Sharing My Story (inspirational post)

Hello and Welcome back to all my beautiful Nature's New Nook Subscribers! I have been waiting for this day to come. For today's post, I wanted to get a little more personal and give you guys a little more insight and backstory to my life. I hope my story of what lead me to veganism will inspire some of you to consider joining this journey with me. Please be respectful and considerate in the comments. I also wanted to put a **trigger warning** with this post, topics such as mental illness and body dysmorphia are mentioned, please consider seeking professional help if any topics mentioned in this story trigger you.  

     

My story begins way back in 2015 when I was a sophomore in high school.  

You never know what lies behind someone masked smiles. In the pictures above, I look like a normal happy-go lucky teenager enjoying my life. The sad reality is I truly was at the lowest and worst point in my life when these were taken.  

Throughout my high school years, I suffered with body dysmorphia which accompanied other troubled conditions such as chronic migraines, fatigue, and acne. I was secretly fighting my own demons, and it took a huge toll on my personal and mental health.

  

I have always been a very independent and "keep my feelings" to myself type person. Growing up I was always a active and athletic kid. I played basketball, volleyball, softball, and cross country. I never really had issues or concerns with my weight until I entered high school.  

I attended an all-girls catholic high school, where I was surrounded by a rich plethora of skinny suburban girls. One by one I started to realize that these sports that kept me active and in shape, I no longer had much interest in playing at the high school level. Being that I became less physically active going into high school, I put on a significant amount of weight my freshman and sophomore year. This is where my tumultuous relationship with food began. Not only was I fueling my body with unhealthy junk food and animal products, but I also became obsessed with counting calories and limiting my food intake.  

Slowly I started to lose the weight I had gained, but even though my I was dropping weight at a significant rate--I still felt disgusted with myself and how I looked in the mirror. On top of that, I was not fueling my body with the proper nutrients. I would often restrict myself and replace meals with a protein bars of some kind. These actions only caused my migraines and fatigue to worsen. I felt disgusted and bad about myself from the inside-out. I was nervous to tell any of my friends or family, out of the assumption they didn't understand that their reassurance wouldn't change how I saw myself. I felt fat, ugly, disfigured, nauseated, and hungry all the time. Especially growing up in a world heavily surrounded and influenced by social media, this only fueled my dysmorphia further.  

When my junior year of high school approached, my two best friends made a last-minute decision to try out for our school's cross-country team. Knowing that I use to run cross country in the past, they pressured me to try out with them just for the hell of it. I decided to give it some consideration the week before try outs and did a practice run in my neighborhood. Within the first few minutes of the practice run trial, I could barely keep myself up nor breath. I was so weak and food deficient that I reached a breaking point. I remember coming home from that run-in angry tears, I felt like all my demons had finally taken control of the healthy and confident person I've strived and wanted to be.  

I turned to the only thing I knew that helped calm me down. As weird as it sounds, jumping down the YouTube rabbit hole of random videos was very therapeutic for me. As I was bopping from video to video, I came across a video by a vegan YouTuber by the channel name of "Freelee The Banana Girl". It was video of her reviewing other YouTubers videos of a popular video trend on YouTube called “What I Eat in a Day”, which is exactly what you think it is—people walking through what they eat every day. She was bashing specifically on beauty guru YouTubers for encouraging their young views to eat like how they eat. Many of the videos featured meals that were heavy in animal products. Freelee is for sure one of the more aggressive and attacking vegans. At first, I thought the videos were comical because she was the stereotypical “psycho” vegan. As I began to watch more of her videos, a lot of what she was saying about the American diet and the toxicity of animal products—I started to notice the connection.  

I decided to do my own research--I watched films like “What the Health” and “Cowspiracy”, as well as researching abstract scholarly articles and more. After learning the truth behind the animal and agriculture industry, I decided to give it a try in incremental stages. I felt like I had fallen in love in a whole new relationship, I began to appreciate and love whole plant foods. After a few weeks I started to notice my migraines and fatigue were coming about less and less frequently. I started to have more energy and excitement for life which lead me into fully dedicating myself to cross country. I found a passion for running and health, it made me realize that once I felt good on the inside I wanted to look and feel good on the outside as well. My hard work and dedication to running helped me get back into amazing shape, I slowly started to love my body and how I looked. From then on, my life was changed and it has brought me to this very blog today.  

Usually at this point in the story people would say “and the rest is history”, but for many of you this is just the beginning of the journey toward your best healthy life.  

Link to Freelee The Banana Girls Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Freelea