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Tabitha Brown has discussed why she went vegan – revealing it was after watching the movie What the Health.
The Tik Tok sensation made the comments in an interview with Goodful earlier this year.
Describing veganism as a ‘healthier, happier, cruelty-free life’, Brown said before she made the switch, she thought ‘only white people did it’, saying she’d never met a black vegan before.
Health
When growing up, Brown would eat whatever food she was given, including large amounts of meat. She said some of her non-vegan favorite meals included seafood like crab and lobster.
Brown initially switched to a plant-based diet for health reasons: she had been suffering with pain in the back of her neck, which spread into her head, giving her a debilitating headache with lasted over a year and a half.
The pain spread throughout her body, and she had chronic fatigue, as well as suffering from blurred vision, panic attacks, and anxiety attacks. She would muster up the strength to take her children to school, then return to bed.
‘I felt like I was dying’
Brown says she ‘felt like [she] was dying’ because of the relentless pain and fatigue, but she tried to act as normally as possible, and carry on with her life.
It wasn’t until she discovered plant-based health documentary What the Health that she found a solution to her problems.
“My daughter came home from school one day and she said, ‘Mom, we saw this documentary at school and I think you should watch it. It was What The Health. My husband and I, we all sat down together, we watched it, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is very interesting’,” Brown told Goodful.
Disease
She added: “What got me, is that when they were talking about diseases and our heritage, they would eat the same thing causing the same disease. For me, my mom died at 51. She had ALS. My dad is 68, he’s the oldest male to live in the family. A lot of my aunts, uncles, and family members died very young of heart attacks, strokes, and rare sicknesses.
“To me, meat was the common denominator. And I thought to myself, ‘well, I haven’t tried that, right? They were talking about plant-based eating on What The Health, so I told my husband, I’m done with the dummy drugs, all the guinea pig drugs that the doctors have given me over this last year and a half. Nothing has worked. If I’ve tried all that stuff, I can at least try to do this vegan thing for 30 days and see if it makes me feel better.”
30-day vegan challenge
They decided to do a 30-day vegan challenge as a family – with astonishing results.
“On day 10 my headaches went away,” Brown revealed. “I remember I was walking through my kitchen and I was like, my head ain’t hurting. I started feeling better from that day. I started getting my energy back. I just started feeling like myself again. On day 29, I told my husband, ‘I think this is my path, I’m going vegan.’”
She said that in the two-and-a-half-years since going vegan, she’s never felt better, and if you know your ‘why’, you will stick with your path, and never turn back.
“It’s got to be a personal decision, you make it for yourself,” she said. “And don’t force it on anyone else. Just let it be personal.”
