Calisthenics fitness coach and Youtuber Jose Pinho, Jr. on his switch to a plant based body weight workout lifestyle and what he’s learned from his channel subscribers:
So you used to have a different life 4 years ago? How different, and was health and fitness part of that life?
I have always trained weightlifting. On and off. Not very committed. My only goal was to get bigger. Then I started doing calisthenics about 2.5 years ago and started to think more about my body and mind. After much research I went vegan January of last year. By far the best decision I’ve ever made.
Before that i was just like most people. Eating in a kind of auto pilot. Whatever I see in front of me and is “tasty” I would eat.
The change to calisthenics came before the change in your diet?
A little bit. I was studying English on my own at that time (I was planing to move to Canada) and searching for anything related to physical activity and nutrition on the internet. My wife was already pescatarian at that time but I was still eating meat and everything else. I had a radical transition to a vegan diet. Came straight from eating meat to not eating any animal products.
Ah so you had a partner in the change, that’s awesome
Yeah, she helped me to open my eyes
Was it personal experiences you were having that lit the spark to start looking at other alternatives to bodybuilding and the normal meat based diet? It must have been hard in Brazil to even think about the change with the culture being strongly mean based.
Definitely. We were the only vegans in our family and group of friends. Only one vegan restaurant in the city (Fortaleza – 2.7 million people) and 2 vegetarian.
wow
I read about many athletes, bodybuilders, strongmen etc that have switched to a vegan diet and i started to connect the dots and think out of the box.
And there are more and more every day it seems
Absolutely. Vegan-ism is something really new in Brazil. Most people don’t even know what it is.
Whats amazing is the before and after, to experience the feeling of transforming your body inside and out, what does your experience tell you about the state of the world and health in the modern world?
I started a Youtube channel about calisthenics at the same time as I became vegan. I often talk about it in my channel and have received hundreds of testimonials about people switching to a vegan diet or reducing gradually the amount of animal products in their diets. As we all know animal products are associated with diseases that kill the most.
Yeah your following is much bigger now, I found you channel at a few hundred, your channel is a proof the word is spreading
Yeah, its 106k already, around 10k new subs every month
10k new pairs of eyes opening every month
Its known that animal products are leading people to chronic disease. These diseases have caused suffering to so many individuals and families. But also there is an economic loss associated to the treatment of such diseases.
On many levels
In Brazil most cardiac surgeries are free, which means the public system covers them. Each of these cost around 25k American dollars. And we still can see the government investing or subsidizing dairy and meat companies. These companies create jobs and pay taxes, but the financial loss caused by the consumption of these products outweighs by far the “benefits” for the economy
It feels like the movement is rushing towards the tipping point, when the damage being done is too great to ignore, and too serious to allow companies to buy their way into people homes and minds.
Definitely. The biggest mean company in Brazil is associated with a political scandal that has brought many politicians, including senators, former governors, congressman, to jail, and even the owner and CEO of the company. And unfortunately the average Joe has to work hard to pay bills and watch their favorite TV show at the end of the day. Most of them are not interested in knowing more about their eating habits or changing anything in their lives. But Social media is a great tool to change this situation. Young people are starving for something new, without consciously knowing this.
And what can’t be denied is that everyone, average Joe included, is being affected by the direction human health seems to be going. With all the record breaking weather events happening, not just in the Americas but worldwide, what do you see in the connection between the rise of the digital age, social media, and the vegan plant based movement?
Its just the same thing, same goals, People trying to be the same as a famous fitness celebrity. In my videos and my posts I try to talk about authenticity. Being special how you are and always changing. Walking toward a better self.
We, as vegan influencers, have a big responsibility in our hands.
To share what we’ve learned in each of our own unique ways
Most people are gonna respond with hate to our call to a lifestyle change. However, what I have noticed with my own following is that when you start to question unquestionable arguments (humans have always eaten meat, we need protein, and bla bla bla) and also show the results, people start to get more interested in it
The conversation that changes how people see what they’ve always seen is very powerful
True. I still remember watching Vegan Gains videos and commenting bad things about him and his arguments. Then I realized he was completely right. lol
But that’s the key though. In a society that celebrates broken systems, the ability to change the mind is the cure
I’ve hear this and its absolutely true: “what made me become vegan was not the argument of the vegans, but the terrible arguments of the non-vegans”
Jose Pinho, Jr. on
