- I'm Leah Thomas, and this is everything I eat in a day.
So the first thing I do when I wake up honestly,
is check my phone.
I wish that I could tell everyone that I like meditate
first thing in the morning,
but I actually wake up like kind of startled
because I just...
What I do in my activism work is really intense.
I love it, but I just wake up just ready to do this work.
So I check my phone because a lot of my work
is activism on Instagram and social media,
and I just get out of bed.
So I eat first thing in the morning.
Honestly, my partner is so sweet
and I'm so thankful for him
because honestly he has kept me so fed
and nourished during this very transitional time
of my life.
When I went from a very small private life,
and a following of around like 13,000 people,
to a following that grew to over 100,000
within a three week period.
So during that, it felt incredible to have him there
to make me food.
And sometimes I'll eat first thing in the morning,
and sorry, I'm not vegan anymore.
I try to live a plant-based life,
but please vegans don't come for me I love you.
I'm gonna be real honest.
And I love to have scrambled eggs for breakfast.
I love toast, I love carbs.
I just love carbs so much with everything in my being,
like bread is probably the best thing ever.
So I love to have toast, probably two slices of toast.
And if we get fancy, I like to have two different jams
on each of the toast, maybe a little like strawberry
and then a little raspberry jam on the second one,
just to like spice it up.
I'm from the Midwest where we kind of like,
we love our jam and our preserves.
When I don't have a lot of time for your breakfast,
I love to get a smoothie with like some apple
and strawberry and banana.
And that helped me just start my day.
I like things that are really quick.
So I try to just drink a smoothie, eat my toast,
have my eggs and then start the day,
and start trying to dismantle systems of oppression
and the climate movement.
I don't drink coffee really
because I'm already kind of anxious.
So I've kind of stayed away from coffee,
but I've been dabbling in Mocha a little bit.
I know that sounds like something that's extreme
I've been dabbling in Mocha.
Like I've been trying to transition into Mocha.
Mocha lattes with oatmeal milk, I really love those.
But I prefer a good Chai tea latte or good tea.
I actually eat my food I probably honestly
it usually takes me a couple of hours,
to even eat my breakfast because I'm multitasking
in between meetings trying to set up
intersectional environmentalist,
and just spreading awareness about,
Black Lives Matter Movement and environmentalism.
And I'm so pumped about it.
A lot of it is doing writing copy and just writing,
writing articles and planning social content,
and then also working on programming
for intersectional environmentalist.
I try to be very loving with myself
because there are days when I work out a lot.
And sometimes there are months when I'm just tired
and I've given myself kind of entirely this last month
to activism.
So I wasn't working out as much
and I'm okay with that.
I love my body and all of its stages,
and I try to be very understanding with myself.
But, I don't like shame-based motivation
when it comes to working out.
I like to workout because I know that it's good
for my mental health and my mental clarity.
And it makes me feel better when I get to practice yoga,
or do an exercise, get my body moving.
So when I do work out, I try to do yoga,
or Chloe Ting,
Chloe Ting let me tell you,
I know she's like TikTok famous now,
but her workouts are amazing.
And she has shred challenges that I really enjoy.
I love to snack.
I love to snack, and because it takes me like for ever
to eat breakfast, sometimes my meals during the day
just kind of fold into each other.
And I can't tell what's lunch and what's breakfast
and what's dinner.
But if I had a perfect lunch,
I would probably say, I love little crackers with hummus.
I like a spicy hummus or like a garlic hummus,
and some like pita chips that are really easy to eat.
I just love hummus.
And I also...
Ooh, a kale salad that I adore for lunch.
It's perfect, it's refreshing,
get a little bit of kale, get a little bit of nuts,
whatever your favorite nuts are, get some raisins,
and then just like a nice creamy,
sweet and zesty sauce for lunch.
Flowy can't go anywhere.
So I haven't really been traveling, but when I am traveling,
I like to snack.
I'm a snacker all day snacks.
I am a snack, I like to...
(laughing)
Sorry.
What's my favorite snack?
What do I eat?
Oh, pickles, pickles.
Okay, so I'm from the Midwest,
MW, (mumbles)
And we love our pickles, our pickle game is like crazy
on a next level, okay.
So I love bread and butter pickles,
they're really good,
they're really sweet and zesty at the same time,
because that's my vibe like sweet and zesty.
My mom, her nickname for me is actually paprika.
She calls me her sweet spice,
so I love bread and butter pickles.
They're so, so good, and they're probably my favorite snack.
My favorite meal to cook is during the holidays,
I don't do this all the time,
but there is one time where I got to help
my great grandmother, Dorothy, with my mom and my sister,
we all made sweet potato pie,
which is just really important,
historically cultural to African Americans and a staple.
Sweet potato Pie not pumpkin pie,
even though they're both really good,
but that's my favorite thing to cook.
My weekend cheat meal.
I don't like saying something's a cheat meal,
I just like to say that I'm human.
I try to be progress over perfection.
Like nothing is ever gonna be perfect, but okay.
To answer the question, my cheat meal.
I love ice cream, I think Mango Sorbet
I could eat that all day every day.
Even though I don't wanna have it in a while,
but if I'm gonna just go off the rails
and not care about the nutritional value of anything,
I would get like a Mango Sorbet, Vegan Buffalo wings,
fries, waffle fries.
I would probably...
Ooh, I'll get some like animal fries, fries,
I would just get fries.
I like fries and there'd be ranch involved,
and there would be pizza and there'd be pizza
that I could dip in the ranch with fries.
And I could just eat an insane amount of ranch.
Like, I don't know, it's just disappears
in the pizza crust, because that's the best part.
I like put ranch on top of the pizza,
and then I also have a little ranch dipper,
So then I can dip the pizza and every part,
every part of the crest will be dipped,
And I think that that's my cheat meal and I just get ranch
and pizza and bread and carbs.
It's beautiful.
I love New York.
They've got all the good food,
It's beautiful and it's all close together.
And whenever I go to New York,
I love meeting my friends like late at night
and just getting really good food.
And my friend Sabz who actually helped me
start intersectional environments.
Liz took me to this amazing vegan ramen place.
And there's also a place there called JAJAJA.
It's a J-A-J-A-J-A, and it's a really good
Vegan Mexican restaurant that I absolutely adore.
So New York's probably my favorite place
and my favorite food city.
Or new Orleans, like it's really hard to compete
with new Orleans food.
Because they've got Beignets, they've got good Gumbo,
they've got Jambalaya, they got all the food that I love.
I love that Southern cooking, Southern cuisine.
There's nothing I think that can compare to that.
(upbeat music)
Dinner, it really depends.
It just depends on what the day is like.
But I think my favorite dinner that's pretty easy to cook
would be like a Tofu Tikka Masala.
And to make it super easy,
I don't make the Tikka Masala sauce from scratch,
but I'll pick up a little simmer sauce from the store,
and also some naan bread and some rice
and some tofu or some kind of protein for the simmer sauce.
And I like it all they good and creamy and warm.
Or soul food, like baked Mac and cheese,
like my grandma.
Damn, like you can't really find that in California,
there's a couple places they use soul food different here.
It's good but when I'm from the Midwest,
our soul food is just a little different
and like hits, okay.
So I think I would love some collard greens
and some Mac and cheese, yes.
In the last two years, I've just really,
I know you're up...
I was, behind it took me a while to see the vision,
but sparkling water was just like a hint of flavor.
(screaming)
It's so good and it's so addicting.
And then I was buying so many cases
of flavored sparkling water.
That one day as an environmentalist I was like,
okay, I know these are an aluminum cans,
but there's no way that this is the most eco friendly
and cost efficient option for me to just be enjoying
this flavored, barely flavored sparkling water.
So I decided to buy a sparkling water machine
and case soda stream.
And it's changed my life.
It has changed the game for me and I make it super sparkly.
Like you're only supposed to press the button,
probably like three to five times.
But I just like keep going
because I never want it to be flat.
So I just go get it nice, and then I enjoy.
So that's what I like to have for dinner.
You know, I try to be good to the planet,
some home on earth.
And I don't like to eat things that are damaging.
And I think that's why a lot of environmentalist,
they might really like me.
And you know sometimes like, I'm not gonna lie,
I do enjoy how meat tastes,
but I grew up with a mom who is a pescatarian,
so it's really easy for me not to eat a ton of meat,
but something that I try to avoid.
CAFOs are terrible.
Those are confined animal feeding, lots.
If I ever do eat anything with me,
I try to make sure that it's a great source when I can,
cause sometimes accessibility is an issue
and I try to support local farmers,
And opt for that kind of foods where I can support
the local economy and regenerative farmers
that are doing farming correctly.
My favorite late night snack.
I love ice cream sandwiches.
They're so good.
You can get non-dairy versions if you'd like,
but I love ice cream,
and I love chocolate.
I have a sweet tooth so all the chocolate every day.
But I definitely do get hangry.
And I think my hangriness comes out as irritability,
but I do have migraines,
and I've had migraines my entire life.
So I'm very sensitive when it comes to needing to eat
and needing to drink water and making sure
that I'm nourished and if I'm not nourished,
I get a headache, so I'm kind of irritable,
and my blood sugar is kind of low.
That's why I'm a snack girl,
I eat so much because I wanna be pleasant to be around.
And I feel like I'm my best self when I have food
though (mumbles)
And that's everything I eat in the day.
Thank you so much for watching, fight the power.
(giggling)
Bye everyone.
(upbeat music)