anything about it until now because I kind of wanted to experience it myself before sharing that with you guys those years of restrictive eating that I felt during my first years of veganism were way before I ever started YouTube I want to continue showing food in a very neutral way that's my goal for this channel sometimes you can just eat some ugly food sometimes you're eating some random scraps and it doesn't have to be glamorous I'm just eating whatever I want if you are dealing with any of the things that I've ever dealt with know that I'm here for you we will get through this together it just takes a lot of time and self-acceptance and patience so that's what I'm here to show you I just wanted to share what I went through because I know this is something a lot of people deal with even if you were never vegan or vegetarian you could probably still relate to things I've said in this video we are growing and healing every year we are here for each other we support each other we know it takes time I hope you got something out of this video I don't really know what else there is left to say but thank you guys so much for watching thank you for listening to me sending all my love to you I'm excited to see what we have in the year ahead and I'll see you guys next time peace bye foreign [Music]

Channel: Amber Alexander

Views: 269,825

Keywords: ur mom ashley, ur mom ashley sister, ur mom ashley brother, ur mom ashley siblings, ur mom ashley boyfriend, amber alexander, andrew alexander, college, university, what i eat in a day, college vlog, college outfits, high school outfits, tiktok, kelly wakasa, vegan meals, vegan, what i eat in a day vegan, vegetarian, veganism, plant based, meal prep, weight loss, low calorie, workout, workout routine, what i eat in a week, ur mom ashley vegan, Amber Alexander vegan, not vegan

Id: n4PAtGYjkdU

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023