Lori Weiss shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Lori, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
I do a 5-minute meditation to start every day. Then I check my phone (texts, emails, messages, etc.). I make my bed. Then I get into my exercise clothes and head to the gym, where I do a one-hour workout. When I return home, I drink my homemade juice that’s already been prepared a day or two prior. I chop my fruit and then make an Instagram story while I sit and eat my morning fruit.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m a life coach who helps busy professionals get happier and healthier.
What makes my brand unique is… me. I’m truly a unique person who has a non-typical life. I’m a raw vegan, LGBTQ, polyamorous Canadian-American. Not too many of those. Haha!
Because of my nontraditional lifestyle choices and ways of thinking, I tend to attract clients who either want something that I have (such as, they want to be raw vegan) or who want to feel the way I feel. For example, they may want to fully accept themselves or be okay with doing things differently than those around them.
I’m also a very compassionate person and my clients feel truly safe sharing their biggest fears and challenges with me, which inevitably allows them to work through those difficulties.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
The moment I made the connection that humans are frugivores completely changed my world.
As a child, I struggled with my relationship with food and my body. I always felt “fat” and was constantly on a diet. I felt like so many foods I’d eat would bother my stomach. And I had really bad acne.
I always wanted to understand food and nutrition better. And it never made sense to me that every other species on the planet seemed to know exactly what to eat, yet humans couldn’t seem to figure it out. That always bothered me.
So when I learned that humans are frugivores, and our bodies are designed to eat a fruit-rich diet like our fellow primates, everything clicked for me. It was such a powerful lightbulb moment.
It felt like everything that I had been searching for as a child and young adult made sense. And from that moment on, I’ve been a raw vegan fruitarian, living a lifestyle that’s rich in fresh fruits and veggies. That was exactly 10 years ago yesterday!
When I made the switch to a fruit-rich diet, my acne-prone skin immediately cleared up within just a few days. I couldn’t believe it because I wasn’t even aware that was going to happen.
So many things seemed to click into place once I learned about raw veganism and became one. And it completely changed how I saw the world and all the food myths that are fed to us on a daily basis.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
There are so many kind things I wish I could say to my younger self!
But I think the most important one would be… you are whole, exactly are you are. You don’t need anyone else to complete you.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
Well, in the health industry in general there are so many lies about food it’s crazy.
But let’s start with the biggest one… the protein myth. This belief that you need so much protein or that vegans could be deficient in protein, etc. It’s completely false.
The stage of life when humans grow and develop the most is as a newborn, when they’re consuming breastmilk. The macronutrient breakdown of breastmilk is about 7% carbohydrates, 3.8% fat, and 1% protein (the remaining percent is water). Protein is frankly nominal! Carbs are 7x more important for growth and development. Yes, protein is essential, but you can see it’s not nearly important as some people in the industry would have you believe. Anyone consuming enough whole foods is almost sure to get their protein needs met, even if they’re trying to grow big and strong.
But also the lie that you need to consume animal products. That’s very, very false. Even major health organizations have confirmed that a vegan diet is healthy for all people, for all stages of life. Obviously, someone eating a vegan diet that’s filled with vegan junk foods isn’t going to be getting the nutrients that they need. But someone eating a whole food plant-based diet is on track for getting their nutritional needs met.
Besides, animal products are acidic in the body and don’t have fiber (only plants have fiber), so animal products are actually harmful to the body, while plants allow the body to thrive.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
To be honest, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and it’s something I’ve been very challenged by.
I regularly don’t feel celebrated for my accomplishments.
It’s because the things that I’m proud of myself for doing aren’t the things that society celebrates.
Nobody’s going to care that I just completed 10 years as a raw vegan (and hopefully I have many, many more years to go).
Nobody cares that I’m an unmarried woman who’s child-free by choice.
Nobody cares that I choose a non-traditional life in so many ways (polyamorous, digital nomad, etc.).
And I continue to make these choices even when I get pressure to go in a different direction.
I ALWAYS stay true to myself and do the best for me, because at the end of the day, I have to live my life. And just accept that nobody may ever praise me for the incredible things I do.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storyoflori
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lori.weiss1/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LoriWeiss
