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

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan Podcast, episode 171. Today I'm joined by Jeremy LaLonde, an award-winning filmmaker and the creator of the website and YouTube channel PB With Jay. We discuss his weight loss and health journey exploring in the kitchen, our mutual nerdiness, and more.

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina, your go-to, no-BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. I love hearing from you, dear listener. It would be nice if podcasts had a built-in response mechanism of some kind, like comments on a blog post. Anyways, I really enjoy hearing from listeners via channels like email and social media or my website, so feel free to say hi. Let me know if there's a particular episode you connected with. If you have suggestions for guests I could have on the show, or just generally what you're up to. So find me on Instagram or Facebook or you can go to karinainster.com/contact and drop me a line. 

A little update on what's been going on in Coach K's world. First of all, the not so great. So for about six months now, I've been dealing with what is most likely long covid on an evidently extremely long wait list to see a respirologist. And at this point things seem to be improving finally, but for the past six months, I haven't been able to breathe properly, like lung pain, chest tightness, the whole shebang that then set off my anxiety. It's been kind of interesting. One of the instruments I play is didgeridoo, which requires a lot of lung capacity. So there have been many days where I couldn't play properly or I was worried about performing or rehearsing with my band. And of course it's also affected everything else like strength training and swimming. 

There was a period of time where just doing 10 squats would make me feel 100% winded. So a CT scan eventually showed a small inflammatory lesion in my right lung, which I've named Lambert by the way, which is not a problem by itself, but it shows that there's been long-term inflammation going on. So as I mentioned, things seem to be moving in the right direction.

Now I am able to swim relatively normally and play didgeridoo now, but I'm still waiting to see this respirologist and I'll have to keep getting CT scans every six months to make sure that good old Lambert isn't growing. So reminder to take your health seriously and to take covid seriously.

Now the good stuff going on is all about clients and all about music. We've had some pretty huge client wins lately, including the following: “With you in my corner and on my computer screen I have lost seven pounds, lost two inches off my hips, lost one inch off my waist, own a pull-up bar that works in my home and started pull up exercises, increased volume in so many exercises, consistently tack on mobility after workouts. The quality of your coaching is unparalleled, and I'm so grateful to be the recipient of it. FYI I'm currently hiking, just completed 700-foot elevation gain, 1.16 miles thus far. Could not have done so well if it hadn't been for those crazy lunges and deadlifts and skipping. Not bad as I approach my 70th year of life, just had to stop for a break and share.”

And last quote, “Just gave away a big suitcase and three giant bags of size two to four clothes, nice expensive ones. I'm letting go completely of this preoccupation with my size and I'm embracing my strong badass self.” How awesome is that?

Now, if you want to learn more about our coaching and apply for one of the spots we have available, head over to karinainkster.com/coaching. 

Now, I mentioned music earlier. I co-direct my city's annual Accordion Fest, which is coming up soon, the third iteration of it. And I've performed two concerts over the past few weeks that went really well.

One was in my city of Powell River and the other one was on Vancouver Island, a classical music society there invited my partner in accordion crime and me to play a show there. And by the way, the secret real reason I strength train is so that I can load 120 pounds worth of accordions into a vehicle. We each played two different accordions at various points in the concert, and they're pretty heavy beasts. So I've also been teaching accordion and didgeridoo at my local music academy for a few months now, which has been so awesome. I'm there one day a week because of course my main focus is fitness coaching. But I love working with music students who are all beginner adults, and I see a lot of parallels with fitness, the importance of building it into our daily lives, creating habits, focusing on the process rather than the outcome. And of course, always remembering to have fun.

Now I'm excited to introduce my guest for today, Jeremy LaLonde. Jeremy is an award-winning filmmaker who lost half his body weight by going plant-based and decided to use his story and insights to help others by creating the website and YouTube channel PB with J Plant-based with Jeremy from his own recipes, reviews of vegan cookbooks, as well as fun and informative videos and interviews. 

Jeremy and his family look to make being healthy not feel like homework. Now you're probably waiting to hear what Jeremy's favorite vegan meal is, but we discussed this in our conversation, so you'll just have to wait and see. 

Hey, Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks for speaking with me today.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Thanks for having me on.

Karina Inkster:

Well, we had a little intro when I was on your YouTube channel, so 

thanks for that.

Jeremy LaLonde:

That's true. That was fun. We're best friends now.

Karina Inkster:

We're basically besties now, nerdy besties of the internet.

Jeremy LaLonde:

As it goes, as it goes.

Karina Inkster:

So if folks are listening to this and they have not seen the interview on Jeremy's channel, they can search PB with J on YouTube. Also, we're going to have links in our show notes, so the direct link will be there. But yeah, it's under the live video feed, right, of things that you've done live-streamed essentially.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, yeah. There's the regular videos, there's shorts, which I don't really do much of on there at the moment. And then the live stuff, which you can see yours and other live interviews we've done in the past.

Karina Inkster:

Brilliant. Very cool. Let's jump into a little bit of Jeremy's background. So I want to talk about the vegan piece. I want to talk about the weight loss journey, so many things in that realm, but you're also a filmmaker. Your work has been shown internationally, pretty amazing. So can you tell me a little bit about that part of your life?

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, that was the main focus of my life for the longest time and still is to some extent. I grew up just loving telling stories and at one point I thought I might do theater and I had a real crisis of faith between really wanting to do theater and at one point I was like, I debated being an actor and then quickly got over that. Not that I don't, and I greatly appreciate and love all actors I've worked with. I'm friends with so many of them, but I always love telling stories and connecting with people. I think that was the main thrust for me was the connection, which kind of continues into what I'm doing now. 

So I started off writing my own plays and when I was in high school, I had an amazing drama teacher named Donna Eckrin, who is sadly passed away a few years ago, but who was a second mother to me and really kind of encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do, and so I was able to write plays that our school would perform.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, that's amazing. 

Jeremy LaLonde:

And then I had theater. I had my own little theater company in the summer, and so I was always just a very much a self-starter, self-motivated kind of person who knew that I'm like, well, if I'm going to do anything in this world, I have to do it myself. I don't come from a family of storytellers, people that work in the media. So when I finally moved to Toronto from my small town, I knew zero people in the film and television industry and kind of had to just make my go of it to give you the Kohl's notes version of it. I've done a little bit of everything. I kind of started off while I was making my own independent projects as an editor, working on everything from craft cooking videos to Pilates videos to commercials to game shows, to scripted sitcoms and whatnot. And then eventually ended up doing some directing in television as well. I worked on the Bareness von Sketch show on CBC for most of its run, and then all the while I was making my own independent features on the side.

Karina Inkster:

Very cool. I mean, that's still this kind of branch of work that you're doing now in the vegan and the kind of nutrition video world. Is this parallel to the filmmaking that you're still working on?

Jeremy LaLonde:

So I still work as a filmmaker and I am still creating stuff to try to get out in the world, but it's also just, it's an interesting time and place for traditional media just because of how technology has changed and how we watch things change. And especially during C, my plant-based journey is a long one. My wife was vegetarian when we met, and so when we got married I kind of switched over to becoming pescatarian. And then over the course of the next, I want to say 10 years, 12 years, I slowly went towards being fully plant-based. And a lot of it for me at the beginning was a health thing. I was twice the weight I am now at one point, and I just knew that luckily I don't have that story where I had a doctor breathing down my throat. I didn't have a heart attack.

I didn't have any major health scares that forced me to suddenly take a look at what I was doing. But I think I just was always overweight my entire life, always wanted to do something about it, but I also always just told myself, well, you want to have a career in film, and that has to be all encompassing. You have to don't have to time to exercise. You don't have time to figure out how to eat healthy. You don't have time to do any of these things. Focus on the one thing you want to do, and of course that's nonsense. So I think finally I just woke up one day and I had a big project coming up that wasn't starting for a little bit and I just made a deal with myself. I said, for the next three months, you're going to exercise every day for an hour and you're going to start eating cleaner.

I had a lot of periods in between that before that where I would join a gym for six months and then never go again. And so it was a lot of false starts, but I said, you're going to do it for three months. You're going to do it every single day, and if after three months there's no change to your weight and your overall health, then we'll just accept that you're going to be a big dude for the rest of your life and that's going to be fine. 

And of course the weight just fell off. I lost 10 pounds a month for three months in a row and found that it wasn't that hard to do. And as I was going through that process, so I was already at that point, I was already pescatarian, but I started just looking at other stories of people who had had massive weight losses, and it led me down to, I think I read Penn Jillette’s book of Penn and Teller, he wrote, I think it's, can't remember what it's called.

Karina Inkster:

He had a massive weight loss, didn't he? Like a hundred some odd pounds or something.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, exactly. And Kevin Smith of filmmaking fame also has a very similar stretch. Of course, all the people's stories I was drawn to were entertainers, right? They all work in the same industry as me.

Karina Inkster:

Also has a podcast with his daughter, I think.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, he does. And so that led me down the path of, especially through Penn Jillette, because he kind of, in his book, I think there was a loop that took me towards Joel Furman and then Michael Gregor and all of those people. And then of course they just started reading all this information, and once you start knowing all these things, it's hard to unknow them and it's hard to reject science-based facts and all these kind of things. So it's funny, I don't have a vegan anniversary, if that's a term. I don't have that day where I'm like, I'm going cold turkey. It was literally, I was working on a post production on a TV series, and someone brought in these delicious cookies from this place in Toronto called Lamond, and I think they're the most decadent cookies ever. I think there was a half a pound of butter in every single cookie. And so I had a little piece of one and within an hour I was throwing up.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, wow.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Because I realized I hadn't had any animal products for three months at that point. I just phased them out without thinking about it. And my way my body reacted to that butter was visceral throughout that process. I could always tell you if I went to a restaurant and the broth was beef broth or chicken broth, because your stomach, you just know. And that in particular had such a profound effect on me of just going, oh, why does my body react that way? If that's the kind of food you're supposed to eat on a regular basis, my body shouldn't be having a problem digesting it like that. That's an issue. So that coupled with just everything else just really solidified, I'm done with animal products for forever because I don't think humans should feel that way. So it's been a lot of things that have brought me to this, right.

Originally it was weight loss and then of course all the things I was reading about environmental aspects of it and what animal production does to the planet. And then of course the animal is part of it as well. I'm a big animal lover, but I think I identify as plant-based, not vegan, because I think it would just be hypocritical of me to say I am fully vegan, which is the way I understand it is mostly an ethical thing for the animals and everything else comes on board with it because I think that's just makes more sense. We don't force our kids to be vegan in the house. They're plant-based adjacent, they're on their own journeys, and I'm never going to be the kind of parent that forces my kid to eat a certain way because I think they just end up resenting you and rejecting it and doing whatever. 

I think we've given them a really strong base nutrition and understanding why we eat the way we eat and why we do what we do, and then the rest has to be left up to them. But I'm always shocked by how they'll go off on how their junk food and their treats and whatnot, but they never kind of push back. And also they just find their way to it. They never kind of go too long on those tangents where all of a sudden they don't just want something clean to eat.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. It's an interesting point you made about the vegan and the plant-based, because I feel like nowadays vegan, the term is kind of loaded and a lot of folks choose not to use it for reasons that may or may not include the ethical side or just the baggage that the term has associated with it for whatever reason. But then on the other hand, it's the same with the plant-based though, right? Where generally plant-based just means our diet and not necessarily the ethics around it and not using products that were tested on animals and not using leather and wool, and there's this whole other aspect of veganism. So I think generally plant-based is just dietary, if I'm understanding how most people use it,

Jeremy LaLonde:

Sadly, what I think the average person assert states the word vegan with is like militant anger, which is justified over the atrocities that people plague upon animals and whatnot. But I think sadly what history has proven to us over the last couple of decades is that the average person doesn't actually care.

Karina Inkster:

Unfortunately.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Unfortunately, that's just it. If they did, we would become vegan very quickly in this world. It was funny, I was just watching a video last night on YouTube of this really well-spoken, very calm guy talking to other people and just kind of questioning their choices and saying all the right things and well, do you understand that this is what happens to cows and this is how they get the milk and all this and the babies, and you're just watching the people. And it's like in the moment, of course they care, of course they're horrified, but the next day they're still going to go off and have a hamburger. They care in that moment because the camera's on 'em and also they're a human being, they're going to react. But I think because it's so far removed and they can just put their blinders off and see meat as a product and not something that actually came from a living thing, I just don't think that that's the kind of piece of the puzzle that's going to eventually shift more people towards eating less animals.

I think sadly, I think the main thing, especially in the experience that I've seen from people that follow my content and the conversations I have is health. It's like people have a health scare and then realize there's a lot of benefits to eating a non-animal focused lifestyle, or it's the environmental puzzle because it affects where they live and their children's futures. I think the sad thing is unfortunately people just don't care about the animals because they don't see 'em. They're not part of what happens to them, but they can relate to their own health or the environment collapsing around them.

Karina Inkster:

And people sometimes, we mentioned Kevin Smith earlier, they do have health scares where, I mean, he almost died and then was basically told, dude, you have to go vegan if you want to have any chance of not having a heart attack again. So there are people who do have health scares and then of course they make a change because that affects their ability to live. But I think you're right, the things that we all kind of want people to go vegan for as so-called ethical vegans are in reality not why a lot of people come to veganism, but I do feel like the ethics piece is included at some point. Even like yourself, you came to veganism for a different reason, but now it's included as part of the motivation.

Jeremy LaLonde:

I think for sure. I think anyone that ends up identifying themselves as plant-based can't help but eventually see that triangle of animals environment health. And I think no matter which entry point you come in at those other two, work their way into your life somehow. Although to that point, I think people that just start off straight as animal activist vegans don't necessarily care about the health aspect. I think that's where you get a lot of the fast food vegans, right? That's true too, potentially. 

But I think definitely, I think anyone that comes in plant-based for their own personal reasons ends up really understanding the animal side and caring about that a lot. Especially for me, even not withstanding just knowing the horrors that are visited upon these poor creatures. And I know that argument is like, well, if it wasn't for the meat industry, they wouldn't exist. So is it better that they have no life than have that? It's like, yeah, it's better that they don't exist. Yeah, I would agree. And that they're tortured and have a given a terrible life.

Karina Inkster:

Exactly. Look, I call myself an ethical vegan right now. That doesn't mean I don't care about my own health, but it does mean that veganism and health are separate for me, and that might be different for you. Veganism for me was entirely ethical. When I was 16, I went vegan. I didn't want to, well, actually, because I realized that the meat and the dairy and the egg industries were all one and the same. I was vegetarian before and then I'm like, oh, wait, now I have to be vegan. 

But for me, in the 21 years since going vegan, it is now also about athletic performance, and it is about my own health, and it is about the environment and climate change and other humans on the planet and famine and all of these other things. So I think everyone needs to keep doing what they're doing in their own way because we're affecting other potential vegans in different ways. Some people come to it because they eat a delicious vegan meal and they're like, holy shit, this was so good. I could be vegan if I eat this all the time. Things that you have on your channel, for example, if I were to eat that every day, of course I'd be vegan, people would think.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Well, that's just it. And we've done a series on the channel as well called Cooking with Carnivores, and it's a bit of a flashy title that people aren't actual. They're not just eating meat, but it's with cooking with people who are plant curious. And my favorite parts of those videos aren't even necessarily the recipes we do, it's the questions they ask in between. And it's like, well, what do you mean I don't need butter? Or what do you mean? I can use chickpea juice instead of oil or whatever else. It is just the shock on their face. It's like, oh, this food actually tastes good. It doesn't taste like a punishment or homework.

Karina Inkster:

Isn't that part of your whole mission? Your brand is make food not seem like homework?

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, keep it fun. Plant-based comfort food that the entire family can, despite the fact that sometimes my kids don't always like everything, but that's every family. Oh, yeah. I think what resonates from with our family to other people is just that, is that we all have slightly different taste buds, but because of that, it also means we're a lot more scrupulous when it comes to the recipes we're creating and putting out into the world, because most of them have passed the bar of at least three of us.

Karina Inkster:

That's a good standard. I like it.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Especially my daughter. It's like you never quite know. It might be her favorite new thing three times in a row, and then the next time you make it, she's like, no, I don't want it.

Karina Inkster:

And how old is she?

Jeremy LaLonde:

She is 12 going on 45.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. I like it. And what about your son?

Jeremy LaLonde:

But also sometimes still four, sometimes still four, and my son is 14.

Karina Inkster:

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Well, I'm interested in your history a little bit with the weight loss piece. You mentioned that you lost half your body weight and maybe took it too far at one point. So I'm interested about that piece. You kind of got into the beginning of the story where you met Emily, your wife, she kind of instigated a change in your diet where you went pescatarian, you lost 10 pounds a month for three months, but clearly there's more to this story after that.

Jeremy LaLonde:

For sure. And so Emily was so great in that she never ever forced me to do anything. She wasn't like, oh, if we're going to get married, you have to become a vegetarian. Those are just choices I made because I was finding that generally speaking, we were eating the same meals anyway. And I always thought it was silly to create two meals for two people. 

And what made me shift over to being pescatarian was watching Fast Food Nation, that Richard Linklater film, and they have that scene in it where they have the kill floor at the end, and I was literally at a friend's wedding the next day and literally on my plate, they just drop off this piece of steak and I'm just staring at it and I was like, Nope, can't do it. I just can't. Can't do it. I know it's already been cooked. I know two days ago I had a burger, but I can't put this in my body right now. I just can't do it. And again, I don't know why it took me so long to then transfer that over to eggs and dairy and all that kind of stuff. We just do. Humans are dumb and limited, and we pretend things aren't bad when we know they are.

Karina Inkster:

Hey, it took me five years to make that connection, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Jeremy LaLonde:

But also, information wasn't readily available as it is now. Now, it's really hard for people to ignore it because it's all so readily available. So yeah, so I started losing the weight. The weight started coming off. So my approach to weight loss was math. It was like calories in, calories out. A pound is 3,500 calories. So that means if I burn off 7,000 calories more than I consume a week, I will lose two to three pounds a week. And so I tracked every calorie I put into my body. I tracked every calorie. I think it's hard to actually know how much you're burning off, but there's a ballpark that certain apps will lead you to believe. And it worked. But the problem is, especially when you're going from such an extreme weight, and I was like double X in clothing size, it becomes a game in your brain.

You're like, oh, what can I do now? And now I'm going to weigh if I take off three grapes off of this pile, well now it's 10 calories less. And so it was really gamifying the system. You could put any food in front of me and I could tell you how many calories were in that food based on the ingredients in it and the portion. But the danger with that was when I got to the point of a goal weight or whatever that was, that was such a skewed number. I was looking at the wrong factors. I was looking at outdated things like BMI and trying to look at all the different ways we factor in what is a healthy weight and a healthy body, but also just becoming addicted to the weight loss and the calorie counting and being scared that if I stopped doing it, I would suddenly blow back up and gain all the weight right back.

So it got to the point where I was kind of skeletal and people thought I had cancer. They thought I was stage four a month away from dying, and I just wasn't telling anybody. And I was like, no, I'm the healthiest I've ever been. And I remember one day I literally was weighing grapes in the kitchen and my wife was like, we're done. This is not okay. This is not healthy. You need to stop. And I did. And it was a nice cold reality check that I had gone to an unhealthy point of weight loss where I had lost more weight than my body needed to lose. But then I'd say the next six months was really a mental health journey for me because naturally I had to gain some weight back. I'd also lost a ton of muscle too. I was doing all that weight loss, and even though I was doing muscle type exercises, it was just burning off the muscle as well.

The next six months was me just trying to find a balance. And also when you start gaining weight again as someone who went from a double X to a size small, it's a head trip, right? You're worried that, well, is it going to stop coming back? When will it peter out? So it probably took about six months and I gained back 30 or 40 pounds that I had lost in that process, which is horrifying when you think about it. I gained 40 pounds. Oh my goodness. Most people that would put you into the obese range. 

But for me, it actually just put me into the healthy weight range where now I maintain what I would consider not a goal weight anymore. I don't believe in goal weight. I like to think of it as my best weight. It's the weight that I can maintain eating the way I like to eat, which has a really healthy balance, but also lets me have a vegan donut every now and then if I want one. And also the amount of exercise and activity that I can fit into a week realistically with my lifestyle. And I've been able to maintain that same weight within a five pound fluctuation depending on what's going on in my life in that moment for two years.

Karina Inkster:

That's amazing. Good for you. And I like that you said outdated measures like BMI, because it doesn't take into effect, especially strength training, but just muscle mass in general. And as you mentioned, folks who do really, really drastic weight loss journeys, even if it takes two years, I mean, I'm not talking about a fast quick fix here. I just mean you as a human have lost half of your body mass. That's pretty significant. So in that case, yeah, of course you're also losing muscle mass and probably bone density and other things that isn't really included in a measure like BMI.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Well, that's just that I think people that have had massive weight loss stories, all those typical metrics are almost useless on you because you've got things like excess skin hanging off you. And if you don't get that ridiculously expensive surgery it takes to get some of that off, and I did one of those just for part of it, but I've still got hanging skin all over the place and I'm fine with it because I don't care. I think I have to probably wear a T-shirt size one size bigger so that I don't have weird little T-shirt shape going on. That's a vanity thing anyway. Yeah. But I think that's just it. It's like we have weird bone density things and muscle things that it's typical, just typical things won't measure properly on us.

Karina Inkster:

So what are some things that you now think about? I mean, you mentioned the six month period of mental health and it was kind of a shift and you gained back some of that weight, which actually put you in a healthier range. Overall, what are the things that you think about now, I kind of get the sense that you're in maintenance stage now. It's been two years, hasn't really varied a lot. This is like Jeremy's new normal at this point. So what are some things that you kind of have on your maintenance menu at this point?

Jeremy LaLonde:

And I imagine, not to say it's the same thing by any means, but I think it's the same as going through any kind of, I don't want to compare myself to someone that's in recovery for alcohol or drugs or something like that, but I think it's that idea when you hear people talk about that, they're like, well, I'm maintaining my sobriety for life. I have to work at this for life. And I think that's true for someone that's coming from someone that probably had undiagnosed food issues and whatnot, right? I'm sure there was moments where I was using food to soothe myself from stress from work or projects or whatever it was, and I didn't ever recognize that. 

So now what maintenance looks like for me is just the boring B word of balance, where it's just recognizing that if I'm going to have a nice big treat tonight, I'm going to maybe try to walk a little bit more when I'm walking the dog later on or I'm going to have a lighter lunch or something. It doesn't mean I'm not going to villainize myself for having a treat or doing something special. I'm just going to recognize that, oh, I should try to counteract that somewhere else or the next day I eat a little bit lighter. But also just recognizing those triggers too, is that I think I grew up in a house too where it was you had to finish everything that was on your plate or you couldn't leave the table.

Karina Inkster:

Right? That's pretty common.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Did you say that was you too?

Karina Inkster:

No, it's just pretty common. It wasn't thankfully for me, but it's teaching kids from a very young age to ignore their internal hunger cues, and it's all about the external environment at that point. So it can be pretty tough.

Jeremy LaLonde:

And honestly, I'm still trying to figure out my internal hunger cues as a 40-year-old, 40 something year old man because I was just trained. You finish what you put on your plate. Whether you're still hungry or not, you have to finish that because otherwise you're wasting food. And that's bad. My mother would always, there's children in wherever, whatever outdated things she would say that don't have enough food, and so you should be grateful and eat it. As an obese child, she's telling me to finish my plate. 

So that was one of our rules when I had our kids, it was like, you don't have to eat anything on your plate. If you're not hungry, don't eat tonight. We'll put it away. You can eat it when you are hungry, that's your meal. Doesn't mean you can go off and have junk or treat. That's good. That's your meal if you're hungry, but you don't have to eat it right now if you're not. And if you get halfway through it, put the rest in the fridge and we'll eat it as leftovers, because I hated that.

That was my upbringing, and my parents didn't know any better. I think that's the same thing that happened to them, and they grew up as parents that went through a depression. So it's like for sure you didn't waste any food in those households the way they were raised. So I don't begrudge them that they were doing the best they could at the time, but it certainly had impacts on me where now it's like I try to be smarter and put less on my plate knowing I can go back and get more as opposed to overloading my plate with what I think I need to eat and then forcing myself to finish it.

Karina Inkster:

Exactly. Yeah. Well, do you feel like a lot of folks, not you specifically necessarily, but a lot of people who were in similar situations where they could stand to lose half their body weight. Do you think a lot of that comes to early experiences? I mean, you mentioned you were a larger child even though you were super active, right? You used to play football and lots of sports in high school and such.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah. Yeah. I always played football in high school, and that probably messed me up too, because especially when you're a teenager, your body is just burning calories. You can kind of eat whatever you want. And for football practice, we did football for two hours a day every single day in heavy equipment out there on the field, and I was already big. I was on the line. It was a center on the offense, but you were starving by the end of those practices. And so it would be nothing for me to eat a day's worth of calories in one meal just to catch up, and I would burn it all off. But then of course when I stopped playing football, I didn't stop eating that way because my brain was trained to go, oh, this is the amount of food it takes to make you full regardless of the fact that you're not expending nearly that amount of calories. So I was in okay shape when I was playing football in the first couple years of high school, and then when I stopped my weight just really ballooned really, really fast. But at that point, I was obsessed with career stuff and what I wanted to do with my life, and so that just wasn't a priority for me at the time.

Karina Inkster:

Well, there's a really nice quote on your website about building blocks of what you think good health is, and it's based around three things for you, the way you eat, move and think. So we've been talking about the food piece, we've been talking about the move piece. What about the think piece? I know you're into meditation. Is that something that came along with this journey? Is that something that's been in the background this whole time? What's the deal?

Jeremy LaLonde:

That's the most important piece Without that piece, the other two don't work then. That's what I said earlier on. I'm like, I woke up that day and decided I'm going to work harder at this. I'm going to devote the next three months to work on this. And where the mind goes, the body follows. And that's why anyone that comes to me asking for help to lose weight or to do whatever, I always try to figure out what their why is, right? And if it's emotional and if it's real, because anyone that doesn't actually want to do it won't be able to. If you don't want to lose weight by eating healthy and being healthy, you won't. If you don't actually want to go plant-based or vegan, you won't. If someone's forcing you to do it, it's not going to happen. Even if it's a doctor is telling you you're on death's door, it's not going to help you if you don't actually want to do it.

And once you want to do it, it's so easy because the resources are out there. Whether it's this podcast working with someone like you, my YouTube channel or any of the other hundreds of great plant-based vegan YouTube channels that are out there, the information is out there and it's undeniable once you start reading it. So that was the biggest piece for me. It was just me knowing that it was a problem and that there was better solutions out there, and not ignoring hard facts when they came my way just because they were inconvenient or unpleasant, just going, oh, now I know that I can't unknow that. Once I decided I was going to work out every day, my body got as buttoned gear and did it.

Karina Inkster:

So what advice do you give to folks to get to the point where they want to work out every day?

Jeremy LaLonde:

I highly recommend starting your day with it because your brain is just kind of an autopilot in the morning, and if you don't like it, it's a good time of day to do it. Then it's over with too. And usually you have breakfast as a reward afterwards, but also especially for working out, I think it's just like there's some people that just don't want to actually exercise or do what we'd call a traditional workout. So for those people, just find other ways to move. Maybe there's a sport you enjoy, maybe you can learn to love walking, get a dog. They will require you to walk, find some podcasts like this one. That's when I listen to all my podcasts is when I'm walking my dog. 

And what's great about it is that it will sometimes make me go, well, actually, I want to listen to the whole episode and it's 40 minutes long, so maybe I'll go in a little bit longer of a walk. Just finding a way to move that is enjoyable for you. So if you don't like traditional workouts, try to sport and if you don't like sports at all, then walk find some way. And there's also just other hacks you can do, right? Whenever you go somewhere, park a block or two away and force yourself to walk that little extra further. There's always little things we can do to just add movement into our day.

Karina Inkster:

I think that's a really great reminder because a lot of people will just think of the gym as the one option for what it means to work out or to be active. And look, that's like 2% of the population basically who goes to the gym even semi regularly. It's not the environment for a lot of people. It's not accessible to a lot of people. A lot of people just don't enjoy it, and that's totally fine. So I feel like it's a good reminder that, hey, you can walk. We have clients who do all sorts of really cool stuff like archery and canoe, portaging and rock climbing, and they're like, that's their main sport, their strength training so that they don't get injured doing all the other cool stuff they're doing. So there's options. I mean, you could do axe throwing. You could do so many things that are moving your body and not a workout if that's not your jam, which is totally cool.

Jeremy LaLonde:

That's just it. And for those that don't want to join a gym either. I know especially a lot of people, there's a lot of people that when they start off, especially if they're coming from a weight loss journey, they just feel uncomfortable in a gym, which is the saddest thing. I think. It's so sad when someone that might be larger ends up in a gym and people stare at them, the person

Karina Inkster:

Who should be right. Well, they feel like they're staring at them. They're not actually.

Jeremy LaLonde:

I think you're right. They feel like that, which is sad because it's like those are the people that should be held up on a pedestal at a gym going, thank you for being here. Good for you. How hard was it for you to walk in this door? Clearly, you're coming from a path that was not related to this life and trying to get healthy. So kudos to you. The trumpet should blare in whatever way that doesn't embarrass them. I remember one of my favorite memories of this loss was I did go to a gym at one point up the street from my house, and I went every day at the same time, and this one guy came up to me. I didn't really talk to other people. I was on my own. This one guy came up to me who was also there every day at the same time, and he just said, I just want to let you know that I've been watching you over the last six months and you're incredible. And that, oh, I've broken into tears.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, wow. What a nice compliment.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Because it was just, he's like, I wouldn't believe if I just saw you that day and saw you today, I wouldn't believe it's the same person. And just your dedication is like, I don't want to bother you. I don't want to bug you. And that meant the world to me. So note to other people listening too, if you see someone in that situation, say something to them. So affirming that other people recognize the journey they're on. The other version I got of that one time was that a film and television industry event, someone who I kind of casually knew but hadn't seen in a long time, asked me if I had ever been told that I looked like a skinny version of Jeremy LaLonde.

Karina Inkster:

No way. Kidding. Oh my god, that's hilarious. And you're like, well, in fact…

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah. I was like, let me take off my glasses. I like, oh, it's you. But that was my favorite version of that that made them feel awful, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Karina Inkster:

Of course.

Jeremy LaLonde:

But yeah, that's the best for me. I don't go to the gym. I just find it just takes so much effort to go there and come back. But my whole setup is on YouTube at home with a yoga mat and weights. It's all you need. I started off with just the resistance bands and the mat, and I've just upgraded to those adjustable weights, so it's like two dumbbells that I can switch from two pounds to 52 pounds.

Karina Inkster:

I have the same ones -- best investment in my whole gym.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, I will say this. They're not the cheapest thing to buy, but they take very little space, and that's what I'm working on now with my health stuff. It's just building that muscle back up that I lost.

Karina Inkster:

Totally. Yep. So your channel is often about showing people new recipes, getting people to explore in the kitchen. Is that one of the missions you have with the channel is to get people to be creative and think about the abundance of veganism or plant-based eating versus here's a list of foods you can no longer eat and kind of be more restrictive in that sense?

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, I always try to look at the positive side of it. I don't want people to think of things they can't do. I want them to think of the things they can do. And I think one of the reoccurring comments we get in our channel that makes me so happy is that one of the things our channel has done for a lot of people is make them feel confident about figuring stuff out in the kitchen and making mistakes and not having to be perfect. One of the main things we do on the channel is cookbook reviews, and we show you the wins and the losses, and sometimes the recipes don't work out because I screwed it up.

Karina Inkster:

I've seen some of those episodes with your kids.

Jeremy LaLonde:

That's just it. And I think they go, oh, you've made me feel like I can explore more in the kitchen and fail. I think so many people are scared about trying a recipe and it not going well. It's like, so what? It'll still nourish you. It'll be something and you'll learn something even through failure. I think that the best things I've ever learned in my life or are after failure, whether it's in my professional career or in weight loss and health, there's no real failure if you learn from it.

Karina Inkster:

That's a great way of looking at it.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Well, that's just the lesson. I've also had that in screenwriting where I've spent a year on a script and then I realized I was taking it in the wrong direction and this is what I should do with it. And some people would look at that as going, oh, you wasted a year writing the wrong version of the script. And I went, no, it took me a year to get to that point, but it was all valuable time. It was a different path there. So that's definitely one of the missions really, I just started, the plan wasn't to really go into YouTube and make that a main thing that we do. It just kind of happened because I had gone through my journey and people were asking me to share information, and I just thought, well, it is probably be easier if I can put it all in one place, if I can put it into a website, into a channel. 

And because I'm a filmmaker by trade, I can't help but try to make it as good as possible and to let it have a bit of a voice and a vibe and a tone and whatnot. And so it's grown really, really quickly to this really wonderful community that we've got that's just full of so many like-minded people that are all in various versions of this journey too. And I think what people respond to on our channel is our basic philosophy, which is don't yuck my yum.

Karina Inkster:

Yes, I love that.

Jeremy LaLonde:

And what that means is we don't judge anyone based on where they're at. I think a lot of the people that watch our channel aren't fully plant-based or vegan, I'm going to say, yet they're figuring it out, but we're not judging them for the fact they didn't go vegan overnight or plant-based overnight. I know that's not my story as I've been talking about it here, it probably took me, I think 13 years is probably the math if I were to put a calendar date on it. And so we're encouraging of people wherever they're at and their journey, because the fact that they're even there and interested is such a win.

Karina Inkster:

A hundred percent. Well, and I think something that folks connect with is that you do show some of the things that aren't a hundred percent, or one of your kids doesn't like a recipe that came from a book. So what? It's not a big deal. They'll like something else. But I think a lot of the, I don't know what the right word is, extra ultra curated. Everything's perfect. All recipes have to turn out 110% every time type of channels. They don't feel as real because they don't have this aspect of, well, what happens if it doesn't work out? What happens if one of my family members doesn't like the recipe? And you're showing a that it happens all the time and it's completely normal, and B, it's not a big deal if it does happen.

Jeremy LaLonde:

And our kitchen's messy and we make mistakes and we're off the cuff and we just don't take ourselves all that seriously. Yeah, I think that that's the response we get too, is that there's so many of what I would call skinny people in clean kitchens on YouTube that make people feel like, oh, I can't be that. That's never going to be me. When we started doing it, my wife was a little horrified that I would just shoot our kitchen as is. And she's like, well, we should ti it up first. People don't want to see this. And I was like, no. I said, I think people do want to see this. They want to know that people

Karina Inkster:

Actually do.

Jeremy LaLonde:

That's just it. They want to know that you can, your life doesn't have to be perfect to eat this way. And I think that's just what it is. I think what we want is this to seem like we're just a normal family, a normal family full of a bunch of videos, but that if we can do it, anyone else can do it.

Karina Inkster:

Right. I love that. Well, my grandma on my dad's side was a home ec teacher for her whole career, and she used to say something along the lines of, “A clean kitchen is a sign of a wasted life”. And I was like, yes, I could get behind that. My kitchen is never clean.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Preach, grandma.

Karina Inkster:

Right? Yeah. Amazing. So you have a membership program on the Mighty Network, which I'm actually on for a different group. So tell me about this. Mighty is just kind of a general networking platform that people can use to create their own communities. So what is the deal with yours?

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, it's like a different version of a discord I think, kind of thing. It's just one of those extra things. We like to think of ours as like PB with J, which is our YouTube channel 2.0. It's like the next step if you want to be that much further into the community, because one thing I've done from the start of our channel is I respond to pretty much every single comment that comes on through because people are often asking questions. I want to let them feel like there is someone at the other end of this. But as the channel grows, it's become harder to stay on top of all those conversations and things get lost and threads and whatnot. And so what I wanted was to create a space for people to come, because the other challenge that I see with people is that a lot of them aren't fortunate like I am, where more or less, my entire family is on board and I have support and backup at home.

A lot of these people are in families where they're the only person doing this, or they are living in an area where they're the only person they know that eats this way. So I wanted to create a community online for people that are like-minded like us. Maybe they're not all perfect. They don't yuck anyone's yum where they could come and they could ask questions and not feel like they're stupid or not feel like they're going to be judged. And so that's what I wanted to create, and that's really the heart of that community is the message board type thing and questions and people sharing information. And then there's other perks on top of that. People get early access to our videos. We do a monthly members only live stream and some other things just to kind of put a cherry on top.

But really it's about that next level of just communication with each other where they're able to form these friendships and communications with them as well as me. And the beauty is too, is it's not even necessarily me driving every single post and thread because it's possible for every single person to start their own conversation and bring things to it. And that's what I love about it is it's this thing that's, we're only about a month into this community, but there's already about a hundred members or so, and it's really, really active. It's already grown beyond my expectations, so I'm excited to see where it'll go from there.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. It's given me some ideas of communities and things that are off social media because as most listeners know, have a love hate relationship with social media. So it's kind of one of those things where you don't have to have a Facebook account, you don't have to be on Instagram. It's kind of a whole separate thing, and you're going there for one specific purpose, not just to scroll through a whole bunch of shit that you don't care about. You're there for a reason for the community that you signed up for.

Jeremy LaLonde:

And it's going to be curated by me. I'm not going to let any trolls in there. It's a very low cost. I like to describe it as it costs about equivalent of a crappy cup of coffee a month, just to keep it accessible for everyone, but also it's low enough, it's like $2.99 Canadian a month. So for Americans, that's almost free.

Karina Inkster:

50 cents.

Jeremy LaLonde:

50 cents. But it also creates that barrier where someone who just wants to yell at me and mock my beliefs isn't going to pay that to come in and do so.

Karina Inkster:

Definitely not. That's a good point.

Jeremy LaLonde:

No, people only want to yell at you for free.

Karina Inkster:

That’s the toll for them. Yeah, exactly. The troll toll in a way. It's kind of the reverse of that though. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, one thing I did not see in your guest intake form was your favorite vegan meal. So you'll have to tell me now what that is, and maybe it changes over the seasons, but what is your current favorite?

Jeremy LaLonde:

You know what? I'm going to give a shout out to the meal I just made that's sitting on my stove. It's one of my son's favorites. It's a clanless tofu chowder.

Karina Inkster:

Ooh, interesting. I've never tried making anything like that.

Jeremy LaLonde:

And it's not on our website. We are working towards making our own book, and that's a recipe that'll be in there. I have made it on the channel though. There's one of our cooking for carnivore videos. I made it for some people, so you can see an early version of the recipe in there. It's modified since then, but yeah, it's our take on a clam chatter.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. You kind of teased a book here. Is that the next project for you? Is that kind of what's on the horizon at this point?

Jeremy LaLonde:

Yeah, people have been asking for it for a while, and now it's almost like a weekly, if not daily things. We get messages asking when are cookbooks coming up, and so we're navigating that, and that's the kind of thing that I don't come from that world, so I'm learning a lot about it as we go, and it's something that we're hoping to get out as soon as possible. I think we're going to do it ourselves for this first thing, just because I think we can control that and we can put it out in a timely way as opposed to spend years working with publishers and whatnot. And so I think we're going to do it that way. I said earlier it's like I'm a DIY guy. I always created my own independent films. I created my own theater company. I was a kid. I've done all this stuff on YouTube myself. I like to be in control and not to have to wait for somebody else to tell me I can do something.

Karina Inkster:

Well, self-publishing is going to be the way to go then for sure. Self-starters, it's a perfect project for that. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, it was great to speak and lovely to connect again. Anything you want to leave our listeners with as we're finishing up here?

Jeremy LaLonde:

If you haven't checked it out yet, go to our website pbwithj.ca. We have a lot of recipes that you can see on our YouTube channel as well. We have also got some fun merch in there, t-shirts and other things, and all the links to everything are in there from our Instagram to our YouTube to our Mighty Network. It's kind of the overall hub that will just bring you to all things PB With J.

Karina Inkster:

Brilliant. And we also will have links in our show notes, so we'll just have one link to your Mighty Network. We'll have a link to your main channel on YouTube, and then folks can just go there as well. But it's great speaking with you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Jeremy LaLonde:

Thanks for having me.

Karina Inkster:

Jeremy, thanks again for joining me. Make sure you check out our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/171 to connect with Jeremy and to see my live interview with him on his YouTube channel if you haven't checked that out yet. Thanks so much for tuning in.