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Anecdote: I remember a friend I had who had been watching lots of vegan Youtube/Instagram videos and was doing a vegan diet for "aesthetics." She was struggling to make it work. We had a mutual friend who was a vegan, so I said, "Why not ask him for advice?" Her response? "Have you seen how he looks?" Our mutual friend looked noticeably unhealthy. While a lot of that had to do with the drugs and drink, the vegan diet was no panacea. Turns out that to look like a Californian influencer, copying their diet is not enough.
Annoyingly for her, I'd lost a lot of weight in that period on a diet where my main principle was just reduce sugar consumption and eat high-satiety foods (fat, fibre, protein, complex carbohydrates).
It is a source of endless irritation for one friend of mine that I lost more weight in 3 months on a diet of red meat, crisps, ice cream and pasta (just in, you know, sane calorie amounts) than he did in a year of veganism.
There is a hilarious literature on ice cream and dieting.
And for diabetes!
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Haven't a lot of vegan influencers turned out to not actually be real vegans? Not quite to the point of "Male Feminist Abuses Women" headlines, but still a bunch.
Seems like a good hussle. It's hard to verify someone's diet and there is a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to diets.
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I think it's not that they weren't vegans, but that they were abusing the fuck out of steroids etc at the same time, from what I recall.
Maybe the bodybuilder ones, but IIRC the pretty-girl vegan influencers just keep getting caught eating fish or eggs(and it is generally quite difficult to have nice skin and hair, or bright eyes, without at least some animal protein in your diet).
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