- Hi everybody! (coughing)
(quiet pop music)
We're back
We're back with another video,
specifically another episode of "I Tried."
which is the series where I try various challenges
and lifestyles and life hacks
and boy oh boy do we have a big one today.
We are going to be trying a raw vegan diet
for the next week,
the next week days.
Monday through Friday.
I already follow a vegan, plant based diet in life
and I've always been curious about raw veganism.
To make sure we're on the same page
let me explain a little bit about what, (chuckles) kittens!
Let me explain a little bit about what a raw vegan diet is.
It's essentially what it sounds like.
You're eating a vegan, plant-based diet
so you're not consuming any animal products or animal foods
and everything is raw as in uncooked.
Proponents of this diet are people who follow
and love and believe in this diet
say that not only will it improve your digestion,
it'll improve your skin,
it improves overall health,
your energy levels
and helps with weight loss.
So those are the things that we are going
to be checking in on during this week.
Personally the one that I'm most interested in is the skin.
You guys know that last year I went off of birth control
and I got an IUD and I documented that whole process.
It'll be linked in the description
if you wanna check that out but one of the changes
that I have noticed is acne.
I'm getting more breakouts so I'm curious to see
if this raw vegan diet helps with that.
And specifically,
the diet that I'm going to be following
is Kate Fruit Flowers' diet.
She's a fellow content creator here on this platform
and she makes a wide variety of videos
all about wellness and raw veganism
and cooking and the LGBTQ community.
She recently came out as Bi!
Woo woo!
Is it Cute Fruit Flowers or just Cute Flowers?
I don't know.
Fake fan.
The reason that I'm choosing her diet to follow
is because I feel like she is one of few
creators on this platform
that support and promote a raw vegan diet
in a healthy, balanced way.
She's not recommending
that I live off of fruit and salad,
which is great (laughing).
I don't wanna live off of fruit and salad,
I'm gonna be honest.
Fruit and salad does not sound interesting to me.
Also, there's a ton of salty and savory and fatty dishes
that she has in her cookbook,
which speak to me.
'cuz I don't like sugar.
But, anyway.
The last thing I wanna say before we get started
is that recently, I've been more honest with you guys
about my own struggles with body image
and eating and food
and just this kind of unhealthy relationship
in that area of my life.
And so I know that some of you watching this
are probably worried about me
going into this kind of a challenge
and so I want to put you at ease, there, if I can,
and say I am in a better, more balanced, more stable
healthier place mentally
with my relationship to food and my body
than I think I've ever been before.
I'm genuinely not doing this to try and lose weight.
I weighed myself this morning,
which I haven't weighed myself in quite some time.
Good job me!
And I'm going to weigh myself again at the end
to see if there's a change,
but it's purely out of curiosity.
And I have therapy to thank for these changes,
specifically Better Help.
This video is sponsored by Better Help.
Better Help is an online Counseling Service.
It's available worldwide.
They have only licensed and certified therapists
available on the site.
When you sign up,
your matched for the counselor within 24 hours.
And from there, you have access to your counselor
through any mode of communication that works for you.
So if you want to message on like a messenger,
if you want to talk on the phone,
if you want to do video chats,
they have all of those options available to you anytime.
And I use Better Help because it's affordable.
In person therapy is wonderful,
but it's expensive.
I go to in-person therapy on and off,
but with Better Help it's a monthly subscription plan.
Rather than paying per session,
you're paying per month.
And the costs break down to so much more affordable
than in-person counseling sessions.
And now I'm even more excited to talk about this
with you guys than I have been before
because they are offering a 100% money back guarantee
for if you're not satisfied.
This is really in response to all that controversy
last year where people were saying
that the counselors were not licensed or
were not certified
which is absolutely not true.
But to really earn your trust,
they're offering you this guarantee.
So if there was ever a time to sign up and try counseling
if it's something that you've been curious about
or something that you think you might need in your life
this is the time to sign up
because if you're not happy,
if you don't like it, you can get your money back.
There's no risk.
And so if this sounds like something
that you would like to check out or try,
you can use the link the description.
Tryonlinetherapy.com/fenderr
and that's fender with two R's.
Okay!
That's enough of an intro for me.
I am not going to run to the grocery store
to pick up the ingredients
that I'm gonna need to live raw for a week.
And if it sucks, (ding)
at least I tried.
(excited guitar beat)
Okay, so I have gone through Kate's grocery list here.
She breaks it down into week 1 and week 2.
I've gone through and I've picked all the recipes
that I want to make this week
and then I went through and crossed through
all the stuff that I already have.
Which is actually a lot
so that's good! (laughing)
And now we're ready to go to the grocery store.
And from the looks of it,
spend a lot of money.
So here's the game plan.
We're gonna go to Whole Foods to try to find
the bigger items like the almond butters,
the cashew butters, and that kind of stuff
and then we're gonna go to one of the markets around here
to get all of the produce.
Because that way, we can save some money.
(beep)
We have taken a lunch break in between
our grocery shopping
because I already went to two different places
to get all of the non perishable ingredients.
And I'm starving.
So I decided to whip up her caesar salad recipe.
Damn!
Does that not look amazing?
I cannot tell you how delicious this smells.
It smells
It smells like caesar salad.
Let's give this a taste.
(lettuce crunching) Oh my god.
If this is any indication
of how the rest of this week is gonna taste,
I'm ready.
This doesn't even feel like a challenge
(beep)
And we are back from our third trip
to the grocery store.
Two hundred dollars later.
Mm hm, yep, I said it.
This all cost me about two hundred dollars.
Which is about
a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty dollars U.S.
I live in Canada.
And I know that that sounds like a lot of money
because it is a lot of money
but most of that money was spent on this stuff.
Which is stuff that's gonna last forever.
Try not to let yourself be too shocked by that number
because I basically had to restock
my kitchen.
Days 1 and 2 went super smooth.
I was continuously surprised by how tasty, how satiating
the food was.
It was savory, it was sweet, it was filling.
No matter what else happens
throughout the rest of this video,
Know that the recipes in that e-book are delicious.
(merry ukulele picking)
Today for dinner
we're trying the mac'n'cheese
which looks and smells unbelievable.
Ready? - Sink it sink it.
(TV chatter)
- Mm mm!
- Those noodles are great!
- It's so strange.
These are called kelp noodles
so they're totally raw, you don't have to cook them.
They're basically made of nothing.
What a great option!
(clapping)
Let's have a round of applause for Kate
because,
girl, you made some tasty food!
However,
It was day three where I started
running into some problems.
(bright pop music)
I realized pretty quickly,
that I was not getting enough calories.
I was not eating enough every day.
Good morning everybody.
Wow my hair is getting long!
It's day 3.
Hi, how you doin'?
I wasn't planning on weighing myself
until the end of the program, until the end of the week,
but this morning I've woken up and I'm feeling really
shaky
and starving
and just not
great.
And basically, I'm realizing that
I have not even close to eaten enough
the past couple of days.
In my regular life, when I'm not doing a challenge like this
I follow an eating style called
inner
inter
innermitted
intermittent fasting.
Which essentially means
that I have a window of time during the day that I eat
and then there's another window of time
during the evening, night, morning, that I don't eat.
And generally, I eat like this
because you're girl has no sense of portion control.
And usually I'm eating about 2000 calories.
So without really thinking about it
that's kind of what I've been following
the past couple of days.
I went back and added up the calories
of what I've been eating
and I've been having under a thousand calories a day.
Which that's a starvation diet.
And I'm not saying at all that that's what Kate recommends
in her book because it absolutely isn't,
and I guess I didn't realize how little I was eating
because I was still full.
I never felt deprived.
Like, I never felt like I wasn't getting enough food
or I wasn't satisfied
or even that I was hungry.
But at the end of the day, if I would add up my calories
I would see just how little I really was eating.
And so I weighed myself because I was curious
if that had had an effect.
It has.
This is day 3 and I've lost almost five pounds.
That's not good.
That is not the outcome that we are looking for here.
Right now, I weigh less than I weighed
at the end of my juice fast.
I don't know how that makes sense.
Probably a lot of that is water weight, but still.
So I knew day 3 going into it that I needed to do
everything I could to eat more food.
Which is not a problem that I've ever had before.
Not a problem that I thought I'd be complaining about either
(plastic clanging) Ah! (laughs)
No, no!
Oh my god, that's tasty.
Willow and I tried a raw vegan restaurant
here in North Vancouver and it was delicious.
Great B Roll.
- When you use a B roll you didn't even record that?
- Yeah I did.
And then I stopped. (laughing)
Ye of so little faith.
- Welcome to muffbin (laughing)
I have a cold soup.
- I'm very curious about that.
- And then I got the raw-sagna
which is a lasagna, but raw.
And then I also got nut cheese and crackers.
And I got a dessert.
You might not know this
but I hate things cold.
Everything has to be steaming hot for me.
(crunching) (steam hissing)
This is like a juice.
- This tastes like a salad.
(ding)
(buzzing)
- [Alayna] (laughs) Okay!
I just wanna snack so bad right now.
Like, give me some chips
a little bit of popcorn.
I would even take a cracker.
If I can have crackers right now
I'd be excited.
So I'm gonna push through it.
Maybe I'll have a carrot or something. (laughs)
A cup of tea, and I'll see you guys in the morning.
I feel much better today than I felt yesterday
because I ate a lot more yesterday than I have eaten
in previous days.
I'm just finishing up my daily meditation practice
and now I'm gonna have my coffee
and then after my coffee.
Wait, Is coffee considered raw?
Oh god wait, oh no!
It can't be, right?
Because the beans and the water's boiled.
Oh no!
Am I not supposed to be drinking coffee?
A person on a raw diet may or may not drink coffee or tea
Some do, some don't but you can't really be a raw vegan.
Yeah, technically, coffee's not raw.
Guess that means no more coffee for me.
Aww (laughs)
Welcome to dinner time.
I'm actually excited about this recipe,
about trying this dinner.
This is the fake burgers.
But the burger buns are mushrooms
and the insides is like carrots?
It sounds really gross and I wasn't totally sold on it
while I was making it
but now that it's done it actually smells
and looks very tasty.
What do you think? - Looks weird.
I'm a little concerned with this one.
You taste it first.
- It's actually really good.
- Not bad, pretty good! - Actually good, right?
Surprising?
- Yeah, way better than it looks
'cause it looks like cat food on a mushroom cap.
- This whole challenge was like this strange feeling
of being satiated and full and eating as much
food as I wanted to and still not getting enough calories.
This whole time I've been eating less than
a thousand calories a day
and I've been eating whenever I'm hungry as much as I want
I've never experienced anything like it.
So I'm not gonna lie the evening of day 4
I felt like garbage.
I felt
really bad.
I didn't feel like myself,
I was agitated,
I was grumpy,
my body felt weird.
I was full and I didn't wanna eat anymore food,
but I also felt shaky and like I needed more food
but the thought of eating more food made me feel sick.
It was very strange.
When I woke up in the morning,
I was still just feeling (gagging).
And I kind of hesitate to talk about this
or to show you this next clip
because I really don't want it to come across
like I'm saying raw veganism is a starvation diet.
That's not what I'm saying.
There are plenty of ways to eat a raw vegan diet
in a healthy way where you get enough calories
tons of people do it, love it,
and see the benefits every single day.
I just know that over this past week,
I've been figuring it out and I didn't do it right.
I take the blame for feeling like crap these two days
because I wasn't eating enough.
So no hate to Kate, no hate to raw veganism,
this has just been my experience trying it out
for the first time.
(ding)
I
am not gonna lie to you guys.
Last night I'm gonna say
I hit a wall.
I hit a wall in the sense that
I feel very similar
to the way that I felt at the end of my juice fast.
Which if you haven't seen that video,
spoiler alert, it's a starvation diet.
Ah man, I just feel
I feel spaced out.
I feel
grumpy.
I'm just grumpy.
I miss cooked foods!
I'm sick of blending.
So for the past couple of days,
my body has just felt very strange.
Every time that I'd eat,
I'd eat until I'm full.
I'd eat until I'm stuffed,
and then I'd look at the calories
and it was like 350 calories worth of food.
And every single time, I find myself thinking,
Okay, I'm gonna make double the recipe
and I'm gonna eat it all to be sure
that I get enough calories
but
I can't.
My body doesn't feel like I need to eat.
But yet I can feel the effects of not eating enough.
So that's my update for right now.
I'm ready for this to be over.
So if I were continuing on or if I was to do this again
the number one thing that I would change
is that I would eat more, damnit.
And I would do that in a couple of ways.
First of all, I would meal prep,
because oh my goodness,
I am not used to cooking.
It's not really cooking,
it's more like blending.
I'm not used to preparing food three four times a day.
The salad dressings, the sauces, the cheeses,
all that stuff could be made in a big batch
and then used throughout the week.
The third thing that I would change,
is that I would be eating the foods
that I really really liked more repetitively.
Because during this challenge,
I made a commitment to try new recipes
every single day.
Whereas if I would have just eaten my favorite things
like the caesar salad.
Mmm mm mmm.
More often, I think I would have gotten
enough calories.
And finally, I would incorporate more high calorie
raw snacks.
So things like nuts, and seeds.
And that brings us to today!
I ate raw vegan for a work week.
And it was good!
Am I going to be raw vegan from now until forever?
No.
Am I going to incorporate more raw vegan foods
into my daily life?
Abso-(beeping)-lutely.
My body feels great.
My energy levels?
Great.
And lastly, the thing that I was most curious about
is my skin!
And I have a clip of my skin from this morning.
In person, it is so much better
and I absolutely attribute that
to eating raw and clean this week.
And I think that's about it.
I would love to answer any questions
that you guys have in the comments down below.
I want to say another huge thank to Better Help
for sponsoring this video.
If you use my link, tryonlinetherapy.com/fenderr
you can get all signed up and connected with a counselor
within twenty four hours.
That's it for this video.
I love you all so much.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for your support and your love
and your comments.
You have no idea how much you all mean to me.
I love you and I will see you in the next one.
Bye! (kissing)
Hi!
- [Dallas] You got a good face girl.
- (laughing)
You tried most of the foods,
pretty much all the foods that I had you tried.
And what'd you think?
- Pretty good, yeah.