From 🍺 and 🥓 to Plant-Based Athlete 🏃🏻♂️🚴🏻♂️🧘🏻♂️
For the first 20 years of my life, I was raised in an upper middle class family in the suburbs. In Hampton, Virginia, my grandparents raised my mom and her six siblings on a farm where they got all of their cow’s milk, eggs, and animals to eat from my grandfather’s stock. My grandparents and the society they lived in raised my mom with the worldview, like most people, that meat, eggs, and dairy were not only good for you and “natural,” but even that these animal products are good for your health. Like the rest of Western society, thanks to the clever marketing of Big Agriculture, and the Industrial Revolution making animal products widely available in grocery stores and markets across the country, my dad’s parents raised him from that same worldview. Therefore, when my mom and dad had their own family, they raised my four siblings and I based on their worldviews. In the late 80’s when I was born, veganism was alive and well, but it would take 20 years for the pulse of vegan culture to make its presence known to me through my love of punk rock and the availability of documentaries on-demand through streaming service providers.
During my pre-teen years, I enjoyed playing basketball and begrudgingly played soccer, which I understand that my parents wanted me to do to get me out of the house and practice being active. As I got older, I enjoyed playing team sports less and less as I felt insecure and constantly compared myself to my teammates who performed better than I did. When my dad was a kid, he loved spending time outside playing sports and games with his neighborhood friends. This - of course - was Pre-Internet America when kids played outside because that’s what everyone did. If I grew up in that time, I probably would have done the same, but that wasn’t my experience. In my adolescence, I stopped loving the competition of team sports when I felt like I wasn’t contributing to the team, and I lost interest in developing my skills further. Around the same time, my dad got a PC for our family to share, which included America Online (AOL) and an Internet connection. This was a game changer. After enduring the cacophony of the Internet dial up modem, we could access websites, stream music on AOL Radio, and connect with people around the world. I started listening to alternative music on the Virginia Beach radio station 96X and watching shows on MTV where I discovered mainstream pop punk bands Green Day and Blink 182 among others. I was hooked on this new-to-me sound. It was through these bands that I dug deeper to find the bands that influenced them like MXPX, their record labels and independent labels like Drive-Thru Records, skateboard and snowboard videos, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks, and attended my first Vans Warped Tour in 2001. All this time I was eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) and other than going to shows, I wasn’t very active so my weight became an issue that I wasn’t managing well which continued into my young adulthood.
In college, I put on more weight by binging junk food due to my independence. Though my family isn’t plant-based, they are very health conscious, and my parents tried to instill in us good values of being active and eating healthy. However, we also had a pantry full of sweets to appease my siblings and I when we craved sugar. When I was on my own, my parents couldn’t tell me how to eat, and I took full advantage of that. Though I didn’t drink alcohol until sophomore year, I bought into the marketing strategy of meat eating being linked to making you more of an All-American, masculine bro with a “fuck you” attitude. While in school, as a result of watching the documentary Super Size Me, I enjoyed taking sociology classes to learn more about globalization and how people live in society. One of the sociology classes I took was “Food & Culture,” and the professor showed our class the documentary Food, Inc. which exposed me to the realities of eating the SAD and its impact on animals and the environment. However, even though I wasn’t willing to change how I was eating at this time, it planted a seed of food and social awareness that I would cultivate a few years later. I thought I was super cool eating “all the bacon and eggs you have” just like Ron Swanson, but the food was really sad and my mood reflected that. Still feeling insecure about myself, I used alcohol to cope. Partying became my top priority, and I had little for regard for my health and wellness. I got involved with a fraternity and the rugby team which enabled my beer-soaked lifestyle. After I started drinking, I also picked up a cigarette smoking habit, and my poor lifestyle choices concerned my family for good reason. I recognized my weight becoming an issue, and I went to the gym to maintain and try to get more “in shape,” but I wasn’t willing to stop drinking, smoking, or change my diet.
Even though college ended when I graduated in 2011, I wanted to keep the party going because my identity got so wrapped up in that mindset, and my reckless behavior reflected it. I was very depressed and used alcohol to numb my feelings of low self-worth. After getting arrested for a DUI in 2012, it finally became clear to me that I needed to turn my life in a different direction. I decided to get into running to help me lose weight, and I started training to run my first 5K. Running helped me create more self-awareness and self-acceptance while also giving me the motivation to push myself outside my comfort zone unlike anything I had experienced prior. Around this time, I switched from drinking dairy milk to almond milk just because I thought it tasted better and made me feel better. In 2015, I saw a Vice documentary feature about John Joseph, former lead vocalist of the hardcore band Cro-Mags, author, and IRONMAN triathlete, who had been plant-based since 1980. I thought, ‘This dude is a beast! He’s covered in tattoos. He plays in a sick band. He’s got great endurance, compassion for people and animals,’ and he seemed like a cool person. I also appreciated his connection to the punk rock scene that I was also part of which made him more relatable. I wanted to be like him, but I still wasn’t ready to go vegan.
About a year later, I decided to quit smoking cigarettes. As a kid, I was prone to getting sick often so much that in my parents medicine cabinet, they had a basket of treatments just for me. I noticed that when I smoked cigarettes, it irritated my throat, and I would occasionally get sick because of it. So the day after my 25th birthday, I felt ready to quit smoking. I bought electronic cigarettes at gas stations for a few weeks after to help me kick my smoking habit until I was ready to go cold turkey. I thought about quitting drinking around that time too, but I wasn’t willing to make that change just yet. I knew I would be more responsible than I had been, and I still saw drinking as something I enjoyed doing with friends. I kept running and, in 2013, ran my first 10K with my family during a Turkey Trot race in Virginia Beach on Thanksgiving. Despite the challenges of overcoming my lack of endurance, I kept running because I loved the feeling I got while listening to music and enjoying my surroundings at a slower pace. It gave me time to reflect and open up my mind more to new perspectives. I even noticed that I started losing some weight! So I kept going.
In 2016, I moved from Northern Virginia to Richmond with my girlfriend at the time, and I was excited not only to live there but to experience the city and its natural surroundings along the James River as a runner. I was trying to eat healthier to continue with losing weight and fuel my runs, and while I was making progress with weight loss, I struggled maintaining endurance on runs over the 5K distance and began searching for ways to improve my health and endurance. Meanwhile, outside of my worldview, the society was shifting to be more inclusive to plant-based lifestyles, and there were documentaries released over the past 20 years that reflected that changing dynamic. I remembered watching Food, Inc. in college, and I wanted to see what else was out there. So one evening in November 2016, came across the documentary Food Choices on Netflix and decided to check it out. In the documentary, I saw John Joseph, which reminded me of the Vice documentary, and it introduced me to Dr. T Collin Campbell and Dr. Michael Gregor as well as athletes like Rich Roll who talked about the benefits of eating a plant-based diet for health and wellness as well as athletic performance for reducing inflammation and decreasing recovery times. I was stunned!
As a runner and someone who was looking for the next “life hack” to help me be my best self, this lifestyle resonated with me, and by the end of the film, I decided that I wanted to be vegan. Since I still had meat and cheese still in my fridge, I decided that I didn’t want to waste the food I had already purchased so I would eat the food I had left, and I would wait to change to a vegan diet on January 1 for the new year. I literally said, “New year, new me!”
The next two months were beneficial to help me mentally prepare for making the lifestyle change, as well as educating myself on additional benefits to veganism and options for eating vegan. I quickly discovered a whole new world of possibilities. In December, I took the pledge for the Veganuary campaign, which opened me up to new vegan recipes and resources. I followed vegan food bloggers on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, such as Buzzfeed’s Tasty Vegetarian, Thug Kitchen, and No Meat Athlete. I started listening to podcasts that featured interviews with vegans and plant-based people including The Rich Roll Podcast, Our Hen House, and No Meat Athlete Radio. I also watched more documentaries on Netflix including Food Matters, Vegucated, Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives, and PlantPure Nation. What I discovered was staggering! I already knew that animal agriculture was cruel, but I was unwilling to accept it and give up animal products until I realized the harm that lifestyle was doing not only to animals but also to my body and the environment. I was ready to change!
I already enjoyed cooking even as a kid, and my new plant-based diet sparked my creativity because I was excited to create new recipes with ingredients I hadn’t considered before, as well as cook modified versions of the foods I already loved, such as cookies, lasagna, rice and noodle bowls, burritos, oatmeal, waffles, and more. I love sweet and savory dishes, and I quickly found that thanks to advances in food technology, vegan foods are just as flavorful if not better! During the first year of eating vegan, I learned that just because food is vegan doesn’t mean it’s “healthy,” but the same can be said for the SAD too. I would argue that vegan is more compassionate to our bodies, to most animals that aren’t killed to produce it, and largely to the environment which is impacted less negatively than animal agriculture.
Not only did I start dropping weight, especially due to juice cleanses inspired by Joe Cross in the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, I had so much more energy that running a 5K felt too easy. I wanted to run longer, and so I signed up to run my first half marathon in 2017, and in 2019, I ran a 10K, a half marathon, and my first full marathon. It wasn’t easy, but I proved to myself that I could do it. Since 2014, I’ve lost 80 pounds and gained self-love, improved my mental health, and positively impacted the people around me. I organized a vegetarian festival for my workplace, and I’ve connected with other plant-based people in the community.
By opening my mind to living plant-based, expanding my worldview, and choosing to live more compassionately, I accomplished feats I once thought I could never do. It hasn’t always been easy, and it’s been such an incredible learning experience that keeps me moving forward. Each day is an opportunity to be better and a lesson to be learned. I’m so grateful for the change in perspective that I gained from having the willingness to go plant-based. I can honestly say the grass is greener, and I’m much more joyful to be living as cruelty free as I can be. In May 2019, I even quit drinking when I came to realize it wasn’t adding value to my life, and I’ve never felt better.
To keep up my life as a plant-based athlete + creative person, follow me on Instagram.