Tag: vegan

diets · eating · weight loss

Let’s Talk about the Myth of the Skinny Vegan Bitch

Tracy I15 Comments

Here’s how the first installment in the Skinny Bitch series (authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin) starts:

It sounds almost empowering.  Almost.

The first red flag?  If you’re full of self-loathing then…wait for it…getting skinny is the answer!  If that’s not clear from the introduction, it is made super-clear on the first page of chapter one where it says: “Healthy = skinny. Unhealthy = fat.”  I’m sorry, but I think that simple equation has been firmly established as utterly false.

Getting healthy is a lot more complicated and is absolutely not correlated to being skinny.  Some of the least healthy people I know are really skinny.  The authors seem to maintain a distinction between a “skinny bitch” and a “scrawny bitch.” That’s when they recommend against over-exercising. Despite warning against over-exercising, they promise that “you’ll soon become addicted to exercising.”

And the mixed messages don’t stop there. They are opposed to fad diets, like low-carb diets (and especially Atkins). They encourage people to eat bread and fruit.  This makes it seem like a not very restrictive way of eating (a lifestyle, remember, not a diet).  But they have a whole chapter that explains why “Sugar is the Devil.”  That would make it thoroughly evil.  I’ve posted about why food is beyond good and evil here.

On the pro side (for me, anyway) they promote a vegan diet for lots of the right reasons too. They quote Linda McCartney, who said that “if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians.”  They remind you that if you adopt a vegan diet, “you’re sparing the lives of at least ninety animals a year.” They even talk about the environmental impact of livestock farming (methane from livestock contributes a lot to global warming).

But I want to take issue with two of their fundamentals.

First, the whole bitch thing.  People are annoyed enough with vegans.  We are inconvenient, not just as dinner guests (“what will we feed you!?”) but as in-your-face reminders that your food choices have moral implications for other animals and for the planet.  So associating veganism with being a bitch. It’s just not the kind of PR we need.

Second, the idea that being vegan will make you skinny.  No. It’s just as easy not to be skinny as  a vegan as it is not to be skinny as a non-vegan.  There’s all sorts of vegan crap out there.

Now of course, the skinny bitch “philosophy” does not include vegan crap.  Nope. A skinny bitch will embark on a regimen of “pure eating.”  Remember: this is not a diet:

Never feel like or say you are “giving up” your favorite foods.  Those words have a negative connotation.  You are simply empowered now and able to make educated, controlled choices about what you will and won’t put into your body, your temple.  Be grateful that you know the truth about the foods you used to poison yourself with…Be excited about feeling clean, pure, healthy, energized, happy, and skinny.

So let me say this.  I’m vegan. Have been for over two years now.  I eat a fairly “clean” diet, in the sense that I choose lots of whole foods, no animal products, I don’t drink alcohol or take any drugs, I’m more active than my peer group.  But I am not skinny. I’m kind of average, really. And I was kind of average *before* I became vegan.  So the magical transformation won’t come simply by becoming vegan.

That’s not to say there aren’t all sorts of good reasons.  But becoming vegan is not to be approached as another diet that will get you thin.  And all this “pure and cleansing” talk–getting rid of toxins and so forth–it’s just not borne out by science. See this about juicing.

That’s my myth-busting message today:  Go for it! Become vegan (which is not just about food, by the way). But you don’t have to be a bitch and don’t listen to the people who promise you’ll be skinny.

Skinny isn’t even a great goal.  It’s not empowering.  And if you are experiencing self-loathing, try loving the body you have and treating yourself with compassion and care.  We have lots of that to go around on this blog!

diets · eating

Vegan versus plant strong redux

Sam B9 Comments

Recently I blogged about the different terms people are coming up with to describe a diet that excludes animal products. I was wondering about the differences between being ‘vegan’ and ‘eating a plant based diet’.

I thought that the plant based diet description had the advantage that it could come in degrees. You can eat a mostly plant based diet but it sounds odd, to my ear, though I do say it, that you eat a mostly vegan diet. I thought the plant based diet might also lack the vegan concern for animal welfare and focus more on human health. As Vegan Soapbox notes, plant strong folks can wear leather and engage in other practices that harm animals. It’s all about human health and what you eat.

But now just after posting, I’ve noticed a third difference. Vegans can eat junk food consistently and still follow a vegan diet. Oreos, pop tarts and Doritos are all vegan foods. Vegans for ethical reasons might not care about their own health. No animals were harmed during the making of these scary foods. They contain long lists of nasty sounding chemicals but no animal products.

But they’re not plant strong. This is the sense in which plant strong is more demanding. Thinking about it this way, there’s plant strong, on the one hand, and merely vegan, on the other. For a great discussion of this, from the plant strong perspective, read When Vegan Is Not Enough!

As a friend once said, I’m a vegan, not a health food nut, but the thought of vegan junk food rarely occurs to me since the thought of junk food rarely occurs to me. I don’t eat fast food and foods like pop tarts don’t hold any appeal.  I haven’t spent time with junk food vegetarians since grad school when for some of my classmates becoming a vegetarian just really affected what went on the pizza.