This transcript is AI-generated and [lightly] edited by a human.

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan Podcast, episode 172. Anelyse Weiler joins me to discuss her research, exploring workers' rights and environmental health, vegan fitness, and how each of us can fight for a more livable world.

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina your go-to, no-BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Thanks for tuning in today. I would like to give an extra special shout-out to our amazing client, Suzanna in Australia. We have been lucky enough to have her on our client team for just over two years now. Actually 29 months to be exact, and just this week she officially earned her 1000th workout milestone. So that's an average of 34.5 workouts every month for almost two and a half years, which is absolutely stunning and very inspiring consistency. So the thousand workout total includes both strength training and cardio sessions, and she'll usually do one of each on weekdays. Suzanna, kudos to you for maintaining this level of consistency and prioritizing your fitness for so long. Even through stressful life and work events, you are an absolute powerhouse. You're showing us all how it's done, and Coach Zoe and I are so grateful to have you on our client team.

Now, if you're listening to this and thinking that you would like to get as consistent with your fitness as Suzanna has been, we do have a few coaching spots open at the moment. You can learn more and apply for one of them at karinainkster.com/coaching.

Introducing today's guest, Dr. Anelyse Weiler. She's an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Victoria. Her research explores workers' rights and environmental health, agricultural industry lobbying and how everyday people are fighting for a more livable world. Alongside her research, she's involved in advocacy groups like the BC Employment Standards Coalition and Worker Solidarity Network outside of work. Anelyse loves running, cycling and lifting. She's been vegan since 2007 and her family includes a flock of cheeky rescue chickens and two adopted cats. Her favorite vegan meal is Spicy Tan Tan Ramen, which reminds me that one of my all-time favorite vegan meals is also ramen from Jinya in Vancouver. Here's our conversation.

Hi Anelyse. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for speaking with me today.

Anelyse Weiler:

Hi. Thanks so much for having me join.

Karina Inkster:

I have to share with our listeners that we did a little book giveaway and your name popped up a while back. It was like a couple months ago, and I'm like, wait, this person lives in Victoria, which is pretty close to where I live, just a 90 minute ferry ride and a little bit of a drive from me, and I looked at your LinkedIn profile and I was like, wow, this human needs to be on the show. So through the power of the internet, Anelyse is now on the show, so I'm very grateful that you're here and that we can have this conversation.

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. Well, I'm pumped to be here.

Karina Inkster:

Well, let's jump in. So when our guests are vegan or plant-based themselves, I love to get the vegan origin story. So it's been a while for you. I think you said 2007, is that right?

Anelyse Weiler:

That's right, yep.

Karina Inkster:

So what's the story? Was there a catalyst? What happened in 2007?

Anelyse Weiler:

Yeah, I think a big catalyst for me was being part of a community in the Comox Valley, which is where I grew up, that had a lot of people who made veganism look like a really beautiful community endeavor, and I was a board member in high school for a group called Earth Save. So we hosted potlucks and community events around plant-based diets broadly. It was inclusive for people of any dietary background. 

So that was really a spark for me alongside just really enjoying cooking. So I'd spend my weekends at the library reading copies of Vegetarian Times, and when I was old enough to be able to make decisions on my own about what I was going to eat, veganism was the obvious way to go. So for me, the primary driver was environmental reasons initially, but as with a lot of vegans, I think over time, other key factors have really come into play, particularly around animal welfare and personal health as well.

Karina Inkster:

Absolutely. That is pretty common. There's usually one main catalyst for folks, and then the other things in their own time tend to show up. Not always, but they usually do. So I can understand that. That's very cool. What was it like on Vancouver Island at that time in the vegan scene? Were there lots of options A while ago?

Anelyse Weiler:

I was really lucky that I grew up in a time when the moose would cookbook, if we remember way back when.

Karina Inkster:

Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, classic. Absolutely.

Anelyse Weiler:

I think there was growing literacy around plant-based diets. Generally still a lot of misinformation, like the idea of combining proteins in a single meal as being so essential. So I'm lucky in a lot of ways that the evidentiary basis behind veganism has really become a lot stronger over time, and I think that's made it much easier to be able to incorporate veganism as part of an everyday practice.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, I have no idea what veganism was like in my area, which is across from you in the Catholic region. I've only been here for five years, so I know the Vancouver scene, which was actually, okay, I went vegan in 2003. So back then it wasn't great, but it also wasn't nothing, but it's definitely changed since then.

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly. And I think one of the really exciting things that I've seen over time in the vegan world is recognizing that veganism has been a huge part of cultural diets, traditional cultural diets for a lot of people all over the world. I think historically the stereotype of veganism was that it was this weird mainly white California undertaking that had to do with a fringe hippie lifestyle. And a lot of vegan cookbook authors and writers of color have said no, plant-based diets are a huge part of traditions all over the world in Central America in Ethiopia, and that the idea that meat needs to be central in people's diets is a much more recent phenomenon that really has been pushed on people largely by the meat and dairy industry.

Karina Inkster:

Absolutely. Yeah, I would agree. They're kind of related to that. There's an argument from outside veganism that there weren't any long-term long ago vegan societies, and thus it's not natural, which is a whole other story and also false and not necessarily a basis for making decisions for our modern diet. But it kind of reminds me of this idea. Yeah, actually there were thousands of years ago different cultures that were mostly plant-based.

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly, and just because we did something in the past that was natural in ancestral terms doesn't mean that it makes sense in terms of our values and contemporary context.

Karina Inkster:

A hundred percent. Yeah. Well, let's jump into some of the work you do. So can you give me and my listeners a quick overview elevator spiel style about generally what work you do? I know that you explore how social inequalities and environmental challenges or environmental problems converge, which I think is super interesting, but how would you explain to someone at a party what you do with your work?

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. I am a researcher and an educator, and I also do advocacy and a lot of the work that I do focuses on workers' rights in agriculture and gig food delivery. And an example of one of the projects that I'm really excited about right now is with my colleague Susanna Klassen, we're looking at how agricultural workers are affected by extreme weather events. So when British Columbia got hit by a heat dome in 2021, we're really interested in what that was like for agricultural workers who are often housed in congregate situations, meaning they face overcrowding really poor cooling, and that in a world where things are going to get hotter and we're going to have even more extreme weather events, climate change poses a significant risk for health and safety for agricultural workers in particular. So that's an example of how I combine approaches to workers' rights as well as environmental health.

Karina Inkster:

Right. Well, I'd like to talk about that specific piece a little more down the road with the agricultural workers and exposure to environmental harms that are related to climate change. So that's definitely one of our main topics. One thing that I wanted to start off with was related to veganism though. So one of the points that you had as potential themes we could base our conversation around was opportunities for solidarity with food and farm workers as part of ethical veganism. So do we need to define ethical veganism first?

Anelyse Weiler:

I think we could keep it fairly in lay terms, the idea of veganism being driven from a values perspective and compassion for animals concern with the harm that they're experiencing.

Karina Inkster:

Yes, I would agree. Okay. So what are some of these links then? So you're saying there's opportunities for links between the food and farm workers and veganism?

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly. One of the common criticisms I often hear about veganism goes something like this, veganism is totally out of touch with the struggles of ordinary working class people that caring about the suffering of animals means vegans don't care about human struggles, and that veganism mainly amounts to performative elitist virtue signaling. I think this is a cheap criticism. Virtue signaling is something we all do. It's just a signal of what we care about. I think it only gets annoying when we expect some kind of cookie or social reward or social status for aligning our values with our practices. 

And compassion isn't a zero sum game caring about non-human animals and the natural world doesn't detract from caring also about humans. I'm deeply committed to animal welfare, environmental health, and workers' rights. And in fact, research shows us that these issues are linked in important ways. To take a somewhat visceral example, a big problem with mainstream animal agriculture is poop.

Modern egg and dairy farming produces huge volumes of manure, and often farmed animals are going to spend big parts of their unnaturally short lives standing in their own urine and manure. And agricultural workers face a higher occupational risk of respiratory issues because they breathe in fecal dust and toxic gases, not to mention exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria when meat producers overuse antibiotics. And in wealthy countries like Canada and the US, the people who are working in primary agriculture and slaughterhouses are often low income migrants and immigrants from the global south with very little bargaining power. So researchers call those kinds of toxic exposures, environmental racism. 

And on top of all this, of course, manure lagoons also contribute really significantly to one of the biggest existential threats we're facing as a species climate change. And so ultimately, I think the criticism that ethical veganism is out of touch with the struggles of food and farm workers and slaughterhouse workers perhaps reflects a bigger frustration A lot of us have, namely our food system makes it really tough for most people to eat in accordance with our values. A lot of people are struggling with having enough food to eat period, especially during a period when massive grocery chains are generating huge profits by raising their prices.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. Okay, so a couple of questions in this realm then. So one is what you're describing here, essentially intersectionality.

Anelyse Weiler:

I tend to take more of a political economy approach where I'm looking at relations of who generates profits off of how things are currently and how they're able to use their power to shape laws and policies in ways that benefit them. And so ultimately, the suffering that we see among animals in contemporary animal agriculture and the struggles we see among food workers, there are specific individuals and institutions who really benefit from the way things are right now. 

Sometimes the response is, we just need to change the way we shop as individuals. And every time I hear someone suggest the best way to deal with animal welfare, farm workers' rights and climate change is to change what you eat as an individual. Every time I hear that, I get a new gray hair, I swear I totally get that. This is a really seductive argument because consumption is the thing that we can see and relate to most personally on a daily basis.

We go to the store, we see options, and really this individualistic idea of shopping for social change reflects the weakness of our political imaginations. I'm increasingly persuaded that the best thing individuals can do to improve animal welfare, workers' rights and environmental health is to stop thinking like individuals. I'm drawing here on Bill McKibben, the journalist and climate activist who says something along those lines in relation to climate change. 

But really I think the most powerful route to social change is an old fashioned one. It's not as sexy as the idea that you can make a difference by convincing your friend to buy plant-based ice cream instead of dairy, or that buying a fair trade organic chocolate bar is going to meaningfully prevent sexual violence toward farm worker women. Instead, I think we need to build bottom up democratic social movement pressure collectively to push governments to change laws and policies so that our laws and policies reflect our collective values. And a lot of us have lost our sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves. We've lost our collective muscle, but that collective muscle solidarity, I firmly believe that we can rebuild it with practice.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. Now, I'm assuming you're not saying we should just abandon all efforts to be vegan and who cares what we spend our dollars on at the grocery store? I think it could be an and situation, not an instead situation or and situation. We can do both. But how does what you're talking about, which is on a more systemic level, look to me as an individual, how can I impact this larger scale change?

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely, and I fully agree with what you're saying. I think as individuals, it's important to have moral consistency in what we believe and how we practice it in our everyday lives and being part of bigger structural change. But I think vegans, for example, who want to contribute to addressing issues they see around workers' rights could throw their weight behind labor movements and migrant justice movements that are happening all over the world, including in Canada. 

So just as an example, tonight I am joining a monthly Worker Wednesday meeting that the Worker Solidarity Network puts on the Worker Solidarity Network is a nonprofit group in BC that supports the rights of precarious and mainly non-unionized workers. So we do joint actions on our worker Wednesdays, like a phone zap, where we all get on our phones, we phone the Minister of Labor, and we call for things like funding for the employment standards branch so that the rights that workers have on paper can actually be enforced in practice. 

That's just one example. There are tons of other ways that people can get involved. So other organizations like Eco Justice, for example, they're right now involved in class action lawsuits and advocacy to help protect workers from toxic pesticides. Collective organizing is really difficult. There are lots of stops and starts, and ultimately it works. It feels really damn satisfying to be part of collective change.

Karina Inkster:

Well, I think even just a mindset shift from me as an individual with my spending dollars, which of course is part of the puzzle to what can I do with a group of other humans and how can we affect change collectively, I think is an interesting point to consider for folks who a lot of times feel pretty lonely. I mean, we have a lot of clients in our fitness and nutrition coaching business who don't know any other vegans in their area. They don't have any other vegan friends. Their family doesn't understand. So the vegan piece already makes them feel like an outsider, and they're trying to live in accordance with their values. And as you mentioned before, our food system makes it real difficult to eat in a way that aligns with our values, but that's part of what they're trying to do. But it can be tough if there's no immediate other folks around. But I think that's where the organizations like the ones you've mentioned come in, right, where you can seek out a group that already exists and join them.

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. And I think a lot of people are hungry for a sense of community, for meaningful friendships, for feeling like they're part of something bigger than themselves. And I think the idea of shopping for social change can reinforce isolation for a lot of people.

Karina Inkster:

Shopping for social change. That is my new favorite phrase for the day. That's a good one. Okay, well, let's go back to the topic we were touching on before, which was agricultural workers, their health, their disproportionate exposure to harmful environments, climate-related extreme heat, pesticides that you mentioned, fecal waste. You also mentioned, so is this disproportionate to animal agriculture versus other types of agriculture? Is this agriculture in general? Where are we seeing a lot of these exposures?

Anelyse Weiler:

We're seeing it in agriculture in general, unfortunately. So the idea that you get get out of jail free card if you're not participating in meat, egg, or dairy consumption. When it comes to workers' rights abuses, unfortunately, it's a challenge across the board for workers in a huge array of crops and not just food crops either. It pertains to cannabis production, Christmas tree production, the production of ornamental flowers that agricultural workers across the sphere often face a huge array of threats to their occupational health and safety and their basic human rights as well.

Karina Inkster:

Right. So are there things there that we, meaning not you but me as a lay individual can do in this sphere like groups, we can organize groups, we can join actions, we can take along these lines?

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. There are tons of different groups that are doing amazing work to advance the rights of agricultural workers. I mentioned eco justice, for example, with some of their advocacy around pesticides. There are lots of groups in British Columbia like Rama in the Okanagan. They do fantastic work supporting workers with both policy advocacy and frontline support with things like learning English or helping workers deal with an abusive boss, or even having community events like salsa nights where workers from Mexico and Jamaica can feel part of the community themselves. So all across the board, there are really wonderful ways for people to get involved in supporting labor movements.

Karina Inkster:

I think that's an important point to take away for our listeners is there are a lot of already existing structures out there, like the groups that you're involved in that you don't have to start yourself. I mean, you can, of course that's an option, but there's also existing frameworks.

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. And one that is operating internationally as an umbrella organization of people are wanting to get involved is the Food Chain Workers Alliance. So a lot of my work focuses on agricultural workers, but the Food Chain Workers Alliance has member organizations in both Canada and the United States and includes workers who do delivery work, fast food workers who are organizing for better workplace conditions. And it's exciting to see groups of workers really recognize common areas of struggle and to find a lot of support among consumers who really want to see things change as well.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. Okay. Well, I want to transition a little bit into a slightly different topic, but was there anything on the general agricultural workers front or solidarity with farm workers from our previous topic that we have missed?

Anelyse Weiler:

I think one thing I'll flag is that in a context where we're having increasing extreme heat events, we're facing drought right now. Governments have an opportunity to prevent workers from getting sick, getting injured, and even dying on the job because of extreme heat, and to prevent workers from issues like kidney disease that are becoming an increasing problem for a hot planet. And one of the things that I and the groups that I'm part of have been advocating for is extreme heat legislation. And if people are curious to learn more about this, the Worker Solidarity Network has a whole suite of policies that it's calling on the BC government to enact that help to protect workers from extreme heat. So things like a maximum temperature policy, and that this can help workers both in outdoor settings but also in indoor settings where not everyone has access to air conditioning during extreme heat events.

Karina Inkster:

Is that something that hasn't happened yet and these groups are pressuring the government to do something about it?

Anelyse Weiler:

Exactly. Governments across the board have really been behind the eight ball when it comes to updating laws and policies to protect workers in the context of climate change. We do have some good models for what legislation should look like. So south of the border, Washington State, Oregon, California are starting to adopt some laws and policies that deal with these issues. But in Canada, we've been a little bit slower on the uptake.

Karina Inkster:

Okay, interesting. That's something new I learned today. I mean, we're talking about governments already. How about the role of governments and industry in expanding ag gag legislation? So basically that's anti whistleblower laws. I honestly am not an expert in this, so you'll have to educate me on this front. I know that there are some provinces, including Manitoba and Alberta and PEI and Ontario, I think, who have pretty rigid laws already around this. But maybe we can define for folks what it is in the first place. What are these laws? And then let's talk about the role of industry and government.

Anelyse Weiler:

Fantastic. Yeah. This is something we're seeing actually all across the world where governments have started introducing these new laws that critics call agricultural gag or ag gag laws. People who are proponents of these laws have different names for them, so they would call them things like farm protection laws or agricultural interference laws, but basically they refer to a whole bunch of different types of legislation that are intended to deter undercover investigative journalists, activists, and whistleblower employees from taking pictures or videos on farms or slaughterhouses. For example, ag gag laws could include raising penalties, jacking up how much you get charged if you trespass on a farm or making an offense to gain access to a farm through supposed false pretenses. 

So for example, a whistleblower employee who is documenting animal abuse on a farm through a video and then shares that video with a news channel. And in Canada in particular, there have also been new penalties for interfering with farmed animals when they're being transported to a slaughterhouse. So we've had vigil movements, for example, where activists will witness farmed animals as they're being transported to a slaughterhouse, sometimes give them water, and ag laws have included jacking up penalties for people who are engaging in those kinds of activism.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. I see why these things have a different name when you're coming from the industry side.

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly. Yeah.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting.

Anelyse Weiler:

I'll also add, these have been around for a while now, and back in the nineties, ag gag laws were first introduced in the United States because of livestock industry lobbying, but they became increasingly prevalent in the 2010s, including in Australia. And as a mirror or an echo of this international trend in the 2020s, several Canadian provinces, the ones you mentioned either adopted or considered adopting ag G laws. And in Canada, the federal government has also contemplated adopting this legislation. So in 2023, it passed an ag gag bill in the House of Commons. Still an open question where things will go, but organizations like Animal Justice and Canada have played a big role in questioning the constitutionality of ag gag laws.

Karina Inkster:

So I was going to ask, I think this kind of answers though, where things stand right now in Canada in general. So I guess it depends somewhat on what province you're in, but it does seem like there's a push to move these forward is the sense I'm getting anyway.

Anelyse Weiler:

Yeah, absolutely. And it's been an interesting example where normally we think of lobbying as an activity that's kind of unidirectional, where it's just a group of, well-funded lobbyists from an industry that find a sympathetic ear of a politician and try to drive home the specific law policy they want. But in Canada, it's been a much more two-way kind of relationship where individual politicians, in some cases appear to be much more actively driving the adoption of these laws. And I think some of that reflects a desire to be seen as a salt of the earth person where they are tapping into a real nostalgia and romanticism around agriculture. 

And the idea that politicians are protecting this romanticized industry through ag gag laws and ultimately the romanticism that I think a lot of people associated with rural parts of the world is not a reflection of what animal agriculture looks like. Certainly, and is not a reflection of what workers' rights look like. It's far from romantic.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah. I think a lot of folks who don't really understand veganism have that exact romanticized view of how animal agriculture works. I think I mentioned on the show recently, I had a conversation with someone on Instagram who really believed that there were such things as milking cows. They just want to give milk. They're lactating all the time. They have to be milked. And there's just this romantic ideal that this is a thing that exists. Of course it doesn't, but I think there's a lot of that in the food industry.

Anelyse Weiler:

Absolutely. And it makes sense why people would have that kind of misinformation, because industry has played such a big role in driving home sort of nostalgic pastoral imagery in children's books and in all sorts of media that informs what people just assume about what agriculture is.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, absolutely. So what are some things here that can be done either on a collective level in groups or on an individual level, pressure towards the government? What do you see as the most impactful steps?

Anelyse Weiler:

I think animal justice is really at the helm of driving a lot of transparency about what is happening around ag gag laws. And I think they've shown the real importance of undercover investigative journalism and whistle blowing to address animal cruelty undercover investigations. Hidden camera investigations in some ways have taken the place, unfortunately, of government documentation and government enforcement of animal welfare, and they play a really strong role in shedding light on what industry actually looks like and have helped hold industry to account in ways that unfortunately governments have often failed to do. 

So I would direct people to towards the work of Animal Justice and other organizations. And I think journalism organizations are increasingly attentive to what's happening with ag gag laws as well. The idea of journalism, of holding truth to power becomes really difficult when people face huge penalties for undertaking investigative coverage.

Karina Inkster:

I feel like there are multiple angles. Of course, there always are. One of them being, if we didn't have animal cruelty in the first place, we didn't need these kind things.

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly.

Karina Inkster:

But that's a pretty idealistic view I realize. I mean, we as vegans want the whole world to go vegan, but we also realize that that's not realistic.

Anelyse Weiler:

Totally.

Karina Inkster:

So that's unfortunate in one way, but it also makes sense if you think about it. Okay. Well, is there anything else on this ag gag topic that we've missed? I want to switch gears completely, so I want to make sure that we've touched on all the important bits.

Anelyse Weiler:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's lots more that I could say from a philosophical perspective around ag gag laws, but all spare listeners kind of the academic side of things for now, if you want to read about our work, I'm working with a really fantastic graduate student researcher at U Vic who's also very involved with animal activism, whose name is Taylor. And so if you're curious about our work, you can check it out once it comes out.

Karina Inkster:

Brilliant. Yeah. Well, as usual, we'll have show notes where we link to your website and your work so people can go. And I was looking on your media page earlier today just on the various interviews and media spots that you've had. And I like the different sections. There's an academic works section and a more popular media section. So we'll link to that in our show notes and our listeners can go there and check out all your work.

Anelyse Weiler:

Fabulous.

Karina Inkster:

So why should vegans strength train? Let's do a total 180 here. You're someone who's active, you're a runner, you're a cyclist, you're a lifter. What is the deal with strength training specifically? I know that you had this as kind of a thing that we could potentially chat about.

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly. Well, as a disclaimer, I have absolutely no business professionally talking about this. I have no credentials whatsoever when it comes to it.

Karina Inkster:

You are an active person. You can definitely address this.

Anelyse Weiler:

I do. I mean, most academics have a fantasy of undertaking some other career. So my alternate career is working as a certified personal trainer. Hasn't worked out for me just yet.

Karina Inkster:

That's hilarious. My alternative is to be an academic, so we could just switch.

Anelyse Weiler:

Amazing. Oh, we're like mirror images then. That's awesome. I think if I can bring this back to my origin story of veganism, when I was growing up, there was a lot of misinformation about veganism, but there was also a lot of misinformation about strength training for women. So one of the stories that I heard growing up is that women should not lift because they just aren't biologically suited to that form of exercise and that they will inevitably injure themselves in the same way that I heard that inevitably, people who follow a vegan diet are going to get sick, they're going to be more likely to catch colds. 

And over time, fortunately, I think science has prevailed on both of these, but there's still a lot of cultural narratives that deter vegans and women in particular from lifting. And so I think for vegans, one of the things that I really encourage is paying attention to bone density, especially for people who are getting over the age of 30 when muscles starts to deteriorate slowly.

But I also think about bone density in relation to my older family members and loved ones and the real challenges that can come with a fall or losing one's balance. And I think strength training can be such a powerful way of learning about one's own body, but also dealing with bone density issues that sometimes are more prevalent for people who have a plant-based or vegan diet. For people who are involved in aerobic activity, preventing injury through strength training is something that can keep your body healthy and happy and doing what you love for a much longer period of time. 

So I came to strength training later in life, and it's been a really meditative part of my existence. I think the specific challenge of lifting something heavy and the focus and the breath and the positive self-compassionate talk that hopefully you have is it's been a really transformative experience for me. So I feel like I'm proselytizing on strength training, but I'm a big fan.

Karina Inkster:

As you should be. There's a lot of interesting points here. One is cultural narrative around female lifters. Now it still exists and it may have morphed into don't lift super heavy weights. You're going to get bulky and look like a dude, which has its own problematic context. First of all, why is that a bad thing? Absolutely. Second, it doesn't usually happen. But anyways, I could go on. There's also the piece around what you mentioned with plant-based folks tending to have lower bone density, just disclaimer, very often that has to do with lower overall body mass. And we know here on the show that BMI is not the be-all, end-all measure of progress or measure of health. It's supposed to be used on a population level, not an individual level, but it's still somewhat useful in statistical context. And so statistically, vegans have lower body mass.

And one of the things that is actually positive about having a higher body mass is you're less likely to have osteoporosis and you're less likely to have low bone density. So just wanted to throw that in there as it's not the diet specifically. There are other factors at play. It could be vitamin D depending on where you live, but generally, BMI, if that's what you want to call it, is a big factor there. And so bone density is huge, and weight lifting weights, resistance doesn't have to be at a gym. Some form of strength training is the best method of increasing your bone density at any age, as you've seen.

Anelyse Weiler:

Fully agree. Absolutely. And the aesthetic barriers to women lifting in particular, I hear that a lot. I hear worries about bulking up and appearing too masculine, and I think it's actually really difficult to bulk up if that is a person's aesthetic goal. So probably not a worry that most people need to have on their docket. Other things are more worth worrying about.

Karina Inkster:

Oh yeah. Right. I mean, first of all, there's a conversation about why that is a negative thing and why the assumption that we should look feminine exists in the first place, but it's also kind of like someone learning to drive and saying, now you know what? I don't want to learn to drive because I'm afraid of becoming an F1 driver. Or I don't want to start swimming. I'm afraid I'm going to become an Olympic athlete and compete in the next Olympics.

Anelyse Weiler:

I love that analogy.

Karina Inkster:

It's like, oh, I'm getting results that are too good. I have to stop doing this. My results are too excellent.

Anelyse Weiler:

Yep, absolutely. I want to know what that person is doing.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, a hundred percent. Me too. So do you find that strength training translates over into other areas like your running and your cycling and just life in general?

Anelyse Weiler:

I think for me, the athletic things I do outside of work and outside of activism have been really life-changing in creating a sense of community. And I'm lucky to be part of a run club and a really lovely, supportive lifting community. People who enjoy just being with other human beings, outdoors, doing difficult things. And for me, athletics are that thing. But I really encourage people to find whatever it is that allows you to connect with others doing what you love, moving your body, ideally something outside. So often I think the benefits of physical activity are mainly touted as being about physical health, but for me at least, a huge part of it is mental health.

Karina Inkster:

Well, when you mentioned the meditative aspect of strength training, I was thinking that's not something that a lot of folks will immediately think of, especially if they're not used to strength training or if it's a new adventure for them. They just think of it as purely physical. It's like, oh yeah, it's a hard thing to do. But I feel like you kind of have to get into it relatively consistently for a while until you realize just how psychological it is and how it translates into things like meditation and doing hard things and focusing on one thing at a time. I feel like those benefits are not talked about a lot, and they're hard to describe if you haven't experienced them yourself.

Anelyse Weiler:

Yeah, it's an individual journey and I think cultivating the ability to have, we all have kind of a voice that we use when we talk to ourselves. And I think cultivating the kind of voice you would use to talk to a really good friend to talk to yourself. For me, weightlifting is where I found that. But it translates into so many different parts of my life and has been extraordinary. And I think using weightlifting as a venue to cultivate that is something I encourage everyone to check out.

Karina Inkster:

A hundred percent. Awesome, Anelyse. Well, it was great speaking with you. I know that you wanted to plug the Worker Solidarity Network, which we talked about a little bit before. Any more info there for our listeners that you would like them to take action on?

Anelyse Weiler:

Certainly, I'll let people know. The Workers Solidarity Network, I'm a board member and a volunteer. It is a nonprofit based in BC. We've got offices in Vancouver and Victoria, but we support workers all over the province, and it includes non-unionized, and precarious workers all across the province. We fight against workplace exploitation and we take collective action to improve labor standards for everybody. So that's the group that I wanted to mention.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. And we'll link directly to them on our show notes as well, so folks can go there and just get the direct URL. So thank you for that. And thank you for our conversation. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on the show.

Anelyse Weiler:

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Karina Inkster:

Anelyse, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Access our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/172 to connect with Anelyse and check out her work. And thanks for tuning in.