One of the most common comebacks when a strength athlete is revealed to be vegan is “well
they must have gotten their gains before going vegan and just maintained while vegan.”
Well my guest today was raised vegetarian and went vegan in 1998 then built an epic
physique that still confounds his competitors.
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. Torre Washington
is a rarity among bodybuilders. He’s not a recent vegan convert, or someone you can
say got his gains on meat. Raised vegetarian, outside of a 3 year period he’ll talk about,
and vegan since 1998, Torre got his pro card at his second competition ever and has been
unstoppable since.
But why am I yammering on. Let’s see the evidence.
I think we’re done here.
Now let’s hear from Torre about his vegan and bodybuilding journey.
Well, Torre, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be
here and to share some of your experience with everyone.
I am...I think I told you before. It’s an understatement to say I’m honored because
I’m so...when I get people that want to interview us, it’s like a nod, like ‘wow’.
I’m doing what I love to do and to be recognized for it, so I’m very thankful to you Emily.
I really appreciate it.
So, I thought that we would just start with a little bit of background. Like, when
and why you went vegan and then, how and when you started with bodybuilding?
It’s kind of twofold. When I was younger my mom raised us, me and my brother,
vegetarian. She raised us vegetarian based on her belief system. Her belief system, she
is an Advent Seventh-day Adventist. If you know anything about the Seventh-Day Adventist
they believe that you’re supposed to worship on the 7th day of the week which is considered
Saturday. And, they’re also...they’re philosophy also is that we live of the earth.
So, we utilize food from the earth for the health...they have a health message and the
health message is, eating natural foods - not eating animals - not eating pig persae. Definitely,
not eating anything that is so called ‘unclean’. Those things are not meant to be eaten for
our sustenance. So, my mom raised us that way for about 10 years, then around our 9th...10th
year we were shipped to Jamaica. And in Jamaica, cause my mom is Jamaican and my brother’s
born in Jamaica, I basically consider myself Jamaican because I was raised around all Jamaican.
Heritage - culture, and living in Jamaica when we went there. My mom took us there to
live with my grandparents because she was struggling, kind of, taking care of us so
she needed some help. Her mom and dad were like, you know, ‘Sent them here. We’ll
take care of them. And you can work on getting yourself together, and get more money’.
Things like this, you know, she’s a single mom. So, while we were in Jamaica my grandparents...my
mom said ‘just please don’t feed them pork’ because they knew nothing about vegetarian.
In the islands most of the time when they’re young...most people in the islands eat whatever
they can get their hands on because most of the slave ships dumped people in these different
islands. So, in Jamaica my grandmother and my grandfather fed us meat, but I’ve never
eaten pork. You know, so we were never giving anything that had to deal with the pig.
So, for that time being...we were there about almost 3 years. So, then I came back to the
U.S. and that continued for a little while until I came to...into the Rastafari culture,
because that...it’s like it latched onto me because most of my (???) were Rasta. We
were all Jamaican hanging out together and then we just started reasoning. Rasta is called
reasoning in like, discussing on things. And then we decided ‘yo man, let’s full fledge
going into being Rasta’. And so, while in the Rasta lifestyle I saw that the Rastafari
lifestyle spoke on being ital. Ital is natural of the earth, using earth to provide nutrition
and life, but most of the Rastas that I knew still ate fish, and still consumed chicken.
So, it was like ‘eh’...me becoming into my own I didn’t want to be hypocritical,
so I said ‘yo, I’m going to go definitely fully ital’. And so, ital was the way for
me. I didn’t even know it was called vegan until later on in life. I’m hearing this
terminology ‘vegan’ and people were like ‘Oh, you’re vegan, What is that?’, and
so, I started to look into it. And I would get a lot of questions on what I ate, and
how I ate in this time. So, back then it was strictly just tofu, things like...simple things
I could get my hands on because I was single and young, and running around just surviving,
you know, enjoying life. 1998...I just cut it all out. I said ‘Yes, this is where I’m
going to go’ and just continued from that point. So, even in college people would ask
me ‘Man, I don’t know how you do that. How...what do you eat?’. I’ve been having
this question ‘what do I eat?’ since I started. So, almost 20 years I get that question.
I even get it more now because I think it’s becoming such a bigger thing that I get that
question even more now. I was always the direct...I guess the object of conversation anytime we
went out because I would have to talk to the waiter. Okay, can you make mine like this,
you know, take this out? And some people were like ‘What are you eating?’. So, I hope
I answered your question as far as the vegan part. But bodybuilding...it’s interesting,
bodybuilding came up to me, once we got back from Jamaica, I would start seeing
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and seeing him on TV. I was really into comics so I used to draw comic
characters like Wolverine, and Superman; their shape, you know, just the superhero look.
I wanted to look like that so I just started working out. A little bit in Jamaica like
my grandfather was an electrician. So, he this like, iron...full iron weight that
he would do things...that he would solder things on and do different things on it.
I would just lift it a little bit. Do some crunches and I was young. I didn’t know what I was
doing but when I got back to the U.S., fast forward, seeing Arnold, I started reading
everything. Anything about bodybuilding I read it - read it. Read about form. Read about
how to train and this, that, and the other. I just continued to do that. So, in middle
school while I was in Florida a friend of mine also worked out, so we started working
out together. And people used to say we looked like some bodybuilders of the past when we
trained together. I wanted to compete but I was young, thinking ‘ah, I’m 15...
...I'm not gonna be able to compete’. So, then high school, my friend started competing and
about freshman year - sophomore year of high school, he dropped out to continue to compete
which I was like ‘Wow!’. But to this day Emily, I don’t know what happened to him.
I would love to find out what happened to Rich. Rich, if you’re out there and you
see this man, I’m looking for you. So, high school...I finished high school. I also did
track, track and field. I run to sprinting 100 meter, 4 by 100 meter, and relay, so,
out of 200. I didn’t compete. Started going to college and at Tuskegee University I took
up engineering. And as I’m taking up engineering my advisors said to me that ‘You don’t
have time to do anything else so you can’t do track anymore’, so I had to cut track
out. Got my engineering degree and once I graduated college, bodybuilding, as far as
competing, I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore. Now, I would go to shows here
and there, then I had a friend in 2008 who I know from Florida. He moved to Atlanta.
I was living in Alabama at the time. He said, his friend of mine called me and said ‘Hey
man, you know, our friend Chris is competing in Atlanta’. And I said ‘what!?’. He
said ‘Yeah’. So, I contacted him and he said ‘He should come to the show’, and
I love going to shows because I love just being around people that still wanted to maintain
physically fit. And you know, this whole time I’m vegan, I’m not thinking anything of
it. I’m there and I see him win and [finger snap] it just went off in my head Emily. I
said ‘You know what? I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say, man, I should
have done it’. I said ‘Let me just give it a shot’. I’m vegan and I don’t know
how it’s going to work out but we’ll just go with it. So, I talked to him...he just
didn’t know how he was going to work around the diet part because he’s not a vegan.
So, I just made adjustments based on what he would tell me, and what he did, and I would
do it myself. And so, I just went to him for posing. But one thing was, particular Emily,
he said ‘How did you remain so lean eating the way you do?’. I was like ‘I don’t
know’. You know, but that’s just a testament to eating that way for such a long time and
to him, it was kind of dirty. They call it “dirty” because I wasn’t eating the
so called “clean” method of eating; we’ll get on that later. But so, 2009 April, I did
my first show. I got placed 3rd out of 9 guys, so I was kind of like ‘Wow! Alright, this
is not bad’. He helped me with posing and everything, and so I just decided to do another
one. I think it was 6 months later...6 months...4-6 months later I decided to do another, just
to see if I could do a little better. Maybe I can get 2nd but I ended up getting 1st.
Then 1st you have to do the overall. Where overall you compete against the guy in the
other class, and the guy in the other class. If there’s 5 classes, you gotta compete
against all of them to get a procard. And so, I competed against those guys and got
my procard. So, my second time around I said ‘Alright, I think we’ve found something
here’. So, from that point on Emily, I’ve been doing ever since, love the competition.
I like to compete...I don’t like to get on stage by myself. You know, I didn’t win
anything if I’m by myself; it’s just me. You know, you’re competing against yourself
but you also want to gauge yourself against the other competitors that are considered
pros, so the second show was tougher. That second show was 16 guys, so it was like, that
let me know. Alright, out of 16 guys who have no idea what being a vegan is, they look at
you and they’re thinking ‘You don’t eat any meat? You sure...no eggs? No butter?’.’
No’. They’re like ‘Hey, how do you look like that?’. So, that let me know, okay
I can do this. But I wasn’t even doing it to say ‘Hey, I’m vegan, look at me’.
I was just doing because I love the competition of getting on stage, and just...it was something
I wanted to do, and it finally came back, and I realized I was good at it, so...
...here we are today.
Well, again, I just want to thank you so much for your time and for the example that you set for others to
find this way of life. So thank you very much.
No I'm- thank you. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure to be able to share a little bit about Torre.
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Torre on his journey. This video was sponsored in part
by Cronometer where you can track your fitness and nutrition to ensure optimal athletic performance.
Whether you’re sculpting your own physique or just wanting to check your nutrients. Use
the link in the video description or up there to make your own free profile.
Now, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Torre’s unique history. Let me know in the comments!
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Now go live vegan, build up some muscle, and I’ll see you soon.
You know what? I too only ate meat for a very limited period of my life.
Maybe I'm meant to be an awesome bodybuilder....
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No...