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Rachel Brathen’s story is a familiar one to me. After being vegan for many years, Rachel began to feel sick. Her body was unable to fight off infection, and she constantly felt run down. Even after being advised by doctors to change her diet, she resisted and continued to look for solutions in superfoods, supplements, and being a better vegan.
Until one day, Rachel received a “sign from the universe.” She tried an egg and recognized immediately that this was what her body needed. Changing her stance from veganism to conscientious omnivore was not a decision she took lightly.
Rachel is the founder and CEO of Yoga GirlⓇ and has spent over a decade advocating for veganism within her work as a yoga practitioner. The backlash from her community has been substantial, but Rachel continues to move forward, knowing she has made the best decision for her health.
On this episode, Rachel shares her story, and we cover topics like:
- Rachel’s origin story
- Her move from Aruba back to Sweden
- Her first experience with an egg
- The conversations with her family around her changing mindset
- How not being vegan has changed her business
Resources:
Connect with Rachel:
Website: Yoga GirlⓇ
Instagram: @yoga_girl
Podcasts: The Daily Practice | From the Heart
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. I am so excited. I’ve been waiting a while to have Rachel from Yoga Girl on the podcast. Welcome, Rachel.
Rachel Brathen
Thank you so much for having me.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So you came out as a not any longer vegan. A while back, you had a podcast announcing it all. And several of my followers shared it with me and said You have to talk to her. She mentioned your book. And coincidentally, I’ve been to your yoga studio in Aruba several times. It’s wonderful.
Rachel Brathen
Thank you so much!
Diana Rodgers, RD
What a beautiful space it is. And the cafe right next door.
Rachel Brathen
And you enjoyed our vegan cafe because it was always a vegan cafe.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I know, it’s just nice to have a little smoothie after I mean, I eat… I don’t have to have a steak at every snack. But so… I so I want to get into all of that stuff and chat with you. And thank you so much for agreeing to do this. But maybe before we get into that, I mean, obviously, that’s not your whole entire identity. And I’m sure lots of my followers also do yoga like me, and would be really interested to hear your like origin story like how did you? How did you get into all of us?
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, so I have been a yoga teacher for almost 15 years, which feels like a very long time. But basically, since I was 19 years old, I started teaching. And I’m born and raised in Sweden. And when I graduated high school felt really just sick of the cold and the gray and wanted a big, big life change and ended up kind of exploring the world in this very free spirit bohemian kind of way where I felt like I had no cares in the world and just pick up little stray jobs here and there. And I ended up living in Costa Rica for a couple years, which is where I found yoga and I found meditation. And I found veganism just changed my life in a lot of different ways. And eventually, that path led me to Aruba, which is where I met my husband. He’s from there. And I spent the past 12 years living in Aruba, where we have a yoga studio and a cafe. And I gave birth my daughter there. We raised our family there. And then long, very complicated story short, I started getting very ill a couple years back. And which I found out later was a big combination of just the diet that I had clung to for a really long time not working for me anymore. We found mold. Toxic mold in our house around the same time was a combination of a lot of things. Yeah. And we ended up going to Sweden just to spend the summer because we didn’t really know what to do with our lives and fell totally back in love with the country here. And about a year ago, I ended up moving all the way from the Caribbean, to Sweden, with my Caribbean husband and very Caribbean daughter who are just getting used to snow and cold and all the things.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and where do people from Sweden go when they’re cold? Like what’s the… what are the common places where Swedes go?
Rachel Brathen
They don’t go to the Caribbean for sure. It’s very exotic. It’s very hard to get to. I mean, it’s literally across the world. People go Spain, Italy, Greece, like Southern Europe a lot. And then Thailand and that part of Asia is also very, very popular. Lots of easy, easy flights. But most people I mean Spain, there are so many Swedish people in Spain. Oh my god, there are parts of Spain I don’t want to go because it’s too Swedish.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So talk a little bit about what it was like to be vegan and you said uniquely on Aruba too. You would think when you go to the Caribbean that it’s like this bountiful. All this fresh fruits and vegetables. And I’m sure some islands are like that. But I did not find many islands to be that way particularly like Bahamas and Aruba. Like there’s not a lot of food production happening on those islands. Yeah, talk talk a little bit about it.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, so when I moved to Costa Rica… Costa Rica is very very abundance when it comes to regenerative farming and organic farming and of course conventional farming too, but it was my first ever experience of picking all ripe fruit off the trees and farmers markets everywhere. It was very, very easy to be a whole foods-based vegan not eating processed foods. For the years that I lived in Costa Rica and I kind of assumed or Aruba or anywhere, you know, Caribbean would be similar. Aruba is particular because it’s not a tropical island. People assume that all the islands are tropical and very lush. Aruba is more of a desert island. So everything that grows can kind of poke you. We have a lot of aloe vera, as you know, everywhere and cactus and thorns. And yeah, not… it’s very hard to farm on the island, but not impossible. I mean, they farm literally everywhere in the world. And I think a lot of the Caribbean islands that have become very Americanized, unfortunately, kind of lack that local dedication to its origins because back in the day before tourism was the number one thing. There were farming practices, there was a local place where you would get your eggs, and then the local place where you would get the vegetables. And then little by little as the really big hotels took over, they started importing foods from the US and kind of edged all the local little farms away. And now there’s next to nothing. There’s no farmers market you can go in Aruba where you can get your veggies or anything like that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I noticed that again, on several islands. And then there were other islands too, like Venezuela got oil-rich, temporarily. And so people left their farms and moved into cities. And then when things reversed and oil got expensive, and they actually needed people to start farming again, no one wanted to. No one knew how to do it. And it caused major food problems there.
Rachel Brathen
So yeah, Venezuela is unique. And I can’t speak for Venezuela specifically like that. But I know, I mean, in Aruba, but one of the really big things for me and the reason why we ended up moving, in the end, was when the pandemic hit, right those first few weeks when we all thought this is the apocalypse, like are we all going to die? Or are we going to be okay? That like, you know, people buying toilet paper and all that kind of crazy time, there was a week or two where we didn’t know if we would continue getting food shipments from the US. And it became a legitimate concern. All of a sudden, the supermarket shelves and grocery market shelves were empty. But there’s no place to go get more, you know, there’s no part of the island where I can go and just kind of stock that if I’m a grocery store owner, I have to wait for the chilled containers to come in from the States. And I had a real just terrifying moment of realizing that I would not be able to provide for my family if any of these systems were to fall apart. And that was kind of the beginning for me when it comes to… we had a small kitchen garden and that garden ended up growing into something that changed my life. I mean, in every way spiritually, physically, emotionally. And it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to move in the end because I wanted to live somewhere with where it’s easier to farm, where there are four seasons and where I can be in closer connection with the land and with the food that I eat.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s so interesting when the pandemic hit I… you know, one of the big things we talk about in Sacred Cow is the importance of regional food systems and decentralizing food. And we wrote that book and finished it and turned it in before the pandemic. But then I was like preparing for a podcast and I co-wrote it with Robb Wolf, who’s a good friend of mine. And I’m going through the last chapter on like, all the things you can do to be more sustainable, like beyond just eating local foods. And it was like, you know, encourage regional food systems, be financially secure, take care of your own health. So you’re not like a burden on a public health system, all these other things. And I sent it to Robb and I’m like, Isn’t this so ironic that here’s the pandemic and it’s like all the things that are going to prepare you for a pandemic are all the things we recommended that you put in the book.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah. Very good timing. And I think people you can kind of understand these things logically that it makes sense. But it’s not until you’re faced with an actual emergency situation or having those systems being threatened to fall apart and that you start to really understand how crucial it is that we have a closer connection to where our food comes from. Otherwise, what’s the option really, right?
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I don’t fault people for not thinking about it. There’s definitely a lot of things to think about and worry about in the world that people have families and you know, financial stresses and a whole bunch of thing you can only really worry about, you know, whatever your bucket of worry can handle, right? And so it may not… Regional Food Systems is probably not at the top of everyone’s, like emergency I have to worry about this list. So I get it until there’s a pandemic… until there’s a pandemic or like, right, you said a health crisis, a mold exposure, that probably exacerbated like some other issues that you are having, you know, in addition to your house, so, talk a little bit about that kind of transition that you went through and how you got sick.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, I was, I think like a lot of vegans, I had those first few years, I was just on an absolute high. And I was I mean, I was in my late teens, I had come from a place where I was very destructive. I was a very destructive teenager. I had a lot of trauma in my family growing up, a lot of issues that weren’t spoken about or dealt with. And I dealt with that through drinking, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, eating really fast foods, and just living a lifestyle that was not serving me in any way. And I basically ended up at a retreat center as like a meditation retreat, kind of like a healing therapeutic retreat that really changed my perspective on life. And from there, I decided, Okay, I’m going to leave Sweden, try something different ended up in Costa Rica, where I, you know, I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I found yoga, I started eating organic foods, and I became vegan. All at the same time, as I was doing this deep, deep, deep healing work. And for me, I kind of attributed all the positive changes in my life to being vegan. I became one of those vegan crusaders, you know. How could I have ever eaten an animal in my life before? How come no one told me about this? How could I have been so heartless, and I was really kind of going down that activist path, which I feel a lot of people… yeah, we ended up there at the very, very beginning. And then a few years passed, and I started feeling less great. And for me, in those kind of years of not feeling super good, I was so entrenched in my vegan identity that identity was so important to me, I really had made a personality almost out of being vegan, and talked so much about veganism on my social media platforms. And it was just, it was never an option for me to even think the thoughts to potentially shift my diet in any way. Like it was not… I was extremely close-minded. So when I started feeling not so great, there was always another reason why I was getting sick. I was too stressed. Or maybe I haven’t found the right, perfect superfood, or I need this kind of supplement or something else was going on. But I never contemplated ever changing my diet, even though I had several doctors telling me, you know, do you want to see how you feel if you introduce a little bit of this or a little bit of that. And I was like, oh my god, I can’t work with a doctor that tells me I can’t be vegan, you know, like, look elsewhere. But basically, I had a lot of years of almost being chronically… as if I had a chronic cold, almost. I was just very low on energy. I was cold all the time. I had a near constant sore throat, always a stuffy nose, always kind of as if I had a cold coming, but I wasn’t in a full blown flu. I just wasn’t thriving. Yeah, I was near sickness all the time, until one day and I honestly don’t know if I can… someone asked me that – can you pinpoint the moment your mind opened a little bit to maybe not just leaving veganism behind or anything like that. But just the potential idea of adding something else to your diet, and I can’t remember that one specific moment. Other than all of a sudden intuitively I started craving things I had never craved in the past decade. Like an egg. All of a sudden, I had this weird craving of wanting to eat boiled egg with salt, which is something we ate when I was breakfast my dad used to make when I was little. I was just craving the idea of this egg and I was very ashamed. And I didn’t even tell my husband I thought it was so something’s wrong with me. I was embarrassed, you know, but it was a huge thing for me even the idea of eating something all.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right, because he was vegan too. And you guys were like enabling each other to be vegan?
Rachel Brathen
Yeah. And he was also… I’m kind of the instigator of all the lifestyle shifts that we do in the family maybe because I cook and do the grocery shopping and the food planning. So when it comes to food, I was vegan first, he was not. I would make these elaborate vegan meals and he would put like, you know a big thing of tuna on top because he would go fishing with his friends a lot and I would get constantly very triggered. And although I never told him, you have to go vegan with me, I kind of made his life a little bit more miserable.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I see.
Rachel Brathen
And eventually he, yeah, he caved, and had a really similar experience, to be honest. He, first two years felt great, lost a lot of weight just was feeling very light in his body. And then after that, struggled, and has told me that for the past year since our daughter was born, so six past six years, he’s felt like veganism has been this uphill climb that he’s doing, because it’s the right thing to do. Which made me really sad, honestly, that I kind of, I stepped away from my own intuition, but I was also so rigid in our in our ideals and beliefs that I didn’t leave him any space to change his mind, either, you know?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, it’s a big mind shift. And also, you know, there’s a lot of things that in society today, we maybe can’t trust, you know, like, if you crave, you know, a candy bar, you can’t trust that, right? So maybe not trusting your intuition, in some ways, is almost protective.
Rachel Brathen
It’s hard to know if craving for the sake of a craving or is it escape. What is nourishment? And I think what I realized at least is, the more of those, the more I identified with a label, the harder it is to tell the difference, how hard it is to listen to the body, because I’ve told my body, this is what we do. This is what we like. This is what we feel good, you know, versus letting my body tell me, which is I think something that will always change. I’m not going to have the same cravings and needs like now I’m six, almost seven months pregnant. My body is very different compared to not being pregnant. Postpartum is different. Teenage years are different. I mean, we go through all these seasons in our lives. And I think our bodies are really intelligent when it comes to guiding us towards what is nourishing and what isn’t.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So how does this pregnancy feel compared to your first pregnancy?
Rachel Brathen
I mean, wildly different. I’m having a very different experience. I have much more energy, this time around, which feels great. I’m having less intrusive thoughts about what I’m eating, which is something I didn’t realize I was struggling with. But I think just having a restrictive diet of any kind isn’t something that’s really doesn’t really work for me, makes me start to think in restrictive ways. So I remember being pregnant the first time around, I was thinking about, am I gaining a lot of weights? And should I be eating more of this or less of that? And now I’m just eating whatever I feel like eating in that day, I haven’t stepped on a scale even. I just feel much more relaxed and trusting around my food. And then I have other stuff. I mean, I’m six years older now I have way more pelvic pain this time around. So I’m kind of waddling around like a duck. Which is something I didn’t do when I was 27. How old was I? When I was… Yeah, which something I didn’t do then.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Well, having also gone through two pregnancies, which were very different. One was a boy, and one was a girl for me. They were, you know, I ate similarly. And they still felt incredibly different.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, so I’m sure every pregnancy is… Yeah. Yeah, that’s something I didn’t think… I didn’t think about then is that I can kind of trace my illnesses back to my postpartum time. Because I think my postpartum time, the first time around was the time I deprived myself the most. I literally was just drinking green juice and eating smoothies. And I think eating too little. Like I should… I probably had a much bigger nutritional need. And it was a little bit after that, that I started feeling really terrible. I think I was depleted from pregnancy and birth, and then I never really recovered.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That makes sense. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about your egg craving. And in your podcast, you talked a little bit more about, Well, I’ll just wait for a sign here. Yeah. Well, will you share about that?
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, I do that a lot. Whenever I have to make like a difficult decision or I’m on the Crossroads to something. I’ll say, Okay, well, the universe will give me a sign like I’m a total hippie like that. And that… at that same time, we had just come to Sweden to just get some relief from everything that was challenging back home. And we rented a little Airbnb in the middle of the woods and there was a the owners of the Airbnb had a little farm next door. And they came over one morning and said, Oh, would your daughter like to, like meet the sheep and come see the farm? And I said, Okay, sure. Great. Let’s go and they gave us this little tour. And at the end of the tour, my daughter found this little sheep shack as you pointed out, like what’s in there? And then they said, Oh, that’s the old chicken coop, but we don’t have any chickens in there anymore. And also, we already collected the eggs today from the other coops. Otherwise you could have collected an egg that would have been so fun. And I was like, We’re vegan. We don’t eat eggs. So that’s okay. We don’t need to collect eggs. And my daughter said, Please, can I go in anyway and check. And then she went inside. And she came out with this one perfect egg that she was holding. And this lady was like, That’s so strange. Like we don’t even keep our our hens in there anymore. Like, that’s so bizarre. Oh my god, that must be a very special egg. You keep it honey. And she like, looked at it. And then she walked over to me. And she said, Mama, this egg is for you. And I was like, damn it. Fine. And I had that egg in my pocket on the walk home knowing I’m going to eat this egg. This is going to be the moment. Yeah.
Rachel Brathen
And then you had forgotten even how to prepare an egg or you had never prepared an egg before yourself?
Rachel Brathen
I wasn’t a big… Yeah, when I was little, we ate a lot of egg. But I can’t remember kind of being a teenager cooking a lot of egg. And then I became vegan right away. So I never really had a household where I wasn’t vegan. So no, I had to ask friends for advice, like, what do I do? How do I eat it? Is it safe? Can I just take an egg from an old chicken coop? Like, you know, it’s like a whole new world for me. And then I ate it. And I said, I told myself if this is disgusting, if it feels wrong, if it’s not tasty. If you know, then this was the thing I tried. I won’t tell anybody, you know, just like have this little egg moment to myself. And it was delicious. It was yeah, it was a big… it was just an egg. But it was a very, very, very big experience for me. And it was that kind of little crack in my very rigid mindset that started opening. And then from there, I think, yeah, we were there for three months at that little house in the woods. And I started getting eggs from the neighbors. And I would have one a week or something like that secretly. I’ve hid the eggs from my daughter, so she wouldn’t see. So she wouldn’t ask questions, because I didn’t know where it was going to take us, you know, and she was raised vegan. So it was a really big, big conversation to eventually have and I didn’t want to have it mindlessly or recklessly, you know.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So when you first started introducing her to animal-source foods, how old was she? And did she have questions? How did that? What was that like?
Rachel Brathen
She had questions. I think the timing was really good. She was in just a very curious open-minded place and her and her development overall. I thought it would be a much bigger deal than what it was. I had already since a year back, I think we stopped talking about veganism as this thing that we have to do. I was more casual about… it was just how we ate but we weren’t constantly talking about. Yeah, about food or about animals and that way, which I think I did in her very, very early years. And I just sat her down and I explained, you know, we have been vegan eating this way for a really long time. And I’m not feeling so good eating this way anymore. So I’m going to try something different. And from now on, there will be some egg and there might be some fish and some other things on the table. And you don’t have to change anything that you don’t want to change. I’ll keep serving you the same food. But if you want to try something or if you have questions, we’ll talk about it. And then every meal became a big conversation. Of course, every time something new was there and she was just very curious and wanted to touch things and smell things and taste things.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And how old was she?
Rachel Brathen
She was five, just five. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s a great age.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, she came home one day, I was preparing the very first time I prepare a whole chicken, which was also a huge, huge experience for me. And she came home in the middle of that process. And I was like, my hand was up the cavity of this whole chicken and like six months ago, we were vegan you know, it’s like a very big, big shift. And she was so fascinated as it oh my god, can I touch it? Can I help you? Can I poke it? What is that like? It was more about curiosity for her than anything else. And now she’s kind of like she’ll taste everything and try everything. She doesn’t love egg. So she’ll bake with egg and loves to make pancakes with egg and things like that, but she won’t have just like a boiled or a scrambled egg or anything. But she’s like most kids I think very into meatballs and hamburgers and will eat like a pasta bolognese and will like she’ll eat and really enjoys meat but certain things not yet. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So you’re a full whole foods omnivore.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah. Yeah, my brother’s a hunter. He’s in a hunting team here. So he brings home a lot of game for us as well. So we eat… we eat a lot of moose, actually, from the forest here, where we live. And then I get eggs from this nearby farm. We’re getting our own chickens. Now, I think in April, which I’m really excited about. And I’m just very mindful about how I source things, but we definitely we eat… yeah, it’s a 180 just kind of complete, turn of events now.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And how has it been for your husband?
Rachel Brathen
It was… it was an interesting process when I said, I am ready to leave this label behind now. Like, there’s going to be egg at home, I want to start eating in this way. He was so reluctant and very uncomfortable with the whole idea. And I kept having to ask, like, why you don’t have to change, you know, like, I felt the same way. I’m gonna keep cooking for Leia this way. Like it’s okay, we can have two things on the table for a while, like, that’s fine. And he said, No, I’m really scared this is just a phase for you. And in three months when you change your mind because the vegan mob of people came for you. And it was like very challenging. Yeah, I don’t think I can reintroduce meat and fish and then go back to veganism because it’s so hard for me to stay away. And that was a conversation we hadn’t had. You know, I said really, because I never had that experience as a vegan. For me, it was just this is what’s right. So this is what I’m doing. And for him, he had the constant feeling like he needs especially fish growing up in the Caribbean. That’s what he eats his whole life. Right? And then having that taken away, I think it really did something, you know, to his physiology. And he said, I crave it so much all the time. So if all of a sudden I’m eating it, and then you want to go back to being vegan, you’re going to be alone and vegan. And I said, Okay, well, I think this is a great conversation for us to have, I don’t think we should be this rigid about what we’re allowed to and not allowed to do. And let’s examine why we’ve made these choices and how we really feel about them now because this is 10 years later, you know a lot has changed and shifted for us. And now he is a very, very happy omnivore.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and so let’s talk a little bit about the pushback and the vegan mob and all that. I know that for Leirre Keith who was in my film, it was really intense. I tend to get, you know, some hate but I’ve never been a vegan. And so I think it’s less for me than it would be for you. What was the… you did preface your sort of coming out podcast with a very long sort of call for open-mindedness and understanding? But I’m sure you still got it. What was it like to… talk about that.
Rachel Brathen
Yeah. I mean, I knew it was gonna be bad. I knew. And I made sure to not… I didn’t… it wasn’t like, I ate my first egg, and then I’m like, Oh, I’m going to tell social media now that… I really took my time. And I gave myself that space to feel really integrated and anchored, knowing that, okay, this is, I’m really leaving this lifestyle on this label behind and I’m not adding on a new label, I’m not saying now on paleo, or now I’m this or that I’m just… I’m just eating in a way that feels intuitively right to meet today. And maybe in the month all I want to eat as vegan food, and then that’s okay. I just wanted to really leave the label behind and also talk about how that became very confining for me. And so I took my time, I waited a year, really. And that year was also back and forth a little bit. It took me I think 10 months or something to try beef, you know, it was a very kind of slow, slow process to arrive at that place of knowing that this is it now. And I am very compassionate to the outrage, which I think I had a hard time sharing a little bit because it was very, it’s hard to be in that place of having to defend yourself. I mean, I had people write me that I should die and I should be raped, and I should… all the terrible things that happen to animals who are factory farmed, that should happen to me. And if there was a lot of the deep, scary aggression, you know, they came also, and I became a little bit defensive about that, and then the choices that I had made. But I do have a lot of compassion for the whole community because a lot of it… a lot of those choices stem from a place of wanting to be good, of wanting to do good, a place of wanting to live a life that’s no harm of a feeling a lot of compassion and a lot of big feelings for other beings. So I know what it’s like to be on the other side of that. But it wasn’t fun. I mean, I can’t say it was fun, but it also knew what was coming. So it was… there was a lot of drama and then a couple of weeks of every day receiving just massive amounts of comments and emails and disappointment from people, especially people, I think, who maybe went vegan because I convinced them or I inspired them or my message made them change their lives and all of a sudden, I’m changing my mind. And then what does that mean for them? And, you know, it’s a little bit complex. And then I think a lot of people felt I was being the biggest hypocrite ever. How can you preach veganism for this long, and then all of a sudden change your mind? And because I felt really good about that process of changing my mind, and knowing that I would be a much bigger hypocrite if I lied, or if I changed my mind and didn’t act on it if I remained vegan, not believing in it anymore. I mean, I had no other option than to just do what was true, really. So I was okay with it. I think all throughout, and now it’s very quiet. I think my community has shifted a little bit. I think the hardcore vegans who hate me unfollowed, you know, it’s hard to follow along with someone that maybe inspires you, and then you don’t agree with anything they do anymore. You know?
Diana Rodgers, RD
So yeah, I definitely have similar messages come at me. On occasion, definitely. When the film came out, I actually called the local police, I was worried that people were going to find where I live and like, show up. Luckily, on the east coast, it’s the vegan community is less aggressive than some of the activists on the west coast. But I know Lierre Keith has been attacked. And so I was just very, very anxious about it.
Rachel Brathen
And I think that that’s just I mean, the majority of vegan people and vegan activist activist aren’t like that, right. I mean, there’s just like in the margin, there are people who are really intense and really crazy – the way every group has those kinds of people, especially on social media, where they can be anonymous and all of that. But I had a comment that really was sort of helpful for me. I had this girl wrote me very outraged. I shared something about regenerative farming and how now I’m eating in this way. And I feel so part of a cycle now and closer to nature. And here’s how it changed our lives for the better. And she wrote me, I remember when you used to think in this way and do these things for the animals. Now you’re just doing everything for yourself. And I was like, Oh, that was a lightbulb for me. Because it was very true, I was very willing to sacrifice my own well being and my own health and my own sort of place in the world for the sake of this ideology for the sake of these animals. And I think that is where I started off wrong. Somehow, I think there’s something a little bit imbalanced about putting yourself at the bottom of that chain in a way that it’s okay for me to suffer as long as someone else doesn’t suffer, where I think there is a place where I can thrive and I can be part of a system that’s thriving, and circular and actually healing and regenerative in a really big way. Which the way I was practicing veganism wasn’t that at all.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. So how has this changed your business? Or I mean, your life definitely – you’re full-time in Sweden, you’re getting chickens, and maybe you’re not gonna even stop at chickens. Maybe it’s going to get even more exciting than chickens. But what other changes do you see down the road for? I mean, are you going to are you moving away from talking about food as much and talk a little bit more about like, what this means for Yoga Girl?
Rachel Brathen
Yeah, I mean, for the community, nothing really changes other than I’m just, I’m still sharing my life and my journey every day through social media and through my podcasts. It’s just that the content of what my life is has shifted, of course. So I think I’m attracting people who are like-minded or wanting to live a similar kind of lifestyle. I’m still talking about food. I think I’m talking about food more now because I feel like I can authentically really share what I’m eating without feeling… Yeah, last year as a vegan I didn’t feel great to just talk about vegan food all the time, because I think I was a little bit out of alignment there. So now I’m sharing a little bit more about what farm life is like, we just bought a farm here a little, it’s not a big farm, it’s more of a homestead. But I’m hoping to lean deeper into that and to become as self-sustaining as we can and grow as much of our own foods as we can and the animal foods that we sourced that they’re either our own or from the neighbor of farms, which is entirely possible where we live. I feel really lucky and blessed about that. And ironically…
Diana Rodgers, RD
It wouldn’t be as easy on a vegan diet and to be self-sustaining in Sweden.
Rachel Brathen
I mean, if I’m okay with eating packaged and processed foods, yes.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh, right. Right, right.
Rachel Brathen
The grocery store I mean, Oatly is Swedish.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right, right. Right, right,
Rachel Brathen
Since the early 90s, we’ve had oat milk at the store here, you know. So it’s…
Diana Rodgers, RD
I meant in the self-sustaining way.
Rachel Brathen
Self-sustaining way, probably not. I mean, I don’t… when I first read… I read the, what’s it called? It’s the Bible of self-sufficiency, that big, big old book from the 1970s. It’s… what’s his name? I forget, it’s the big book of self-sufficiency. It’s this old school, total hippie 70s book about… breaks down every part of how to be self-sufficient. And I read that when I was still kind of on the fence, in between. And one of the first things that he writes, and this is 1976, or something, is, you know, I understand this longing to be vegetarian and peace and love for all. But if you want to be self-sustaining, you’re gonna have to… you’re gonna have to get a cow. You’re gonna have to either buy cow*beep*, or you’re gonna have to have a cow. Otherwise, you can’t farm in this sustainable way. And my brain went, what? Wait, like, how is that possible? Why would I need a cow? If I want to be self-sufficient? Can I just grow cucumbers and tomatoes, and anyhow and compost? Right? So that was, and I learned a lot also through your book. So I want to thank you for that. Because that was a big eye-opening thing about how all the things I was eating as a vegan, the tofu and the almonds and the spirulina and the goji berries, and all the weird *beep* I was eating that was from very far away, how it’s actually farmed, and how disconnected I was from that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, well, I’ll have to send you the other… I have two cookbooks and one of them is a how to grow it, how to cook it seasonal. It’s called the Homegrown Paleo Cookbook. So I will send you that one. Yeah. It’s funny, because I remember three or four years ago, probably more like four years ago, I was in Boulder at a regenerative brands conference. And there was mostly vegans at this conference with their goji berries and their cashews. Cashews are another one that, you know, they’re like extremely toxic when they’re harvested, really bad for the workers, you know, imported. And, but yet, these were regenerative cashews, and some somehow they were called regenerative. And I got up on the stage and said, You know, I think everyone here is really stretching the word. And it’s fine if you personally want to be vegan, but you need to support those of us who are advocating for livestock like Savory Institute and others because these animals are required for the grasslands to thrive. And you know, I started going and I got booed.
Rachel Brathen
Oh, I can see it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I wasn’t even… I was like, You guys are cool. You do you with just like you need to support the other people who are doing livestock. And that was just a no.
Rachel Brathen
And where do you think that this disconnect comes from? Because I was… when I was growing my own just when I started our little kitchen garden. I would just buy bags of soil and then they would tell me at the garden store and here’s the fertilizer you’re going to need, well that you know soon and I just thought Okay, you just keep doing that. Okay, I guess that’s what you do.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Magical fairy dust fertilizer, that has…
Rachel Brathen
Magical fairy dust fertilizer, not understanding that okay, this is it. Right? This is the issue is right here.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, just I think, you know, a really big disconnect from nature and this whole worldview. I mean, I see a lot of this coming out of the UK with George Monbiot. I don’t know if you are familiar with some of the stuff that he’s put out in the guardian. But I mean, he really thinks that grass-fed cattle farming is the worst, worse than even chemical agriculture. And that we all need to be eating this biological goo made out of hydrogen and farmers should just be rewilding everything and everyone everywhere needs to be vegan. It’s wild stuff, but I don’t think he’ll ever come around because his worldview is like, just so technophobia or I don’t know how to describe it. Actually, my quote… my producer and I, James Connolly, were chatting about… its longtermism, this idea that we need to sacrifice our own health and the health of everyone suffering right now, for future humans like 1000 years from now and like this idea that we must colonize Mars and like tech is gonna save us and there’s nothing of value in today’s nature.
Rachel Brathen
Wow.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s the complete opposite of how I think and how I operate and so I’m not sure they’ll ever be a time when the worlds will meet.
Rachel Brathen
Black and white kind of, I don’t know. I think people really miss that big wide gray area in the middle where, you know, just because you’re not vegan doesn’t mean you have to eat the worst factory-farmed meats and support that industry at all that there is another way. And I always thought when I was vegan that it’s this or it’s that. And I know for sure I don’t want to be that. I mean, I saw all the you know, Earthlings and Dominion and all of those terrible documentaries showing these horrible, horrible conditions for these animals. And I knew that wasn’t it, so then I have to do it this way. And I think, yeah, learning from your book and reading different just getting different kinds of information from a wider variety of sources. And then working the land with my own hands. Like that was a very eye-opening thing, realizing how I can actually, for my own family, where we live right now with this amount of land, we could get one cow and we could probably be self-sustaining for the rest of our lives. Like, literally, we can close that loop here. And I know not everybody can do that. But just knowing that in that way of thinking, helped change things for me from what can I get at the grocery store, to what farms are there nearby. There’s like eight of them around where we live, that I didn’t even know they have little stores, you can go visit them. You can buy milk there, you can buy eggs over here. And I think a lot of that is available to so many of us, we just haven’t done that work yet. But being vegan is doing work too. Right? Where can I eat? What vegan restaurants are there? Where can I shop? Like, this is the same amount of work is just in a different area. And it’s not harder, it makes more makes more sense.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I do think that there’s sometimes is a little bit of a well, you know, if people can’t access that, that, you know, the small farm thing, then they should never eat meat. And I understand if that’s a personal choice that someone wants to make, well, I don’t have access to that. And so I’m choosing not to eat meat. Lately, my message has really been pushing back saying that’s cool that you have the privilege to and the health and the whatever economical status to be able to push that away. But there are other people in the world who can’t. And kind of, you know, if someone’s working two jobs and just trying to do their best for their family and want to give their kids nutrition, that mom has a right to make the choice to get meat from the grocery store, if that’s the best she can do. And those of us who have influence can try to make animal farming better. Right, all of it better. But right now, I’m just seeing a lot of black-and-white thinking. And, you know, well, if schools can’t get perfect regenerative meat, then it should be vegan schools. Not necessarily, you know, there’s nuance in that and, you know, nutrients that these kids need that they might not be getting at home at all, and people who are underprivileged should have access to the best that they can do for them. Their families.
Rachel Brathen
Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s a hard conversation to I mean, it’s a near impossible conversation to have with a vegan person who still thinks that that that’s the healthy way. Right? Why should that, you know, struggling mom of two should she have to give her kids that horribly farmed meat, you know, when that meat is what’s going to make them sick, and it’s going to give them heart attacks, and it’s going to, you know, so I think the vegan argument, it’s so layered.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I get it.
Rachel Brathen
Once you hold on to it, it’s like, yeah, it’s very, very hard to take in any other kind of information on there. And for me, it took getting really sick and then noticing how I felt once I started introducing, like, I have bone broth on the stove right now. And it feels like I have a chocolate cake downstairs like, it feels like this exciting thing that I, you know, because I feel so nourished by that in a different way. But it took getting sick for me to get there.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, thank you so much for your time. Anything else? Where can people find you? It’s probably pretty obvious. But…
Rachel Brathen
Yes, I mean, I’m Yoga Girl on Instagram, but I have two podcasts. I have a weekly podcast where I talk a lot about this kind of stuff and motherhood and well-being and vulnerability, basically. And then I have a daily podcast where I give little daily tips for self-care called The Daily Practice.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Excellent. Great well, I will get your address so I can get you a book and you know I envision some fun farming/yoga/ nourish yourself workshop or something like that.
Rachel Brathen
Really? Yeah, I gotta pop this baby out first and then nourish myself really deeply afterwards. And then I’ll be back out there. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Things really change once you have two in the world.
Rachel Brathen
So, I hear
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Being pregnant with one and having one is a lot easier. So good luck with all of that and So, I hope to maybe work with you in the future. I’m really proud of you for all of this, and I really enjoyed your story. Thank you.
Rachel Brathen
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
