LIVE: Yoga & Diet - Should Yogis be Vegetarians?

Transcript

hello everyone welcome to yoga upload this is our live video chat for the month thanks for joining me today I can see some people are already on the chat there so if you are tuning in right now yeah just say hi and let me know if if you can hear me and just make sure that everything's okay for for the broadcast before we die ride it alright thanks for thanks for joining for the live video and if you are watching the replay thank you as well I'll try to keep this at about 20 or 30 minutes my goal is to not go beyond 30 minutes for sure all right what is the topic for the month today's video is about yoga and diet so diet and nutrition within the context of yoga practice and Veronica I can hear you thanks for letting me know that good so diet within the context of a yoga practice a lot of you have brought this up in comments section of videos before and I also get messages and emails from people just asking me about my own way of eating some of you asked about my nutrition plan my meal plan and things like that so here we are after much hesitation in doing this video because it can be a little controversial for some we're doing it right now all right what is today's video about and what is it not about just so we're clear about what we're gonna be talking about in the next 25 to 30 minutes so today's video is about the relationship of yoga yoga practice and diet and the way one eats what does yoga philosophy or the yogic texts what do they have to say about food and one's way of eating and also I will be sharing my own personal story about my journey throughout all the different lifestyles and ways of eating in the last 15 years 15 20 years alright and yesica you don't see mmm I think um I think I think other people are able to see the video and hear it so I think we're good I'm just gonna proceed alright so that's what today's video is about what is today's video not about this is not about me giving nutrition advice I am NOT a professional nutrition coach or a registered dietician so this is not me dispensing meal plans and whatnot and also this is not some kind of I don't want to say propaganda but I'm not here to promote one lifestyle over another I'm not here to bash certain lifestyles so again like I said I'm just here to share my personal story and what I know about diet within the context of a yoga practice so that's what we'll do I'll talk about those things and my story and in the comments if you're watching live alright let's dive right in a few months ago I wrote a blog post I also posted a video on it about yoga and diet like should Yogi's be vegetarians or vegans or can they eat meat and let's use that as our jumping-off point here and in that blog post I wrote about why it's a it's important to to talk about diet within the context of a yoga practice because if you've been practicing for a while you've probably come across some yoga philosophy or yogic texts and you've probably heard or read about the ethical principle called ahimsa that's aah I am as a ahimsa it's a Sanskrit term that translates as compassion or non-violence none harming and it is a very important ethical principle in yoga maybe it's even the most important it is the cornerstone of the yogic way of life you'll read that and some yoga philosophy books so I'm just gonna read a little bit from my book here the path of the Yoga Sutras by nikolay bachmann and this was on my blog post as well ahimsa which is the first of the five Yama's is the ethical practice of none hurtfulness toward others and ourselves it involves abstaining from intentionally inflicting pain on we're killing other creatures in thought word or deed ahimsa also implies an attitude that strives to reduce harm so if you're practicing yoga and you're exploring yoga philosophy you've come across ahimsa and this is where the diet comes into play you'll have two different camps of Yogi's here some yoga teachers yoga masters yoga practitioners their interpretation of ahimsa is to refrain from harming or killing all creatures humans and animals and so with that interpretation they choose to not consume meat or any other animal products and they're thinking there is it's harmful and violent to the animals to ourselves our health and also to the health of the planet so that's usually they usually cite ahimsa as their main reason for being vegetarian or vegan it's because they don't want to harm other creatures so that's one interpretation of that are if you're familiar with the yoga school Jivamukti yoga founded by Sharon Gannon and David Lyfe they are yoga teachers and also very vocal vegan activists if you take their yoga teacher training if you want to become a jeevan mukthi yoga teacher you know the vegan philosophy is part of your training and I think you're encouraged to be vegan while you're doing the training and so I know someone who is a jeevan mukthi yoga teacher and n is a vegan so the philosophy in the yoga practice go hand-in-hand if you go to their classes they'll have a little talk usually at the beginning about about veganism and and that so that's one now on the other side you have other Yogi's yoga teachers and practitioners who are not vegetarians and vegans not because they don't agree with a hamsa they do but their interpretation of ahimsa of none harming and non-violence they think of it as you also need to think about yourself if a vegan or a vegetarian diet is not right for your health and you insist on doing it then you are hurting and harming and being violent in a way to yourself so include your own include your own self in your circle of compassion and non-violence so that's that's there they're thinking on that so you have you see now why it's kind of divisive you will have some Yogi's from the vegetarian vegan camp who sort of judge others and say that you're not a real yogi if you're eating meat because you're not living by the principle of ahimsa which is a very very important part of the yoga way of life but then other people are like no I also need to think about myself everyone has different health issues everyone has different nutritional needs and just for some vegan vegetarian diets might not be right for everybody and you have to consider a lot of factors before you decide on on your diet your way of eating so so you have those two kind of conflicting calves but also I did a little bit of I always read about other yoga teachers and I always do my research and so you have other teachers who are pretty vocal about not being vegan and vegetarian they've tried it they've tried it for many years and it just didn't work out for them for their health and so they they had to adjust that towards a more omnivore type of diet including a little bit of meat and fish and eggs and dairy and their diet and so we're actually very vocal I don't know if you follow bad yogi here on YouTube or look at her website Aaron moths she's talked about you know she's not gonna be a vegan or a vegetarian and that's not the usual you know yoga teacher vibe and so she's kind of a rebel in that in that sense and other people connect to that because they can't sustain a vegan diet and they see Aaron who's a yoga teacher and like yeah you you can still you can practice um even without being vegan one of my favorite yoga teachers Sadie Nardini who I followed for a long time and has influenced my teaching a lot is also very not very vocal but she's mentioned um you know that she likes to eat steak and drink wine and you know that's what's right for her and we should let go of our judgments of how other people eat as uni so those are the who within the context of like yoga philosophy that's that's what you find in a lot of texts about about diet is a himself another thing worth mentioning before I share my personal story is our Veda it is considered the sister science of yoga it's an ancient like holistic healing system that started in India and with Ayurveda the way they look at a person when they treat someone for any condition or when trying to prescribe a diet is to look at the individual constitution of the person and there are like three main types and then a combination of those three types and and then they prescribe what might be a good diet for that individual Constitution and it's not necessarily vegan and vegetarian so they have foods that are considered like light and good and supportive of yoga practice and their foods that are considered to not be so supportive of yoga practice so that's just a different it's not my area of expertise it's just a different system a different way of looking at things and again it's considered the sister science of yoga but even our Vedic practitioners do not exclusively push a vegan or a vegetarian diet again it depends on the person's Constitution so there you go all right what do I do I've talked about what other yoga teachers have said and their beliefs and their diets everyone's different what do I do okay just to give you a little context here I'm from the Philippines I grew up in the Philippines it's a very meat-centric cuisine very meat-centric cuisine and so I grew up like almost everybody else eating meat and not really being aware of food choices and where the food comes from and things like that so that's how I grew up and around tooth - I want to say I was what 24 I came across this newspaper article it was an interview with Alicia Silverstone the actress Alicia Silverstone who is a very passionate vegan and so she was talking about in that article her reasons for for being vegan health reasons ethical reasons environmental reasons and I think that was the very first my very first encounter with all of those like arguments I have I just I had no idea and that started me on the path to just researching like you know vegetarianism and veganism and things like that and so 2002 was the year that I decided I wasn't going to eat meat anymore it was gonna be for my health it was gonna be for the animals to not participate in in Cruelty to Animals and also for the environment because these factory farms slaughterhouses and just the entire meat industry pollutes the environment as I read in that article and and I gathered a lot of other you know research materials as well so that's when I first tried a 2002 and in the Philippines at that time I just I didn't know anyone else who was doing it and it was just so difficult and and I I did it but I said I think I still need to eat some fish and seafood I just I just couldn't do it without that so that first year 2002 to 2003 I was a pescetarian someone who still eats fish and seafood but not other meat and then 2003 I finally kind of made the plunge and became full vegetarian I cut out the seafood and you know I was fine I was fine it was hard it was hard physically because it's hard to find things to eat specially when you're going out were out with other people you know restaurants didn't really understand I was doing and also yeah hard socially people make fun of you a lot for for your choice especially in where I'm from because you know it's predominantly meat meat eating country so I did that and I know around 2005 I tried going full-on vegan but I didn't last a year it was too hard to cut out the dairy and I think what was harder for me was also eliminating other non-food animal products like leather and like I I just you know I couldn't get rid of everything I own or just find some alternatives and things like that so I gave up and just went back to being vegetarian and 2010 right before I moved here to the States I was 32 years old when I moved here 2010 I went back to being vegan I had some support I had a friend who was a vegan the movement was kind of getting more popular in the Philippines so there were places to get majid Aryan food and and so I was able to do it with the support of my meat-eating husband who is the most supportive person ever like he would cook vegan food for me and and you know have his own meals and stuff like that so I moved to the States and Wow it is so much easier to do it everywhere you go you go to the grocery you go to a restaurant there are vegan options and there were vegan restaurants in my neighborhood so I was really easy and there was no excuse for me to to not keep doing it and this is where I became really really invested in vegan philosophy and you know reading all the books and knowing all this statistic said but I tried to not be this judgy vegan that people are scared to hang out with so I hope I wasn't bad anyway alright let's fast forward to 2013 14 maybe it we were having trouble conceiving and we had like a few miscarriages and we were going through fertility treatments so it was a pretty challenging time in our life and I started questioning could my diet have anything to do with it because we did all the tests and everything was fine and it it was just all the other factors were we're okay so it just started questioning like could it be my diet and you know it's hard when you're a vegan to look at opposing points of view because I've done it for so long you start identifying with it you make it part of your identity and so you don't want to look at opposing evidence because you feel like it's an attack on you but because we were having a hard time with with getting pregnant I decided all right let me read things that oppose my paradigm because I've just been reading all vegan books and vegan authors and you know they support what I already believed to be right so I figured let me look at the other camp see what they're saying and this is when I encountered a lot of these other kinds of diet like high fat low carb diet I I saw leer Keith's book I hope I'm saying her name right the vegetarian myths and so I just started reading up and just just looking at what they had to say because for the longest time I refused to look at that and to be honest it really got me curious am I am I missing something have I been so wrapped up in the vegan dogma that I'm not being objective and looking at evidence that's clear and and just right there so I want to say it was 2013 or 2004 in that I started adding eggs and dairy back into my diet and I was agonizing my first like taste of eggs I was like I haven't even exit five years and because I've been vegan for five years at that point well yeah so maybe it was 2015 yeah 14 2015 and and so I'm still not gonna eat meat but I'm gonna maybe start eating some some eggs and dairy and things of that nature and so I was able to incorporate that after a while and and that was fine I was feeling a little guilty I wasn't telling my vegan friends that I was doing that because there's so much judgment from vegans towards former vegans it they they hate the former vegans more than just meat eaters who were never vegan in the first place it's like how can you ever go back knowing what you know and so I kind of like kept it hidden a little bit there but you know after a while I felt fine I felt good and and then we did our fertility treatments I got pregnant with Kieran and and I'm not saying that it was my change in diet that did that because we did the idea of the fertility treatment so could it mean that the diet combination of that or I don't know I don't know I don't have the answer to that so anyway when I was pregnant I was really really sick and couldn't eat what I usually eat and that's when day was like maybe you shouldn't start eating meat while you're pregnant just to see if you will respond to it if you're gonna be able to keep it down because I was throwing up every day multiple times a day and and so I did again after much agonizing because at that point 2016 I had been vegetarian I've been meat free for 14 years almost 15 years I had not touched me at all almost 15 years so it's so hard to just abandon that and start eating meat again and so I remember just my first day was kind of like oh I'm sorry right but I don't I don't know I don't know if I can keep eating this but I was pregnant and I just there was I couldn't eat other food and so I started eating meat when I was pregnant the nausea passed after the first trimester first four months actually and and I just kept eating meat and I felt okay I felt okay with it I didn't get sick I didn't throw up or anything and after I had the baby I kept doing that and what I found was that I felt better especially after I started exploring a higher fat low carb way of eating and that's what really it was a light bulb for me and this is if if you're curious about my resources I can miss that in the comments later on just the the books I've read YouTube channels that I follow authors and doctors that I follow and I've just what what happened was I increased the fat intake right and lowered the carbs dramatically and I wasn't I wouldn't get hungry I'd be so satisfied I can go for hours without eating and I had so much energy and I felt really good and I lost a baby way pretty fast I remember when I was a vegan and a vegetarian I had to eat every two hours I was hungry all the time and looking back I realized I was just eating so much sugar so much carbs I'm sure I could have done a better job as a vegan but I was just eating a lot of packaged foods you know and so I started just eating more Whole Foods real foods not a lot of carbs very low sugar and just it was it was just a light bulb for me it was it was life-changing and I figured this could be a way that I eat for a long time that I can sustain and that I feel good in so that's where I am right now I'm pregnant with baby number two so I'm not as this they didn't not as disciplined with a low-carb I'm not restricting the carbs too much just you say I am I'm eating every few hours I do try to eat healthy and more Whole Foods and less processed and junk food we don't eat a lot of junk food anyway we don't go to fast foods and things like that so that's where I am I really enjoy the lower carb way of eating and good healthy fats olive oil avocados salmon nuts things like that so and I eat a lot of salads as well I'm still eating a lot of vegetables and then we eat some meat some fish so that's what we're doing right now it works for me and Dave and I and our family are we perfect no absolutely not sometimes I eat junk and if you or Facebook you know we were in Montreal just a week ago and it was just like pastries and sugar you know and all of these things every day for a week so the goal is not perfection the goal is to find something that works for you now that's my story going back to yoga and I don't feel that going back to eating meat has made my yoga practice worse I feel like it supports it the way that when I was vegan I felt fine most of the time too and I felt that that supported my practice it's just that we can't be identified with a paradigm and refused to look at opposing points of view don't make it part of your identity whether you're a vegan vegetarian omnivore or whatever it is look at it as a tool it is what you do to support your own health and and your own well-being and and I'm not here to judge anyone for how they I don't know the state of their health their nutritional needs where they live their foods or says so many factors to consider when deciding how to eat and what diet to adopt so that's what I've learned is to never say never I remember when I was vegan I was like I'm doing the right thing you know this is how I'm gonna eat for the rest of my life I'm not gonna change my mind but what I did not foresee was that life will bring on changes to your body to your health your situation your family everything changes and you must be willing to adapt to those changes and do what you need to do for your health and well-being and so that's what I decided to do that's what I'm doing right now will that change next year three years five years ten years from now maybe I don't know I don't know what circumstances will will come about I don't know what changes life will bring to me but I do know that I will try to adapt accordingly and just see see the state of my health and see what I need to do so right now this is what works for us we're not Victor Terence we're not vegans I feel like I'm coming out of the closet here because I you know my friends have known me as a vegan for the longest time as a vegetarian for the longest time and I almost felt like I didn't want to tell people that I was eating meat again and you know I don't want to do that anymore I don't want to hide I'm just gonna be honest with with people and and hopefully this little bit of my story helps you and I'm not the expert I do a lot of research though I read a lot watch a lot and and if you want to know some of my resources I can put that in the description below or the comments below later on so let me know if you are interested in that yeah there's so much judgment surrounding this topic people in general and especially Yogi's Iran you'd think that we would not be judgmental but you know we are sometimes we're not perfect we're human and so thank you for listening that's that's what I am that's what I wanted to share with you and I really hope you come away with you know not identifying with a certain paradigm not getting so stuck in something not being so invested in being right that you don't want to look at other perspectives so I'm glad that I looked at other perspectives and I will continue to look at other perspectives and you know gather information be as informed as I possibly can all right I think we are nearing 30 minutes so I want to be true to my problem this year that's our yoga and diet let me just look real quick here you got Olga and Eska who else is here Hong and Brian I do yoga for my body and soul I eat from my health absolutely don't want to harm animals but you know do what you have to do and there's a way to not participate so much in the cruelty of factory farming so factory farming is you know big industrial meat operations and they are unnecessarily cruel to the animals and the people who work there in the environment so you don't have to participate in that whenever you can whenever you can afford it you can go to just small farms or farmers markets where the operation is completely different and it it actually supports the planet again not an expert on this is just what I've been reading but there is a way to eat meat without supporting the cruelty of factory farming so and yeska if you yeah if you need to consume meat there's a way to get it from better sources you know more ethically sourced there there is a way to do that for sure alright thanks for tuning in today the next live video is gonna be on November 5th I'm gonna do a live video every first Monday of the month so if there are topics you'd like me to discuss for the next videos please try that bat in the comments below as well and make sure you're following me either on Facebook or Instagram or both so you can get updated on on the videos alright thank you so much you guys for joining me I went over a little bit I'm seeing 31 minutes 38 seconds 39 40 all right I'm gonna say bye bye thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you in the next video namaste