My Journey to Veganism: Challenging Assumptions, Embracing Change, Gaining Clarity

It was talking about strong men. It was talking about people who you would look at and think, well, they must eat meat, because you need meat to survive, to have that strength, to have that speed. But they weren't. They were fully plant based. And so then that got my brain thinking, huh? Everything that we've been told is actually a lie. You're listening to the Triple C Project. Welcome to the Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage, so you can live life lit. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat. Allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey. Hey. Welcome to episode 69 of the Triple C Project. You may remember back in episode 63, I shared with you the tower's parable about the farmer and the questioning about if something's good or if something's bad. Who knows? Maybe very much like that for me at the moment, you could probably hear in my voice that I'm very congested. And that's because we're having the most glorious weather here in the uk. I'm so happy. We finally seem to have summer after what seems to have been an eternal winter. And that is good, or could be, because the flip side of it is that I get really bad hay fever in the uk. Didn't have it when I lived in Singapore, but in the uk, it's really bad. And it means that I spend most of my days talking like this, which is absolutely annoying. So the good weather, it's good. People could say it's amazing. You love the sunshine. It's really good. And my response would be maybe hay fever. Oh, man, that's really bad. That's really annoying. It's really stressful, maybe. So I just wanted to share that with you. Nothing to do with today's episode, but I thought it was a good real life example from my own experience as to how that parable proves to be true and plays out in real life. So what do I want to talk about this week? Well, I'm going to talk about a subject that's really close to my heart and I'm going to talk about veganism. I'm not going to give you lots of data and facts and any of that stuff, because there are many people out there who do that far, far better than I ever could. But I'm going to share with you my story of why I became vegan and I'm going to share it not from a position of trying to convert you to veganism, although if we ever meet and we sit down over a beer or most likely a glass of champagne, I will be happy to talk your ear off about the benefits and why. I feel that it's everything that we should be thinking about, but that's not really the point of this episode. I'm going to talk about it because I want to start to get you to think critically about lots of different things. Because when we're trying to get that clarity, when we're trying to change our lives from what we think we should do to what it is we want to do, it's going to require us to start to question things, question things that we've always believed to be true, question things that we've always been told. And it's that questioning that led me to become vegan. So I wanted to set the scene there so that you understand the angle that I'm coming at this episode from. So I hope that you stick around to the end, because at the end I'm going to share some questions that I asked myself that you can ask yourself in regards to the food that you eat, but also to think about it more broadly in terms of decisions that you make, things that you do, the way that you feel that you should be living. Okay. So I was probably one of the biggest meat eaters ever. I mean, I grew up, my both my parents are from the Caribbean meats, very much a part of, of the Jamaican diet. So I grew up eating all sorts of meat and fish, but weirdly, I didn't have much dairy. I hated milk. I was in the area when you used to get free, free milk at school, in your primary school. And I never had it because I hated the taste of milk and I never have liked it. But meat was a huge part of my life. And as I progressed through life and as I became a lawyer in big law and started to have money and be able to go out for fancy dinners, steak was my food of choice. I went to some of the best steak restaurants in London and steak and fries and oh yeah, that was my jam. It's funny because I had a message from a friend of mine this week who's thinking of being vegan and she wanted to kind of Know, how did you do it? Because she remembers me. I just always go to a restaurant and be very disappointed if there wasn't steak on the menu. Anyway, I digress. But I want to set the scene because that was me. I was the meat eater. And even when my wife decided to go full vegetarian, which was back around, I think, 2018, I wasn't having it. And because I was at work and she was around, she would sort of plan most of the meals that we would have. And I left now because it's so stupid, but it just shows where my head was at. I would get annoyed if I came home and the menu didn't have me because I would say, well, I wish you would have warned me, because then I could have, like, made sure I had more beer at lunchtime. I mean, it's stupid. It really, really is stupid, but we do stupid things based upon what we believe at any given time. But meat was a huge part of my diet, largely because I used to do a lot of spoil. And everyone says, you need to get your protein. And where do you get your protein? You get it from meat. So meat and eggs. Eggs was what I used to have for breakfast pretty much every day. So I was not somebody who was going to be swayed from that. I've had girlfriends who are vegetarian. I've had friends who were vegetarian. None of that ever swayed me. I was always like, no, I need meat. We need meat. As humans, we're told we need meat to survive. That's what we're meant to be consuming. That's what we're meant to be eating. Everything from government guidelines to advertising to whatever you could think of is pushing you down this path, that this is what you should be consuming to be fit, to be healthy, to be strong. And particularly when you're a man, and particularly when you're a man who is doing sport. I played football, I played basketball. I was. I used to run a lot. There were many things I used to do. So I needed me to. Allow me to do those things. Allow me to build the muscle and build the strength and be a real man again, all of this stupid shit. So excuse me for that noise for my nose again. But that was very much the life that I was living. So when it came to that trip, that monumental trip to Bali in Christmas 2018, when I decided that enough was enough and I had to find a way to get out of Big Law, that started me just thinking about some things differently. It wasn't a huge shift, but as I said, I wanted to find A challenge. And I found boxing, decided to sign up for this white collar boxing match. The slightly inconvenient thing about that was that I'd started 2019 thinking that I actually want to start to eat a little bit less meat. And that was due to everything we were hearing about the climate emergency and how the over consumption of meat was bad for the planet and was contributing to effectively the destruction of the planet. So that was where I was. And my wife was heavily involved in climate action and so I learned a lot from her. And having two young kids, I wanted to have a world for them to grow up in and their kids to grow up in. I feel an obligation to do my bit to help to preserve the planet. But then I joined the boxing squad. Sign up for this fight and it's three months of training. And again, what do they say when you're an athlete, particularly when you're a male athlete, what do you need? You need protein. And where do you get that protein from? You get it from meat, Meat and eggs. So although starting the year with the best intentions of eating less, I actually ended up eating more because I was training six days a week, sometimes twice a day. And everything points towards you needing this, this meat, this fuel to build your strength, to help you to recover, to get you through the next training session. And even in the gym, there was no question that that's what you did. When my trainer was sort of telling me what to eat and the sorts of things to include in my diet, it was all based around meat and around dairy, particularly eggs. So that went out the window. So I did the training, I had the fight and I continued training because I loved boxing. And so this consumption of meat just pretty much continued as normal. So it wasn't until November 2019 when I flew off on a yoga retreat, my first yoga retreat in Bali, which was amazing, by the way. Another life changing moment, another plane to Bali. I watched a documentary called Game Changers, you may have heard of it, I think it's available on Netflix. And the interesting about that documentary is it was the first time I had heard actual scientific evidence, facts that you didn't need to get your protein from meat. And what was particularly striking about the documentary is that it was talking about athletes, it was talking about Olympians, it's talking about strong men, it was talking about people who you would look at and think, well, they must eat meat because you need me to survive, to have that strength, to have that speed. But they weren't, they were fully plant based. And so then that Got my brain thinking, huh? Everything that we've been told is actually a lie because there are these people there who are not just surviving, but are thriving without consuming animals. So if they can do that, and if that's true, why am I consuming animals? So that was where my brain went. And you can imagine having three days on a yoga retreat in Bali and had a lot of time to reflect on a lot of things about my life and to kind of be alone with my thoughts. So this thought was mulling around in my head and it brought me back to my earlier decision at the beginning of the year to try to consume less meat, less animals. And I decided that, okay, let's, let's try this. Let's, let's give it a go. I'm going to have a month of being vegetarian and I'll see how I feel. No, no sort of big declarations. I'm just going to try it and see what happens. So on the flight back from Bali, I had an airplane meal which included chicken. And that was the last meal that I ate that included animals. Well, they included meat at least. And I often think if I'd known that that was the last time I was going to eat meat, would I have had that last meal somewhere else? Would I have had it somewhere differently? Would I have gone to an amazing steak restaurant and gone all out, really savor that last meal? Who knows? But it's a thought that I have sometimes. But at the time, I didn't know the last time I was going to eat meat. It was just going to be the last time for a month when I tried this vegetarian experiment. And so I mentioned to a few people when I got back to Singapore that what I was doing and they were all a little bit surprised, but just thought, yeah, okay, won't last. Let's be fair. I wasn't really sure either, but I was committed to giving it a go. And most of the time when I decide I'm going to do something, I do it because I keep that commitment to myself. So cut to about two weeks into this four week experiment and I was talking to a colleague of mine in, in the office in my, my law firm and he was vegetarian. And he just said to me, oh, have you seen this documentary? Documentary was called Dominion. And I said, no. And you say, oh, you might want to give it a go. It's, it's on YouTube, it's free, you should give it a try. And so that night, went home, made my dinner, no meat, put on TV and sat down to watch Dominion. If you've never seen Dominion, you. You need to see it. And if you have seen it, then you'll understand what I'm about to say next. I got six minutes into that documentary and I had to turn it off. And in turning it off, I said to myself, and I remember saying this out loud, I'm never eating animals again. I advise you to watch it at some point. Don't watch it while you're eating there. Like I did. And I did finish it. I went back the next day and watched the remainder of the documentary without. Without eating before eating. And it's so powerful. And it also made me so angry. And it made me angry because so many things had been hidden from me, from us, so many lies had been told due to money, due to the farmers, the producers of animal products, that lobbied the government to present things in a certain way, to put out this propaganda without allowing us as individuals to have the full picture so we could make fully informed decisions about the food that we eat, about what we consume. And that was it for me. I went vegan. And I've never looked back. And I've never looked back for a number of reasons. One, because the thought of consuming that suffering, that death, that destruction, it just repulses me. And knowing that I would be doing that from a place of desire, not from a place of need, makes it a hell of a lot worse. And the funny thing is, is that once I decided overnight that I was going to become vegan, I'd never craved anything since all the things that I thought I would miss and people ask if I'd miss. I don't. I mean, you can get pretty much anything in the vegan form now anyway. But I don't miss the steaks that I used to have, you know, with the. With the garlic butter on there and the fries that were cooked in duck fat or goose fat. I don't miss any of that. Because all I now see when I see any of that is death and destruction on a plate. And you might not see it that way, and that's fine, and this isn't really about that. But what I want this episode to illustrate for you is, well, first of all, I just wanted to give you a bit of an insight as to why I'm vegan, because I get asked sometimes and, you know, I wear my. My vegan T shirts and my Instagram videos and people are curious. But I also wanted to show you that even though I had lived a particular way for the majority of my life and believed particular things have particular ideals based upon what I was told. When I started to think for myself, really think for myself about everything, I realized that a lot of what I've been told wasn't true and that a lot of what I was doing I didn't want to do. And becoming vegan just set me off on this path of questioning everything. My critical thinking muscle has sort of gone through so many reps over the last few years that there's very little now that I take at face value. I'm always questioning, but why is that true? Is that the case? Where are the facts? Who's saying it? Why does this have to apply to me? And in doing that, yes, I end up down many, many rabbit holes. But it also means that I tend to make more informed decisions. And it also means that I have greater clarity and that that clarity is continuously getting refine as new information comes to light. I think this is why I love being a coach, because I'm so curious now about everything that I will ask the questions, no matter how difficult and challenging those questions are, because I want to know the answer. And for you, sitting there as my client, you're probably going to feel challenged at times or feel uncomfortable at times, but that's only because you're being asked questions that you've never thought of before, because why would you? Particularly when you are quote unquote, successful, You've done everything right and you're on this path which everyone looks at saying, wow, isn't that amazing? The fact that it feels out of kilter for you, the fact that it doesn't feel in alignment to you, you think that it's something wrong with you as opposed to it's something wrong with the way that you've been told that you have to live because you don't have to live that way. But unless you start to question why you do certain things and get to the essence of why you're doing them and really understand that, then you're never going to have that full clarity, you're never going to have that control of your life that clients say to me that they want to have. Because in order to be in control, you need to know what it is you're trying to control and why you're trying to control it. You need to know the direction that you want to drive your life in. This is why you have to question everything. And I believe so passionately in questioning everything. I mean, I even got a tattoo. Question everything on my arm to remind me on a daily basis to question everything when things seem A little bit too good to be true. When you feel that there's a little bit of a smell of bullshit here, or just when you're not quite sure about something, having that critical thought muscle exercised and asking yourself the question, what's going on here? Do I believe this? Is this an alignment? Does this work for me? All of those things are really going to help you to get the clarity that you need so you can start to get onto the path that you want to be on. So that's an insight into why I switch from being this committed meat eater to being vegan. And yes, of course, I hope that it's kind of given you some food for thought in terms of how you eat and what you consume. But I really hope that it's given you an insight into my thought process and help you start to think about things that you do that you could question, way that you live that you might want to question because you've just never thought about it. It doesn't mean anything that you're doing is wrong. It just means that often we are doing things because we're on autopilot or because it's the way that we feel that it should be done without really questioning whether it's the way that we want to do it, whether it's the way that we want to live. And that's really the main point of this episode. I want to leave you with three questions. These three questions are in relation to veganism and I want to share them because I feel that they are good in showing you the sorts of things to ask yourself or the way you want to question yourself about anything. So here they're in relation to veganism. But you could take variations of these questions and apply them to anything that you're doing in your life right now, anything that you believe in your life right now. And these questions and much of this story, I go into more detail in an article that I wrote back in 2020, and I'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes. But as I say, I'll leave you with these three questions and the three questions I would like to leave you with in relation to your consumption of animals. If you do eat animals, you do eat meat and dairy. Are this Question one, why does eating a dog repulse you more than eating a pig? Number two, why is the forcible impregnation of cows and ripping away of calves at birth a price worth paying for milk in your tea or coffee? Question number three, why does the act of putting male chicks in a macerator, not evoke the same outrage as slicing off a shark's fin. And if you don't know what a macerator is, Google it, look it up. It's absolutely fucking horrific. So I ask these questions not to judge, but again, to just encourage you to start to use your critical thinking muscle and to ask yourselves these questions, see what comes up for you. It'll likely make you feel uncomfortable, and that's cool. Sit in that discomfort and figure out why you feel uncomfortable and whether there's something you want to do differently. Not just in relation to animals and to veganism, but in relation to anything else that's going on in your life, particularly the things that don't feel in alignment, the things that you don't feel are serving you. If you have answers to these questions, I would love to hear them. Shoot them over to me by email. Hey@iamrinespence.com or on Instagram at I am Underscore Ryan Spence or you can find me on LinkedIn. Just Ryan Spence. You'll see me. My cheeky face is there in the profile picture. I would love to hear your answers or to hear anything else that you take away from this episode with no judgment, just conversation. Happy to share more about my journey, what works for me, more about why I did it, or more just generally about this process that I follow now, this critical thinking, this phrase of question, everything and why I feel it's so important to finding clarity and why it's so important to living life lit. Still here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for at least just taking this in and letting it sit and marinate in your brain. And I really hope that you take it away and get your own insights and share it. Share it with somebody. Share it with a friend, somebody who was like me, who is a really committed meat eater. Share it with someone who you know is doing something that they're not happy and that isn't in alignment for them so that they can start to think about how they can start to question what they're doing and why they're doing it and really get to the essence of what it is they want to do and who who they are. And until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. If you love the show, if this resonates with you, you've got some valuable insights, let me know. You can find me on instagram @I amryan spence or search for Ryan Spence over on LinkedIn. To find out more about the show me or how to work with me as your Coach, head to iamryspence.com and get on my mailing list. Grab hold of my free Confidence journal to help you start to build the belief you can do the things that you want to do. Thanks for being here. As always. Until next week, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.